Freedom Takes Practice

Creating and the Long Road of Courage

I’ve been editing this letter for days now…almost two weeks, edited only about er, 364849 times…

Which feels… about right. 😬

Visibility has a way of lighting up old wiring when you’ve spent a lifetime unable to express oneself freely. Anyone who has survived by reading the room, managing perception, and staying within invisible lines tends to edit like this. It’s not perfectionism so much as precision born of consequence. When words once carried a cost, you learn to weigh them carefully very early on.

After sharing a recent Substack letter - Patriots of Planet Earth - which touched on authoritarian and coercive patterns currently playing out in US governance, I noticed those old familiar tendencies arise, not because I regretted writing it, but because oh how fear gets very creative (and loud) when it senses movement. Cue shame spiral.

❌Fear I hadn’t validated pain enough.

🫥Fear I’d not been positive enough.

😑Fear I’d been too positive.

🤯Fear I had no right to speak at all. About, well, anything.

January felt raw and heavy, collectively and personally. More than once it asked me to meet myself on my knees and stay.

I fantasized about deleting my Substack on numerous occasions.

And yet, still, I keep writing.

❌I don’t write to prosecute my culty past. ❌I don’t write to create an Us v Them attitude (goodness knows there is enough of that in the world). ❌And I don’t write stay tethered to what hurt me.

To the very contrary.

✨I write because I’m interested in what long-term suppression, oppression and deep conditioning does to a nervous system and how we can slowly, bravely, live beyond that.

✨I write because my experience of a deeply controlling belief system is a microcosm of the wider world we’re living in right here and now.

✨I write for peace, and for softness. All the while knowing that to remain soft and peaceable in a world that wants us to harden takes gargantuan courage and the strength of a lion/lioness.

✨I write for freedom.

Not the freedom to react, project or unload. And sure as heck not because it’s easy.

❤️‍🩹But because Truth liberates at a cellular level.

As Caroline Myss repeatedly says: Just tell the truth.

We can tell the truth with nuance. With depth over speed. Truth doesn’t need to shout. It doesn’t dominate. And it sure as heck doesn’t bypass.

🔥That kind of freedom terrifies the old systems. Because it can’t be controlled or bullied into submission.

So, if like me, you are in an ongoing journey to be seen, and to place your wild, open heart into the world, if you’re practicing honesty with gentleness, you’re are most definitely not alone.

Can we keep going? Slowly. Together.

Here’s something I find so moving in these times. There are so people in the world right now who would give anything to have freedom of expression. And so for every time we are able to soften our fear just enough to speak, create, write, sing anyway, we speak for them too.🇮🇷 🇸🇾 🇵🇸 🇦🇫 🇪🇷 🇰🇵 🇷🇺 🇹🇲 🇨🇳🇦🇿🇸🇦🇹🇲(I’m aware this list may not be complete: 🇺🇸 )

Last year, in the month of March, I created three videos each week for paid subscribers exploring fear, how we can work through it without abandoning ourselves, and gently move beyond it. This month, I’ll be distilling those videos into short newsletters. Not speaking from a place of “Hey, I’ve cracked this”, but as someone very much in the trenches with you.

As a new week and month begineth, I’ll leave you with this quietly breathtaking clip of Martin Luther King Jr. on overcoming fear. I hope it carries you into your Monday in the way it carried me. Just, WOW.

With so much love, and as ever, shaky hands,

Suzy

PS. You know folks, your reflections are always so warmly welcomed