So I’m learning about value.

Value – n. – a fair return or equivalent in goods, services or money for something exchanged; relative worth, utility or importance

This is really huge for me. I have this idea about what the USA is. What it’s about. What my life would be like here. I have ideas. I have had them my whole life. But they never felt like my own. They felt like … and still feel like, I have no choice. But I’m realizing that now and that is so powerful to me.

Basically, in 2017 I had to prepare for a big life change. 2018 has brought that change. I knew it was coming and I thought about it. It was hard. It still is hard. Because I realized that before, I had a life with everything I thought I valued. And I feared that I would be leaving behind all the things I value and not be able to have them again.

I am home. Here in Jersey. It’s different here. Before I even came home, I felt suffocated by the fact that it feels like money is so important here. Money is the trump card (pardon the pun if you so choose). I gave myself this idea that I would not be able to have the life I had before. That I would have to start over. Start from scratch.

But then these past two weeks I had to work hard. So flipping hard. In so many ways. The biggest way that I had to work hard was inside. It was inside myself. Realizing a bit about value. And actually realizing what I don’t value.

The truth is that I don’t value my experience enough to believe that I can have what I want now. And the other truth is, that I am so afraid of dying because I fear that I don’t value my life enough to live my best. And so if I died, then I wouldn’t have done it justice. It being life.

Knowledge is power though right? So now that I know these things about myself… Serendipitously I had the opportunity to have a conversation with a special person last night. This person asked me what I want to do and what’s important to me. And I had the opportunity to speak my truth.

I hold myself back a lot from speaking my truth. Inside my head I think “wow I really have a lot to say about that. I know a thing or two about that.” Inside my head I say “I have so much to share. I have learned so much.”

So why don’t I speak up? See above. Being afraid. Fear man… it’s so crippling. But in these past two weeks, I have been thrown into an ocean of fears. And yesterday, I had my time to speak up. Twice.

Aloud, to a room of beautiful souls, I shared my journey to realizing “wholeness”. Along with this, I released the fear of speaking up long enough to realize my wholeness. In front of a room of people, spontaneously I spoke, not realizing that this was what I was going to say. It was waiting there, behind the shields of fear. And of COURSE it was. Geezus haha I am flabbergasted a bit now because it’s like… duhhhhhh of course I am whole. I can’t be partially existing. No human is. But the mind allows us to compartmentalize. This is a dangerous task. So yesterday I realized that over the past two weeks I have had the opportunity to put some pieces together. IN this piecing together I have realized how this is my journey – to uncover my whole self. In the process I will discover what I already know (as I nodded to last week).

So the other thing … about starting from scratch. Nahhhh. Just no. Because what I have realized in recognizing my wholeness, is that I have that, the whole me, no matter where I go and what I do. So it’s not scratch.

I am not starting from scratch. I am here with everything that I am and all that I have lived, proceeding forward with a whole lot more than scratch.

B-

Thank you to the individuals whom I have met in the past two weeks. I’m grateful for the conversations, the energy, the experience, the soul, the life, the opinions, the perspective.