How A Rockabilly Chick Changed My World
I was twenty-three years old, working at the Good Times in Santa Cruz, California. Sweet, young, Christian girl from the country, selling real estate classified ads in one of the most hippie towns in the country. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Naive as they come.
Sitting next to me was a girl the same age as me with long, sleek black hair, full sleeve tattoos, and a rockabilly style. She did the mind-body section. I didn't even know what that meant when we first started working together.
Neither of us knew we were about to change each other's worlds.
She knew herself. And I was enthralled at her confidence, courage, and belief in herself. I was deep in a phase of trying to understand what was really going on in the world. It would take me twenty-three years to fully see how she had expanded my mind in those early days.
I grew up with the belief that people who didn't believe in God the way I did were going to burn in hell. Not just people outside the church — people inside it too. If they didn't believe my religion's way, it was going to end very badly for them. There was a woman in the office who kept trying to stop our friendship. She'd pull me aside and tell me this tanned, lithe chick was into evil and witchcraft. We knew the truth, she'd say. We were the light. She was the darkness. And it almost worked…
Except even my young self knew was that every single one of us carries light and dark inside of us. All of us.
What Fear Sounds Like When It Thinks It's Faith
When I ask people with strong beliefs about God why they believe what they believe, many of them quote the Bible. But they don't actually know. I hear their words, yet the way live their lives says more about their beliefs than their practiced words.
I see fear, not intuition. Division, not connection. I'm right. You're wrong. This is right. This is wrong. Light is good. Dark is evil. This is the only way.
And although I can see why they would believe that, I keep coming back to my knowing that our only job is Love. Just like Jesus originally asked us to. So if we come from love, how is it possible to live a life in fear and judgment of others? How can we make ourselves right when the truth is based on being better than other people? When everything we see is a projection of our own inner world?
The girl I knew in Santa Cruz never once tried to make me wrong or bad for my beliefs or how I moved in the world. She just accepted my naivety as sweet and treated me with kindness. My Christian friends, on the other hand, were mean and hateful to her.
Which begs the bigger question: Doesn't darkness win when it separates us? Especially those of us who are here to be light in the darkness? Doesn't the darkness get the last laugh when self-righteousness masquerades as sacred connection?
That girl showed me what real acceptance looked like. And now, twenty-three years later, I'm living the cost of that lesson.
Losing Everything to Find What's Real
I've been deep in the darkness these last few weeks. Noticing how painful it is to experience the suffering often described in the Bible stories I grew up with — the stories of Job losing everything and everyone, only to find that by losing it all, he could step more fully into his walk with God. He could step more fully into being who he was meant to be and on mission. And how he eventually had everything restored at an even higher level than he ever had before.
I've been sitting with how the attachment to identities, things, and people all disappear when we decide to step into the next parts of ourselves. And how everything that remains is what's actually real.
The Reclamation has shown me just how human I am. How utterly painful it still is to lose so much of what I believed to be forever. How I was raised to be strong, enduring anything, yet how attached I have been to some things that were never for me.
When I began this latest journey, I had no idea what it meant to call all of my energy back to myself. But with the impending birth of this dragon — the dragon that is me — I see how all of the old beliefs, structures, and systems are burning to the ground. Including some of the closest people to me.
Painful beyond belief. Yet necessary.
Some are leaving, yet I see now that they were the ones taking from me, straddling two worlds, or being destructive to themselves — often without even knowing it. And I'm finally willing to let them go.
The most humbling part? Taking responsibility for those I've hurt. It's fascinating to be able to reach out to people who have hurt me — people I've also hurt — and apologize. Some of this almost 20 years later. To see the truth of what really happened. To understand that I can't close off my heart again because of the hurt pointed at me. That each heartbreak only allows me to expand the heart I had before.
Expansion is not just about being bigger. It's about breaking all the parts that aren't the right size for this next phase. Every part has to crack all the way.
To the 23-Year-Old Me
To the naive country girl who sat next to that rockabilly chick. To the girl who knew — somehow, in the deepest part of yourself — that separation was the real darkness. That connection was what mattered. That love was the only answer.
You were such a tender badass. And I'm so proud of you.
I know you'd be so proud of the 45-year-old me who has stepped more powerfully into her peace — with an almost-finished sleeve of tattoos (yes, even the most straight-edge kids can change their minds). With a Soul Family of epic proportions spread across the entire world. Who can hold both the light and the dark without needing to choose a side. Who can love people without needing them to believe what she believes. Who can be wrong and still be right. Who can be healing and still be whole.
Thank you to the beautiful tattooed soul who was my inspiration all those years ago. The girl with the coolest style I have ever seen. You showed me what it looked like to know yourself. To not apologize for it. To accept others even when they feared you.
As Mark Nepo said: "As a seed buried in the earth cannot imagine itself as an orchid or a hyacinth, neither can a heart packed with hurt imagine itself loved or at peace. The courage of the seed is that once cracking, it cracks all the way."
I'm cracking all the way now.
And the light that comes through those cracks? It's the same light that's been inside you all along.
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