The Mirror You Keep Avoiding and The Question You Need to Ask Yourself
Spirit in the Desert, Carefree, AZ
After nine days in Carefree, Arizona facilitating a STAR retreat, I'm still in the afterglow. That's the only way to describe it... that particular stillness that lingers after you've been inside something real.
Here's what I keep thinking about on the plane home, and while making coffee this morning: We are so good at seeing other people clearly.
We'll spot a friend's pattern before she's halfway through the story. We know exactly what our sister should do. We have thoughts about that colleague, that stranger, that public figure making choices we'd never make.
It comes easy when it's not ours.
But turn the lens around... and suddenly it's foggy. Suddenly we're busy. Suddenly it's complicated. Suddenly we need more information, more time, more certainty before we look. What are we so afraid we're going to find?
The participants in Carefree reminded me of a few things:
Awareness is not the same as understanding. You can know something intellectually for years and still not have felt it. The knowing doesn't shift you. The feeling does.
We avoid ourselves in sophisticated ways. Staying busy is avoidance. Over-helping others is avoidance. Constant self-improvement can even be avoidance... if it keeps you moving so fast you never have to sit with what's already there.
The thing you're dreading looking at rarely kills you. It's the not-looking that slowly erodes you. The weight of carrying something unseen is almost always heavier than the weight of facing it.
Witnessing matters. Being truly seen by another person, without judgment or agenda, does something that no amount of solo journaling or thinking can replicate. We need each other for this work.
I believe willingness is what opens the door. Not readiness. Not certainty. Not having a plan. Just... am I willing to look? That one question can change everything.
If something in this landed, I'd love to hear what came up for you.
If you’ve been circling something… the question isn’t ‘am I ready? It’s ‘am I willing? And that's what I'm here for. This is the heart of the work I do with clients—where insight becomes real self-awareness.
With Love and a little Carefree dust still on my shoes,
Adela