For a lot of my life, I’ve white-knuckled it.

Truth be told, I’ve been scared (pretty much) shitless on most days.

I am highly sensitive, intuitive, and introverted.

If I had my way, I would never leave my house. (I did that for a number of years after my last break up. Sure, I went to work. But otherwise, I hid out. I rode my couch, binge-watching Battlestar Galactica and MI-5, sleeping with my dog. If you look up hermetic in the dictionary, you’ll likely find my selfie pinned there.)

And as you can imagine, this state of being has made day-to-day life a bit of a challenge.

(Bold understatement.)

But I’ve realized that even if I do have Retrograde Pluto in Virgo in the 1st house – if you can believe it – and four planets in Pisces (including Venus in the 8th house, Mercury in the 8th house, Mars in the 7th house, and Chiron in the 7th house), and I am an HSP and a card carrying INFJ, I still have to open my front door and head out into life on planet earth each day. 

I still have to sit in coffee houses where people talk about World of Warcraft and discuss their genital warts and their extramarital affairs. I still have to interact and take risks and make friends and go new places.

Even if it is painful, initially.

Even if I feel like screaming, “Be quiet!” everywhere I go.

I have to toughen up and I have to tough it out.

Because the world needs me and I need the world. We have a fragile but crucial dance to learn from one another. We have the ability to awaken things in each other that will remain dormant if we never have our brief encounters.

I need to go out and meet the world because unless I do I will remain tentative and small. I will be a tiny haiku instead of a searing memoir.

The world will be less bright, eccentric, or willing to wear its hair silver or pink.

It won’t just make me small. It will diminish the world, too.

I have to meet the world so my heart becomes larger, fiercer, heartier, fuller. I have to shake things up and loosen the grip of the ‘way it’s always been’ so that ‘the way it could be’ can bloom.

And the thing is, this is true for every person alive today.

We are needed. We are here for this complete transformation (now underway).

We are buckling our cosmic seat belts and strapping in for the ride of our lives.

We are here as witnesses and scribes, earth angels, and water carriers.

We’re here to break our hearts and sprout tender, wet, sun-flecked wings.

Yes, we’re fragile.

Yes, we must take care.

However, that doesn’t mean we can sit this one out.

Nope.

Not this time.

Not this go round.

So, buck it up, buttercup.

If you do, you’ll discover you’re braver than you ever thought was possible.

© 2016  Shavawn M. Berry All rights reserved

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