On Shedding the Old Skin

Last Christmas, I made a long-awaited visit to Trinidad to see my family for the first time in five years. I have a very tight-knit immediate family, none of which live here in the US with the exception of my mother. So visiting Trinidad always feels like a homecoming of sorts. These are typically the moments where I’m reminded most of the importance of family and connection, but also of the roles we all tend to take on in different areas of our lives.

As the youngest in the family, I was surrounded by accomplished and intelligent relatives, and I relished in the luxury of soaking up their wisdom and knowledge. So I have to admit, it does feel interesting to now sit with them, adult-to-adult, and talk. I had the chance to catch up with one of my cousins, and we got to talking about my previous work with The Chroma Network and how exciting it was but on the inside, I was having a completely different experience. I expressed my frustration that it no longer felt aligned with the new direction of my life and I felt unsure of how to continue. At this moment, my cousin provided me with the most unsuspecting, sage advice, “don’t be afraid to let go of an old idea to get a new one.”

Though it wasn’t his intention, this statement sent shock waves through my body. I knew that I was ready to call something new into my life but the thought of letting go felt like a heavy thing. And while on a soul level, I know that donning the proverbial coat of my new life would require me to donate the old one, I felt lost and uncertain about how to proceed. The instructions seemed straightforward, but my mind raced in a thousand directions trying to analyze and find how exactly the collection truck would arrive.

In my soul, I knew that I was ready for something new, and I welcomed it wholeheartedly. However, letting go feels like a heavy thing, and it feels hard and almost like something that I need a tutorial for. How does one let go? The instructions seem simple, honestly, there is only one step. But then my mind starts racing in one thousand directions, trying to analyze and find the how. I start asking myself thousands of questions – what will it mean for me if I don’t do this anymore? Did I give up? Should I be embarrassed? Did I fail? What will I do next?

Playing this round of 50 questions with myself, I realized a few things. Ego is a hell of a thing. We use our experiences to create this concept of ourselves that we use to define who we think we are and what we think we can be. We start to define our potential from the confines of our own limitations.

I’ve spent my entire life following very specific steps to achieve very specific things. Being methodical has allowed me to thrive in competitive environments and “overachieve”, but it has also caused me to overthink myself out of speaking up and asking for what I want. Accolades are wonderful, but what do they mean when they come at the expense of personal freedom?

I realized that not every question needs an answer and this applies as equally to the voices outside of us as those within. We can choose not to feed oxygen to the fires that light within our minds. We can choose to quell them with the water that is silence. We can observe them rise and watch them fall. We do not have to participate in the burning. 

The other thing I realized is that we always know what we want. I am starting to think that there are only two core emotions – call them love and hate, truth and lies, good and bad. You can decide how you address the polarity, but everything we feel can trace back to these two things. One of the biggest questions I have in life is how do I know that God is here with me or that He is speaking to me? How do I know that I’m on the right path or doing what I’m supposed to do? What if I make a wrong turn or choose incorrectly? How do I know that I’m doing the right thing?

But here’s the thing, you always know. I think that many of us dampen our intuition – those gut-level reactions to situations that we chalk up to overreaction or random circumstance, but what if one way that God speaks to us is intuition? What if His voice can be found in those immediate gut reactions? What if we chose to simplify everything and chose to navigate life by walking boldly toward the feelings of bliss, flow, and elation vs. The feelings of worry, panic, and resistance? Intuitively, we always know.

When I sat down to write for Chroma, I felt stuck not out of fear, but out of resistance. I felt disinterested and like the flame I felt in my soul when I first started had completely gone out. When I started, I was at a completely different place in my life. I had recently graduated college, landed a job that I had thought about since I was sixteen, and was ready to change the world. I wanted to share what I thought I knew about career navigation and life as a working woman.

And while I still do want to change the world (and, in fact, believe I will), my approach to this now is completely different. If I am meant to teach, I want it to be through embodiment and by example. I want to share what I learn as I learn and unpack.

I want to teach not from a place of mastery but from a place of being a perpetual student. I want my learnings to inspire others to embrace their own curiosity and seek the knowledge that they crave – not because someone told them they should but because their soul leads them to that special place. I want to live my life not from a place of perfection but from a place of metamorphosis and continued evolution.

And as I get older and become more clear on who I am, I realize that I need a space where I can do this freely. A space that is mine and continues to grow as I do. A place where I can write freely, unpack, and grow. A space where I can build an architectural plan for my life and perfect my foundation but then find room for improvement, burn it down, and start anew. A place where I don’t have to be perfect but instead, can just be.

When I write in this style, the words flow from me to the page in a way that just feels natural. There’s no SEO strategy in place, just heart.

This is my landing space, but it’s also my launch pad. And while I’m not quite sure what this space will turn into, I’m excited about the journey.

So cheers – to the future.

By,

Daneshé