Who the F*** Am I?
Is a thought I’ve encountered quite a lot in my life.
For a long time, it was a silent question posed to the void as I grew up and found my stride as a human. You know — the usual soul searching that happens in your twenties. During that decade I tried on many fascinating masks and identities. Some were far-fetched, some were fruitful, and a few were hella fun.
As I began building my “career” in earnest, these roles and titles gave me real footing when I was fumbling around trying to launch my first business (and my second, and my third). They were a foundation that allowed me to communicate what I was doing and the terrain I desired to navigate when few understood what, exactly, I did.
They were a way of legitimizing myself and my value when no one else was handing out permission slips.
And yes! Occasionally they were also ego trips.
I say all this because in the past few weeks I have been making some big announcements. Proclamations that feel brave, risky, and edgy. Social media screeds that make me shudder with glee and that pee-your-pants feeling when I press SHARE.
You know, the kinds of things that might precipitate the casual:
WHO THE FUCK IS SHE??
I suppose that is one thought you encounter when you dare to be free.
I ran into it most recently when I posted a vulnerable share on Facebook. (You can read the post in full here.) This post is contextual backstory, because there’s a layer here that is far more fascinating to me than what I say or don’t say online.
It’s important to note that I encountered no pushback save for what unfolded in my own experience before, during, and after this post. The only thing screaming bloody murder over these words was my inner fear monster. But admittedly, that was the whole point of the existential game I’m playing: to trip my triggers so I could see my own prisons. Then to actively dismantle them so I could go all in.
In my post, I intentionally named three things:
- A fear of how I will be perceived.
- A role I’m currently playing.
- What that role means to me.
More broadly put: I am planting my flag in the territory where life has nourished my gifts. I am saying YES to the path I keep walking so that this decision is conscious. It was never an accident that I found myself here. My post on Facebook was a purposeful declaration — not a question. There is a critical difference when it comes to such spiritual investments.
And I’m holding myself accountable publicly.
Sound is a potent medium of transmission. Language is another. Put together, you have an incantation. Call it whatever you want in the end, but to me a covenant of this kind is about BIG commitment. The kind of soul oath I will no longer walk away from because it’s why I signed up for these shenanigans when I was chilling in the bardo as an Ur-babe.
American culture doesn’t talk a lot about total responsibility. No, we love canceling things that don’t fall cleanly onto the right side of the fence. It’s too easy to be a troll these days and just as easy to think you’re not.
Honestly though? If life has taught me anything it’s that being a human is tricky business. It’s hilarious and embarrassing. It’s divine and ugly. It’s all of it, and that’s unavoidable if you want to have a fuckload of fun while you’re here. Let me be clear: I do.
I also have a mission.
Turns out you can do both at once if you’re ready to get real.
Which is why I am choosing to pull the curtain back on my own self-exposure, my own messy wonder, my own Kanye West moments of inspired insanity. I am choosing to have this divine conversation out loud because in doing so I cannot turn away from the truth of my life. That is my particular medicine in this moment. If my shares are in service to your growth, amazeballs. But it is not for you at all.
For I have nothing to prove and neither do you.
When I write, I am tuning the frequency of my truth. I am speaking to forces far beyond the authority of the forum to decide what is right, good, or worthy. I like to joke that Facebook is my open mic night, but lately it’s turned into a confessional.
Ironically, it’s not easy for me to talk about myself. Yet, there is always a way to do the work we need to do, and my work is asking me to be seen. To speak loudly. So in taking the tools of the “system” and using them to broadcast my soul songs, I am re-programming a limiting belief. I take my power back from the fears that kept me silent.
I flip that script.
And in doing so, I release so much fear and shame. I release conditioned smallness. I empty myself of a strange, sticky worry that somehow, I will wound someone with the reality of what I am.
Perhaps I will.
Because in consciously bringing my internalized fears to the surface to name them, I am acting in opposition to the dominant cultural paradigm. I am dismantling ideas about who I am and what is possible that I inherited from someone else. I am making myself exquisitely uncomfortable and that will inevitably be a difficult mirror for some. Because in speaking my truth without shame, I am confronted by all the parts of me I have disowned along the way.
Now I am claiming all of myself so that’s not up for debate.
And I embrace a reality that is both deeply challenging (for me, at least) and absolutely necessary:
We need to be witnessed along the way.
This is one of the most powerful realizations that struck me this year. Witnessing is the soul’s recognition of someone as they are, wherever they are. It is lightyears different than validation or permission. I would argue that it’s a critical need for ALL humans: to be held by their community as they cross a threshold and come out as themselves.
I could be wrong, but it seems that the vulnerable lessons I’m learning are also food for someone else’s freedom journey.
In sharing what I did, I cleaned some fears that were taking up too much space in my field. It was an intensely cathartic experience and one I can recommend if you like running face first at your inner demons. I learned a lot about myself in the process — like the fact that my fears are often a distorted mask for profound power and excitement.
As I become less afraid of who I really am, I create more space for all of me to be seen. And not just the socially acceptable pieces.
From the other side I can state with certainty: when I go beyond the judgements and perceptions of what I think my life is supposed to look like and love the fuck out of what is in all its terrifying divine expressions, I am changed.
I don’t know who needs to hear this, but:
May you find your own ferocious bravery and fly your freaky colors like they are the last flag.
🔺
Katharine Hargreaves is a spiritual mentor, transformational facilitator, ceremonial guide, and initiated medicine womxn. Her first book, The Art of the Experiment, is a transformational manual for people who want to change their life but don’t know where to start. For more information on Katharine and how to work with her, visit her website.
