to a new day.

This is the year of looking at our fears square in the eye without running away.

This is a moment of no escape. Its time you step into the fire.

Sit with your fears. Feel the pain. 

Let it pin you to the wall but not paralyse you.

Let it break you open but not into pieces.

Let it shake your ground but not your core.

The universe will never give us anything we are not ready to deal with.

So if you're finding yourself face to face with death and pain and fucked up, 

nothing-will-ever-be-the-same, gut wrenching, earth shattering loss?

Congratulations!

You're ready.

We might not want them but we need awful situations to surface from time to time.

This, right here? It's how we remember what it feels to be alive.

It's how we're pulled from the drowsiness of regular human,

"Is this really all there is?" type of living and it's how we grow.

It's how we reach our full potential.

We won't know how to love until we've had everything fall apart.

It's time you stop wishing for a life where comfort and happiness and butterflies 

and rainbows is a permanent state because its a grand illusion.

There is no permanent state. The ground beneath us will always shake.

Sometimes there will be happiness and peace and sometimes there is sadness and despair.

Clinging to one side is what pains us the most because it's the greatest deceit of all. 

We use hope to avoid looking at our scars and through that, 

we trick ourselves out of the present moment. 

We miss out on the feeling of being broken open by life 

every time we choose to numb our pain.

And we'll spend the rest of our days trying to hide it, fade it or fix it.

We write and drink and stay busy and talk and work and
do yoga and read books and we tell ourselves we're healing
when all we've done is run away.

Everything can be an escape if you try hard enough.

You need this!

One day, you'll even be grateful.

So remember that nothing is permanent.

Let yourself fall apart and you'll see that there is 

more beauty in the in between than you could have ever imagined.

Yes, there is death and loss and Yes, 

it's exhausting to live with this pain but NO, 

you will NOT give up!

It's time to stop running.

It's time to step into the fire.

-  Rachel Brathen @yoga_girl (Instagram) -