lessons I learned from my juice fast:
We choose our method of learning by our actions. We don’t get to choose the lesson plan.
this one might seem a little farfetched.. but it is the overall message that has been shown to me over the past month. my teacher Liana always repeats: we can learn from pain, or we can learn from love. some people choose love, but many humans choose pain because our egos get in the way. *me raising both hands emphatically, owning my struggles*
learning from love, i’ve gathered, requires full surrender and a healthy dose of humility. neither of which seem like an easy trait to adopt when you are accustomed to living out of fear or survival mode. this is not to give myself an excuse or an easy out, but to be gentle with myself in understanding exactly why my experiences have been labeled (in my mind, at least) as struggles.
every experience of my life, to date, has been a misguided attempt to seek love. attention, affection, praise, acknowledgment, encouragement, connection, the list could go on forever… but all of these boil down to one thing: “somebody please love me.” my particular version of this story has been playing out in the form of over-giving. i somehow grew up thinking that, if i just made myself super useful, it would earn love and ensure that nobody would abandon me.
i have repeated the same cycles over and over, without learning the underlying lesson: i am worthy of love regardless of how others treat me or perceive me. it’s not about what i offer or how perfect i am, it’s not about how helpful i am or how much i know. there is a simple yet hidden truth beneath these layers of deception: i am already loved— my life itself is proof of that. i am here. i have been given this gift of living and loving.
the tricky part — the lesson in the school of hard knocks — is that i am going to keep repeating these cycles until i learn the lesson. truly, at my core.
i started my juice fast with the understanding that something was holding me back from realizing my true potential, my deeper understanding of everything. blocking me from my divine connection to true spirituality. i believed that, if i could just clear out my body, i would have removed all the junk that was cluttering my mind and be able to “see the truth.”
what i did not see coming, perhaps because i am naive and have yet to surrender my ego, is the fact that the realizations come only after you face the junk. you can’t just remove it and hope for the best. “okay Jesus, i’m empty now, take me on a magic carpet ride to space and show me all of the secrets of the universe.” i really believed it was going to play out like that! i think i may have listened to a few too many ‘near death experience’ podcasts..
throughout the course of my juice fast, though, Jesus did just that. i wanted my blocks removed, my limiting beliefs brought to light. and it turns out.. they’re all tangled up into what i’ve come to view as my inner voice. when i chide myself for “cheating” on my fast.. when i reprimand myself for craving something sweet or warm instead of “just being grateful” for my green juice and ignoring my human desires.. when i hold myself to ridiculously strict standards without a single ounce of grace… those are not examples of MY voice coming through. those are the beliefs of others which i have adopted as my own, and once i stopped distracting myself with constant eating, i was able to hear them SO clearly. i was able to observe them rather than feel trapped by them. by observing these thoughts, i could begin to determine what was true and what was fear.
through my actions, i got to choose how i integrated these lessons. did i give up on my fast because i “cheated?” no. i woke up the next day and knew that i deserved patience and forgiveness.
did i get to choose how these lessons showed up for me? i truly don’t think so. i think that my trajectory thus far simply placed me onto a path that literally could have been interpreted millions of ways. i could have spiraled further into my perfectionism. i could have fallen back into disordered eating and damaged my body. it was my action of consciously being kind to myself that determined my lesson, ultimately.
i don’t have control over every little thing that comes into my life. i’ve always had this need for control, like if everything just went perfectly, i would feel safe and not ever have to face uncertainty or anxiety or the death grip of shame when i “do something wrong.” this was such an important lesson for me, in realizing that it’s not up to me to control what comes. it’s up to me to decide how i view it, and how i am going to approach it. i feel excited about this lesson because i think it might be a step in the ladder of surrender. which is a huge deal for me so i am going to celebrate it!
It is okay to backtrack, as long as our overall trajectory is still moving forward.
this brings me to day 19 of my 21 day fast. the dreaded “day of defeat” that i’ve taken many days to process. i believe this was the most important part of my lesson overall. on day 19, i woke up feeling refreshed and renewed. i had my morning juices and my teas. sometime in the late afternoon, i made dinner for my family and i really wanted to try a bite. up until this point, for THREE WEEKS, i had had no problem whatsoever just asking someone else to taste the food and let me know what it needed. my kids love helping me cook! but on this day, i was overcome with a sense of, “what will it hurt? what’s the point anyway? why am i doing all of this? Jesus hasn’t taken me to space so apparently i’m not going. he still loves me anyway, why am i depriving myself?”
i feel this was important for two reasons: it was the exact opposite of my usual way of seeing things. i went as far into the extreme as i could possibly go, from perfectionism to absolute disregard. it brought up a LOT of memories for me: this was my typical response during my teenage years! i was a “goody good,” but when i messed up, i went big. like, underage drinking, get expelled from school, get put on probation, move out at 17 and “shame the family,” big. this was sooo profound for me!! my inner child, who has been locked into the shame of my teenage years for so long, came front and center. i have been so LONELY!!! perfectionism, to me, is the loneliest road. it causes me to hold others to high standards like i do myself. so i become critical and judgmental and ultimately i am never happy. this swinging back and forth, from high to low, good to bad, was my outward manifestation of attempts to self regulate inwardly. approval, shame. affection, unworthiness. this lesson came in hot for me, and believe me when i say it is heard.
