You Are Only as Sick as Your Secrets

At the launch of my book, “Coming Home to the Heart - Transforming Trauma into Infinite Possibilities for Healing” I had a major breakthrough. Not only was the process of writing the book cathartic, but I realized that once written, it was the first time in my adult life that I didn’t have a shame-based secret to hide. I had never, as an adult, inhabited my own body, secret-free. Do you know what I mean?

Since I was a little girl, I was made to believe that the secrets of my life would have to live and die with me. That was as final as it could have been. I was fortunate enough that this trajectory changed in my life and today I know what it is to not carry the past in my heart, body, and mind. Just weeks before my book launch, I was so afraid, so terrified of the book coming out, that I wrote the following words:

Let Go

I don’t want to be here

In front of you like this

I don’t want to tell you my story

I don’t want to speak about what happened

This is hard.

I want to be free of what happened

I want someone to know my story

I would like to be able to tell you fearlessly

Even stand here, quivering, shaking, shivering

I want to be here

I want to stand still, breathe

And look into your eyes

See your face

I can tell that in so many ways

We are just the same

And this is so hard.

I want to hide, but NO I tell myself

No more!

No more hiding!

No more silence!

No more pretending!

Giving myself permission is hard

But no one is stopping me

No one CAN stop me

Only my fears, doubts, worries

My beloved “What ifs”…

My life will never be the same again

When I let go…

 It is amazing how we have the propensity to hold two opposing thoughts in the same mind we possess. This is the human condition. We know one thing, we want another. We innately know what we must do, but we second-guess our intuition, we wait for external validation. I realized that as fearful as I was of releasing my book into the universe, it was the next step on my journey and without it, I couldn’t move to the next thing in my life. My secrets and my shame around my past were holding me back from being, doing, and having what I truly wanted and desired in my life.

 The last line was what hit home for me, “My life will never be the same again. When I let go…”, and aptly, there is little left to be said when one does. It has been the truth for me. Letting go of the past shame, anger, blame, and pain of my past towards what happened, who was responsible, none of that matters anymore. There is so much freedom in knowing that the only truth is love. That fear is not the opposite of love but rather the absence of it. Love cannot have an opposite. It is absolute.

 My life has not been the same since I let go and released my book into the universe, and since then some amazing things have been happening. I have a second book now, and I can’t wait to share it with you. In addition to that, Coming Home to the Heart has been translated into Spanish.  I can’t wait to launch it to my Spanish-speaking readers and viewers. Life is opening up, the opportunities are opening up. No more secrets, no more hiding, I am opening, I am free.

 The painting you see here is called “I am opening”, it was a vision I had while I was dancing a few weeks ago to live African drumming. It had been 15 years since I danced and it has been 17 years since I painted. Things are happening in my life that I never imagined, life is shifting, I am shifting, opening, learning, growing, and I have never been more ME than I am right now. As my best friend V just told me this morning, “You gotta do YOU, Richa”!

 Here you go V, I am doing just that!