I took this photo in October 2018… after what was the hardest summer of my life. I had bought this outfit with the intention of using it on a particular day. A day when I could liberate myself from the mess I had found myself in… I never got to wear it for what I had intended it for… and the following months are hard to forget. I wish I could forget them.

A year later I had a miscarriage.

And this October… two years later.. I’ll give birth to a baby boy…

The past two years of my life have truly been the hardest years of my life… I found myself in several little messes… some of which I had made myself… and some of which were made by others.. but what I am learning… is how to be liberated… how to be free…

Below are words by Tara Bliss… found via her podcast Sounds Like Bliss on episode 14: The Goddess with her hand on my back. You can find it at https://tarabliss.com.au/episode14/. Give it a listen.., it’s for all women facing those big forks in the road. From her transcript below:

“My heart was thumping, and I was angry, but my breath was calm, and I could taste liberation. So close. So close this time. So close to me lingering in my nose, still requiring me to chew and spit out the bones and then swallow in good faith.

In one moment it seemed a kaleidoscope of memories lay out before me, time frozen as I acclimated to the intensity of this here reality. A fork in the road appeared in my mind, a fork I had seen many times before and veered off in the wrong direction due to naivety, avoidance, codependency. But the invitation for my 15 seconds of courage was nigh, and it was urgent.

These are the moments that refine and define a woman’s life. These are the moments that redefine her and all that she can be. And this moment wasn’t just mine, it was an archetypal boom in the cosmos, a big bang in and of itself for all women too afraid to do the hard necessary thing.

I felt millions of women with me as I calmly packed my bag that afternoon. I felt the Goddess with her hand gently pressed into the back of my heart as I pushed the gate open. I felt the huddle of hope around me in that car almost as if every woman who wanted to draw strength from my strength was absorbing warmth from a fire. My fire. Holding their breath as my key turned in the ignition, holding their breath because they feared that this would be just another detour down that shonky branch of that fork in that road. Another detour into simply taking some space and collecting some thoughts and taking some more responsibility for what was not ours… what was never ours to carry. For uttering apologies, it’s circumstances unworthy. I could hear them urge, repeat, beg…. drive. They needed proof that they could do it too.

And as they keys turned into the door of my secret studio apartment, a cove of safety and retreat, and as I entered with tears of relief stinging my eyes, these women in my heart and all around me did the most unexpected thing. They danced.

And I, salty and dehydrated from weeping, I joined them. The nights I dissolved that contract, I danced in that little studio apartment until sweat ran down my thighs and down my back and sexual energy eclipsed me into tingles. All that power, I had syphoned into trying to keep a tower without healthy foundations tall, mine again. Striking me like lightning, coming home, humbling me with how worthy I felt to lay and stand and dance in the receivership of it. Caressing that guilt right out of my bloodstream.” –Tara Bliss