the liminal's dance with ego
loosening our sense of identity, flowing through the liminal, and returning to ourselves...
Loosening my sense of identity whilst maintaining a strong sense of self. This has been my thesis for the past few months and it feels like this:
What does a ‘strong’ sense of self even mean? Strong in its flexibility, not in its rigidity nor stubbornness. Strong in its knowing of this is where I begin and end, this is where you begin and end, and this is where we overlap which is our relationship that we both tend to. Strong in its ability to experience others’ preferences that you think are a vibe whilst knowing that you don’t need to copy them point blank. Rather you need to distill the essence of it and see that they are showing you something authentic about yourself that you’re meant to connect with. An invitation to excavate a gem you just saw the corner of. Stripped back to its purest form, envy is admiration––it is our body’s compass leading us towards our deepest desires (if we let it).
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In the liminal, it is natural for the ego to activate. Nothing seems to fit, everything feels itchy, and our egos clutch onto anything they can to ease the discomfort: I need a new tattoo, IG profile pic, piercing, and completely revamped wardrobe. We latch onto things as we move through this transitory time because we think we need something tangible to anchor our to-be-determined selves.
But the liminal isn’t meant to be of the earthly realm. It’s why during times like this all I want to do is speak and think and exist in metaphors because real sentences feel too clunky. We need to be light and flowy, letting our bodies be gently guided, changing direction whenever we need to, moseying down the path of least resistance whilst inhaling sudden gusts of inspiration. It is the time of poetry and cursive. It is the time of air. It is no surprise that right now we are in Vata season, the dosha ruled by air and space.
So in an effort to dance more freely in the liminal, I’ve decided to capture all the “I” statements that my ego is clutching to by putting them onto paper and calling it an ‘ego dance.’ These are all the things my ego thinks it knows to be true, the things I hold so closely to my sense of ‘me’ for they have brought immense comfort in the search of self. But I won’t get to where I want to go with what I’ve always known of myself. So my hope is that in writing them down and sharing them, their grasp will loosen and I will lighten, for the paper creates that healthy separation. They will simply become preferences and stories that I have become intimate with and that I can appreciate while they still serve me and let them go once they no longer do.
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My ego dance was intensely inspired by the first few pages of Constance Debré’s ‘Love Me Tender.’ When I read this for the first time, I immediately wished that I had written it:
“I don’t consider [the audience] at all. The audience comes last. I’m not making it for them, I’m making it for me. And it turns out that when you make something truly for yourself, you’re doing the best that you possibly can for your audience.”
- Rick Rubin
(Excavating my envy:)
In her immediate rawness, I immediately trusted her. She wasn’t performing for me, the reader, she was doing this for herself and every bit of my body respected that. She soaked herself in herself for herself. The rough edges, the casual nature, the matter-of-fact/take-it-or-leave-it energy. The bomb drop towards the end that is obscured but not hidden because she still allows you to peek at her pain and truth…
These two pages unlocked something inside of me that led me here, to my own ego dance:
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I’m fairly tall, definitely taller than average, and look healthy/well-fed. I have a pretty muscular build under my curves. I walk a lot and feel my best when I break a sweat everyday but I can’t say that I actually do that. I’m surprisingly athletic but look a little funny doing it which used to embarrass me but now I find it endearing. I have three tattoos: one bee, one cherub, and two half circle lines that I count as one because together they represent balance. I want so many more because I like the idea of adorning the hell out of this life’s skin suit. Someone once said to me that tattoos are like the tick marks of your height on a doorframe: they don’t have to mean something to you for your entire life, what matters is that they meant something to you at a specific point in time and that that’s enough.
I prefer denim, loose linen shirts, flowy dresses, chore jackets, chunky wool sweaters, rainbow sandals, sunglasses, and baseball caps. I get clothing inspiration from the boys from Sandlot and homesteading women. I buy one pair of sneakers a year and wear them to oblivion and then feel a pang of sadness giving them away because we’ve been through so much together.
I thrive with mornings and routine because the early nourishment and predictability make me feel satisfied and safe, but I gotta be careful as to not build my own prison. I love making and buying baked goods and have the guttural urge to sew my own clothes. I make my own deodorant and it actually works and even if it didn’t I think that would be okay because my soulmate will like my pheromones. (I’m single). I wish I could experience my own unique smell but my nose is oblivious to it. I suspect I smell a bit smokey because of all the musky incense I burn, and a bit herbal because of all the oils I put on my hair/body, but who knows, that might be too generous.
I have green eyes and light brown/dark blonde hair with copper undertones. It is quite curly and large. A few years ago I chopped it to my chin which in hindsight was psychotic and a slight cry for help but I got it out of my system and now I’m trying to grow it down to my butt because I am dying to join a braiding circle.
I used to wear a ton of makeup but now I only like a little blush, lip (always), and brow, maybe mascara, not much more. My makeup motive before wasn’t for fun self expression, it was to warp my face into something it wasn’t because I didn’t think my natural face was enough. But now it’s slowly becoming plenty.
I sleep naked with socks on and that makes me laugh. If I’m too cold, I’ll wear matching pajama sets or an old giant t-shirt from my past days as a sorority girl which is also funny because it’s so off-brand now.