the other reason i think my descent into carelessness was important: it was partially true. for once, i allowed myself to see a situation from a different perspective than absolute precision in every little detail. i was forced to dig deeper into my motives for my juice fast. i wanted to get past my blocks and have a personal connection to spirituality.
why? because there’s got to be something more than what i’ve been doing.
what have i been doing? trying to be good enough.
for whom? everyone.
except myself..
i was running myself ragged trying to get everyone to love me, and i had no idea what i wanted for myself! i was even willing to put my body through this challenge, yet again letting my brain take the lead, to feel love from the divine.. yet i wasn’t even prepared to give it to myself. it wasn’t divine love that i was missing.. it was self love. wow.
once i allowed myself to own this decision (because choosing to break my fast and continue to eat in unloving ways for several days was a DECISION), suddenly the memories started pouring in. i felt so much anguish from my teenage self. always having to be responsible, never being allowed to make a mistake. not having a feminine influence to help me understand what was happening with my body, never being encouraged in these changes or helped to see myself as beautiful. no praise or affection whatsoever for this new stage of my life. always criticism, condemnation, judgment, every little word or action picked apart and told how i was wrong. always babysitting, always cooking and cleaning, always feeling so awkward and ugly and lonely, knowing that the only thing i had to offer was my intelligence and my scholarships and my ability to achieve anything i wanted.. academically. but not otherwise. ties to poverty, limits to abundance, disregard for my cleanliness, spiraling into body dysmorphia, allowing others to use my body and pouring myself into giving, giving, giving, while constantly hearing that i am a mistake…
this. was. heavy. i then felt guilty for disappearing from social media. i have lived my life in the public eye since 2016, and i recently deleted most traces of that existence. but that lingering feeling was still there… if i disappear, i am not offering anything… these people will be mad at me for being gone and not posting every day…. these feelings were so much. i cried. a lot. my eyes hurt, a few days in. i would begin to cry, and then my eyes would hurt from trying to cry, and that would make me want to cry even more.. and if i had seen someone else doing this, going through this, i would have hurt for them and said, “that poor, poor baby.” i spoke with my sister during one particular moment of this journey, and she said something profound to me:
“Breezy, you aren’t describing yourself right now. I hear what you’re saying. I hear your words. But those aren’t your words. You are telling me your dad’s opinion of you. It’s not you who’s talking.”
i had intellectualized that my inner voice was that of my parents, or others who had hurt me. i knew this, mentally. but in that moment, i felt it. the heartbreak involved. the truth behind my feelings. no wonder i try so hard. that poor, poor baby.
this felt like rock bottom for me. i felt surely i was a dark person, disconnected from the divine and fated to misery. my decisions to this point had led me a step too far, and now i was drinking coffee with MILK for christ’s sake, eating a CHICKEN sandwich and dill pickle chips???!!! i was pure evil. what happened to my nice clean, empty body from my 21 day fast?? i was a fake! health coach, pshhttt….. nobody would want to listen to me.
i laugh now, but i felt it then. deeply. and that was step one.
step two was being ready to release it. because if i let that story go, that was when the hard part actually began. the change. it’s so much easier to grab an iced cappuccino, throw back a few donut holes, and watch a few episodes of Survivor than it is to feel these feelings repeatedly, every time they come up, and allow them to pass through me on their way out. and not just once, but every. single. time.
step three (for me, in this particular lesson) was to realize: oh my gosh. this is the process. this is why i can help people, because i’m doing it! i’m not a fake.. i’m real. and being this real fucking hurts. i can’t tell someone to feel their feelings. i can’t feel their feelings for them and save them from the pain. but i can tell them: i have felt my feelings, and it is NOT picture perfect. it is NOT rainbows and ice cream and a trip to space on a magic carpet ride. it’s a coffee enema on the bathroom floor at 5AM, crying out to Jesus because your meditation was interrupted and you feel like you got nowhere, begging for a dismemberment journey because you can’t stand yourself a minute longer, an excruciating end to a long and beautiful juice fast that leaves you truly dismembered, forced to stand yourself, and realizing just how messy this is gonna get before you can say you made it safely to the other side of that darkness and actually learned something from it.
step four was allowing this to humble me. the next few days consisted of me crying over seemingly insignificant things like clean sheets, butterflies, and my daughter’s nose. everything was more beautiful. more fragile. more empowering. more vibrant. more real.
