S4E5: Lion's Gate & Letting Go

Hello from the other side of a surprisingly intense Lion’s Gate Portal! After a quick trip to Seattle for a retreat, I came home feeling raw, exhausted, and a little confused about why an experience that felt so expansive also seemed to require so much recovery.

In this episode, I talk about the realization that maybe I’m finally ready to see myself clearly — and why stepping into a new version of ourselves can come with a surprising amount of grief.

A much more detailed recounting of the story behind the transformation is over on the Modern Day Mirror Substack.

Can't wait to hear what this episode brought up for you.

Love,

Cecilia

moderndaymirror.com

Transcript

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Welcome back to the podcast, everyone. It's been a little while. I was sick all last week, and I gotta tell you, the eight-eight portal and the first August eclipse just whooped my ass. I was down pretty bad. Not in a bad way, but I very much felt like I needed to go inward. It felt like a cocoon period. The idea of a scab keeps coming to mind. The 8-8 portal and the eclipse left me feeling so raw. And this time where I've kind of gone dark allowed me to grow some new skin so that the scab could eventually fall away. On August 8th, my longtime mentor held a retreat and I decided to fly out to Seattle for it. It just so happened that I have several high school classmates who are also in that area. So I figured since I was out there, maybe they would want to get together. So I fly in Friday, and Friday night we all headed out to this fabulous restaurant, uh Taiwanese restaurant. So, so good. And these folks, we're all in very different stages of life. One of us is married with young kids, another is married with older kids, another is single and unhappy, and then I'm single and on the other end of the spectrum, incredibly satisfied with life right now. So it was very apparent early on in our time together that this was not going to be a cup-filling experience for me. And what I mean by that is, you know, I'm really lucky to have found and made so many amazing friends that at the end of our time together, I walk away feeling so seen and so held, and dare I say celebrated. This experience was not that. It was just asking questions that maybe these three gentlemen would not have otherwise asked each other with no expectation of unearned intimacy here. But just, you know, what's what's going on in your life right now? Like, what are you excited about? We talked about everything from pets living and past to movies and music and art. We ran the whole gamut of topics. And at the end of the night, it was still a great time. And I had no regrets about spending that time with them. It was quite an emotional whiplash to then walk into this 8-8 portal retreat experience with the most amazing women and have these like soul-filled conversations and aha's. And I'll share one in particular with you that kind of rocked my world. At the top of the retreat, we were doing a journaling activity where we were thinking about what it is this next season of life was asking from us. In what ways are were we being asked to step more fully into our power? And of course, this is all through introspection with the help and support of spirit guides, spirit team members. So I'm going inward and I'm like, okay, guys, I know you want me to step more fully in my power, but what does that even mean? What does that mean? And my spirit team said, it means don't be afraid to show up as someone who knows how beautiful they are, how intelligent they are, how charismatic and sexy and thoughtful and funny they are. And I it's hard, I don't have language to describe what I was feeling in that moment, but it was very conflicted because on an intellectual level, I understood that it's a good thing to know this about yourself and to embody this. And at the same time, there was this deep conditioning that was telling me, ooh, this feels scratchy. This feels inappropriate. This feels self-absorbed. So we continued to journal. And Spirit brought to my attention a book that I won't get into the details of it, but a book that a gift a friend had gifted me back in high school that I was using in the workshop as like a hard writing surface for journaling. And inside of this book, gifted to my birth, gifted to me for my birthday in 2001, was an inscription from a dear classmate who had the kindest things to say about me during a period in my life where I saw myself as anything but. Room for more people who love you and see you and want to join you on this path. I was bawling during this whole time, by the way. I'm incredibly grateful to be able to get through this retelling without feeling overwhelmed by all of the emotion that this brought forward. But as a result, it did feel like a new version of me was unlocked that day. Unleashed, the guides are saying. And with great knowledge comes great responsibility, right? So this last week, I was laying low. I was sick, I couldn't get my ass in the shower, I didn't leave my home, and I couldn't understand why I was showing up this way because I wasn't depressed. I knew that. I'm very familiar with that feeling, I experienced it a lot in my youth. I knew this wasn't that, and yet I still needed to tend to myself to go inward and to just lay low. So instead of trying to figure it out and make it make sense, and instead of pulling myself up by my bootstraps and forcing myself to do things I did not have the energy or interest to do. I just leaned back. I leaned back and eventually I had the realization. What was it on maybe Thursday or Friday? I finally feel well enough to take my dogs for a walk. We're out in the fresh sunshine. I'm moving my body. It is no surprise that I had this realization in that moment. And I realized that what I've been feeling is grief. I have been grieving for what I've always understood to be grief. I was realizing that I'm leaving this past version of myself behind. And we've been told a lot of stories about what it means to move on. That there is this expectation of grief involved in the process. But if I love her and appreciate her for everything that that version has done for me up until this point, where is that grief coming from? Is that actually what I'm feeling, or is that what I've just been conditioned to feel? How I've been conditioned to understand this process. Maybe in that restful period, there was room for celebration. That's the kind of story I want to move forward with as I continue to leave one period of my life behind and move on to the next. So I'm incredibly excited about the new energy I can feel coursing through me. I'm feeling a deeper connection to the feminine within. I'm feeling more grounded and excited about my expression. And I have a lot of fun ideas about how to continue to bring people together over story and intuition.