I don’t drink and haven’t for the past 2 years. I don’t really smoke weed but every now and then I give it another try and then regret it immediately for the first 5 minutes and then vibe and then regret it again. I recently had some around a bonfire and said a prayer before smoking it and it landed very softly in my body because of that. I dabble in psychedelics for intentional play/healing purposes which sounds douchey as fuck but I do believe they’re powerful plants and should be respected as such. I used to love the occasional puff of a hand-rolled cigarette, but my body has been rejecting it more and more recently which is a shame because it always felt so romantic.
The most beautiful things to me are well-loved and worn down (wabi-sabi mami). I prefer second-hand because new feels devoid of life sometimes unless it’s by a cute small biz/artist. I like how used items have lived lives that we’ll never know about.
I’m from LA and love the ocean but crave true seasons and rain and lush green nature. I want to live in the countryside with my soulmate and a bunch of animals and max three babies one day.
I’m the youngest sibling with one older brother so I tried to be the guys girl that could throw a great spiral for years and then realized I’m a sacred sisterhood girl that just wants to frolic, play with animals, and craft (though I do still love a good game of catch).
I have never felt my age and have felt 32 since I was 8 but now as I get closer to 32 I just feel perpetually 8 which is when I really knew myself and honesty it’s cool to return to her again.
I’m a Leo sun, Virgo moon, Capricorn rising, 5/2 generator, INFJ, and I love any type of framework for the self that tells me why I am the way I am.
I introspect probably 5x more than the average person and being a writer only enables that, which I secretly love. It’s hard for me to describe what I write about because the topic always changes, but how I write is always through the act of confession. Even when I try to hold my cards close, I always end up confessing something because when I sit down to write, I cannot hide from myself. Any practice (art, sport, craft, meditation, you name it, etc.) that cracks you open and forces you to see yourself is 1) your spiritual practice and 2) requires your utmost devotion.
Furthermore, I am not meant to be consumed in bite-size chunks. I am meant to be consumed slowly, over time, with surprises. I meander and take my time and then rush full speed ahead and then meander some more and back and forth because that is how I am, that is me.
***
I know the above may seem like my silly little ‘about me’ where I just let it rip, but it is a glimpse of the sense of self I have been ardently building over the past three years. Yes, I’m about to go into my Saturn return so who even knows if this all will stick, but I can say with 100% confidence that I did not have ‘this’ three years ago. I would’ve sat down to write, started pondering ‘who am I,’ and then immediately crumbled––paralyzed from realizing I barely knew what I liked and the things that I did ‘like’ I hadn’t actually done in years. I barely knew myself.
Since then, it has been a trek of coming in closer after being so far away. It is painful to ask ‘who am I’ when you are far from your true self because you are shining a light on the distance between who you really are and who you’ve been performing as or defaulting to for the past few years. You feel like a stranger to yourself, finally noticing the weight of the stacked-up self betrayals, both the big and the small. You glance down at your feet and then look around and finally take in where you are and realize how lost you are. And it’s okay to cry about that on your bathroom or kitchen floor in a little ball so many times that you can’t keep count. We don’t talk enough about the deep, hollow pain of feeling lost with a dash of growing pains and how that is literally what being in your 20s feels like at times. Mourn it. Pity yourself. Cry all the tears until you’re severely dehydrated and have slipped into a kooky, laughing vibe about how insane reality is and how you feel like a sad Sims character that just threw a fit in this game of life. (Lightness too can exist amongst the heaviness.)
“The only way out is through.”
- Robert Frost
In all honesty, the distance is daunting and the default way of living is an easy fall back. But at some point, the pseudo ‘comfort’ of the default will dissolve and it’ll become too painful to keep performing. That’s when you’ll finally choose the discomfort of change over the discomfort of stagnation and you’ll become conscious of your dance with life and the oddly magnified power of baby steps and how much distance they actually cover.
Once we’ve begun reclaiming the parts of us that we thought we’d lost, we realize we never needed to grasp so tightly to them to begin with. It’s valid to grasp at first because it’s been away from us for so long and we missed it dearly, but we gotta loosen the grip to change and evolve with ease (aka in the ways of the liminal). We make it unnecessarily hard for ourselves when our dance partner is trying to spin us but we’re white knuckling their hand.
Remember, this isn’t just for you, it’s for your inner child. She misses her favorite arts and crafts, she misses rolling down grass hills, she misses learning her new fave song on the guitar and performing it for her parents, she misses experiencing the world through her sketchbook. She isn’t checking to see if you took 10k steps forward today––she’s having a blast looking at the snails with you on the ground after your one step forward.
333 Messages
3 symbols, 3 authentic moments, and 3 quotes that all came across my path in some way or another and have had profound secret messages when examined.
🐝 – impossible dreams coming true, getting things done through focused action
🎀 – leaning into our gifts, seeing our gifts as gifts, you my love are the gift
⏳ – now is the time to do what you’ve been wanting to do, there’s nothing you need to wait for
“The breaking of so great a thing should make a greater crack.” – William Shakespeare
“Stop playing it cool just be passionate and intense and insane and whoever sticks around is meant for u.” – @brainsoupp_
“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.” – Socrates
Love,
Kristen 🐝 🎀 ⏳
I read this when you first posted, and again just now to let some more of it sink in. I love the ego dance writing exercise and wonder how much of it you still identify with fully, partially, sense it shifting, sense it staying. This is a great exercise to do (at least!) yearly.
And it's true, when we write for ourselves it reaches out to others even more. This post got right down into my heart <3
♥️♥️♥️