THIS WAS THE MOVING FORWARD!!! it felt a hell of a lot like moving backward in the thick of it, and that’s okay. i had to go back in time and sit with myself for a while. and now the future is a bit less intimidating than it was before. (:
Healing is like disentangling a spider web, blindfolded.
this one is kind of a joke.. because we aren’t truly blindfolded, we are blessed with so many signs and guides which we may not even know have been there until after the fact. what i mean is, i can’t trace my perfectionism back to JUST my dad criticizing me, or JUST my mom not wanting me, or any of the other contributing factors. it’s all tied in together, one building off the other until i decide to take out a brick and start dismantling the foundation, layer by layer. but once i take out the first brick, it opens my eyes to many others.. some i might feel ready to face, some i might not.
i have repeated Liana’s Mother Wound course four times in the last year, and each time i hear nuances i didn’t hear before. i also learn that there is one session or another that i’ve been putting off, avoiding, or not enthusiastic about. it wasn’t until completing her Father Wound course and working my way partially through Lifepath Manifesting that i had a breakthrough in one specific Mother Wound session. every time i have a new realization come to me, it opens the door for more healing in another area. i’m chipping away at the pieces of all the walls i built around myself, and some of those walls were built from the words and behaviors of others.
this juice fast helped me see that i can’t spend ALL of my time in the bathroom floor talking to Jesus. because the healing is all intertwined, i have to trust in the fact that he is going to meet me where i am. in every moment. there is a difference between running to him and keeping myself chained to the idea that i’ve got to find him. like i said, we have signs and guides that we haven’t necessarily been aware of. and if i spend all my time in the bathroom listening to Mother Wound sessions and trying to remember my past, i might miss out on the situation at the park with my children that was actually perfectly aligned to propel me forward in healing my abandonment wound.
what about the anxiety that triggers in me? what about my immediate thought of oh god what if i’m not always in the right place at the right time to learn the right lesson??? this is where i tell myself: see above. THE DIVINE WILL MEET YOU WHERE YOU ARE. letting go of that fear is the main part of learning to trust. my juice fast helped me see that, and now i get to slowly integrate it in realtime, in the daily moments. when i feel that anxiety creep up, i remind myself that i am okay, and that i’m exactly where i am meant to be, to learn the lesson that’s meant for me right now. without Liana’s teachings, i wouldn’t have even made it to that place. so, see?! all my decisions got me here. keep breathing. it’s okay.
There is no “one size fits all” answer, and our experiences unearth answers.
i have a habit of generalizing my problems and turning to someone else for comfort or solutions, or comparing myself to others as i try to find a path through my obstacles. this is SUCH a limiting belief for me!! it’s not helpful in the grand scheme of things because:
the problems that i feel overwhelmed by today are usually the result of a series of choices i made to get here, so i can’t generalize them in the sense that something is “just randomly happening.” i didn’t just randomly decide to do a 21 day juice fast and bomb it on day 19. i have a history of restricting my diet far too easily, because that sense of control allows me to feel like i am achieving something and “doing it right.” (seeking love but not realizing i’m doing it!) that mindset alone caused a snowball effect on my juice fast towards the end— when i was faced with the (very NORMAL) urge to eat something in a time of emotional discomfort, i fell back into that same pattern of being hard on myself that got me here in the first place. it became a self-fulfilling prophecy. the very root of the issue? i believed that i was unworthy of love because of my past experiences, and i internalized all the emotions involved with that, until i ultimately took all that anger out on myself. i couldn’t see that in the moment, so generalizing my problem in the moment was pointless. there is no answer to “fix” my emotions. i simply have to feel them. all the way through.
if i hadn’t made alllll the choices that got me here, i wouldn’t have done the juice fast, and i wouldn’t have ended it the way i did, and i wouldn’t have had these exact realizations at the time that i am having them, and who knows what effect this will have on my future, or what doorways i have opened for myself in learning these things about myself…. i think you get the point. it reminds me of the movie The Butterfly Effect, because one small change starts a ripple and we truly have no idea the full consequences until we are facing them. good or bad. because of this, i learned that i can’t compare myself to others because i have no idea what choices they made to get them here, either. nor what karma they may be facing from those choices, now or in the future. and honestly mine is enough for me, i don’t need to be worrying about anyone else’s (:
Connection is vital <3
the common denominator, the glue that holds us all together, so that we don’t unravel and become this mass of separate-ness and suffering? to me, it’s vulnerability and connection. i didn’t want to write this post, because i didn’t want to own up to my shortcomings. but in typing this out, my lessons came full circle and i know that i would LOVE to read this experience from someone else’s perspective. so i am going to share my vulnerability and put my story out there, and— okay, maybe someone feels a spark inside themselves when they read it. no acknowledgment necessary. they will know. and i’ll be here, making my way through my realizations and finding those little magic carpet rides in everyday moments.
my juice fast showed me that isolation is sometimes a step in my process, and i need that time to be real with myself. but it doesn’t need to be all the time. or it would be quite a lonely road. and i believe i have accidentally stumbled upon my why.. maybe not my reason for becoming a Wellness Coach, but definitely a huge part of why i choose to share my experiences in writing. i don’t think i’m a phony anymore. i think i’m real. and i can’t wait to start building amazing relationships and having these REAL experiences with my clients. <3
