But... who am I if I'm not "good"?
You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
–Mary Oliver, "Wild Geese"
I cannot begin to tell you how truly LIBERATING it felt to read and hear Mary Oliver’s poem, "Wild Geese," for the first time in my twenties.
Liberating, truly perplexing, and even terrifying in a way.
The first line itself, “You do not have to be good,” shook/disrupted/shattered/crumbled my entire foundation of being.
I mean… WHAT? How and who am I if I’m not “good”?
But really…
My entire sense of worth and value was wrapped up in this being good. I HAVE to be good to be seen, to be loved, to feel that I’m ON THE RIGHT TRACK. