“The ego is telling you things you need to do to be better, to improve yourself. When in reality, it’s about what you need to let go of. You are not your ego.”

After releasing my first novel, In Body I Trust, the most vulnerable piece of work I have ever written or created, I went into a week of depression. A week of darkness. As I write this, I may not be entirely out of the woods. There is an element of chemical imbalance that I am still working through and will continue to work through with my team. But there is another portion of this equation that needs to be addressed.

Throughout this last week, I’ve had to overcome so many obstacles.

When issues arose starting from the very next day after the book release, my old thought patterns and behaviors began trickling in. Instead of releasing, and letting go of the things that overpowered me, I took them on as my own. Other people’s problems, feelings of being a failure, not allowing myself to unfold the way that I needed to, appeasing other people, making sure that others were satisfied in whatever means they needed.

I stopped caring for myself. I stopped living for myself. I stopped acknowledging what Lauren needed.

I gave into my ego. I gave into Amelia.

Amelia is not only the name I’ve given to my eating disorder and the main character of my book, but as my dear friend reminded me, it’s also the name I’ve given to my ego, without actually saying those words out loud to myself until the other day when Kelsey and I talked on the phone. See, Kelsey is one of those souls who constantly reminds me that it’s not about what other people tell me to do or what I should do. She reminds me it’s not about what I believe others want me to do. Most importantly, she reminds me it’s about what my heart and soul needs to relieve itself from.
In theory, it sounds so simple. Let go of what is not serving you, hold onto what provides you with joy.

But in practice, it can be one of the most challenging things a person can do.

“When you are in those moments, when the dark is arising, how can you bring yourself back to the joy? How can you politely, courteously tell your ego, ‘Thank you, but not right now,’ and let yourself be brought back into the joy? You have to allow yourself to do just that. You have to remember the power that you have, that you hold.”

I’d forgotten, with all of the chaos that was my depression, that I held power. I kept reiterating the narrative that I held power. Past tense. Not that I continue to hold power. Present tense. How quickly does our ego try to revert us back to the familiar, comfortable, and safe space we once held onto for dear life. The things that never allow us to truly move forward into the light, life, and love that we want.

So what happens when we start saying goodbye to the things, feelings, thoughts, patterns, people, and behaviors that once bound us to who we were, and start saying hello to the joy that we once had, and have always had, but were just to wrapped up in the ego to see?

Well, I’d like to say that I’m there and have all the answers for you. But the truth is, I don’t. I don’t have any answers for you as much as I don’t have answers for myself. But what I can tell you, is that I’m learning, each and every day, I am learning. A year ago, I would have never called upon the people who have been brought into my life to help me navigate these terrifying paths of depression and my eating disorder. But today, I not only called on one, two, three, but several human beings on my team until I finally found a way out of the dark and back into the arms of joy.

Because as Kelsey so desperately reminded me yet again, “Our ego, our brain, searches for answers. It searches for data. Reasons as to why we are doing, acting, feeling, thinking the way that we are. When in reality, there aren’t always answers. There may not always be data and simply just is where we are at.”

It’s okay if we don’t get this 100% right, because the only one who defines what is “right,” is ourselves. Don’t forget that. It’s not what other people need or want of us. It’s what we want for ourselves.

Today, I am going to sit with the little moments that I realize tear me away from my truth. Today I will acknowledge the hard in these instances and not try to “cure” or “fix” them. Today, I will let them be what they are, and ask myself the important question: “How can I bring myself back to joy?”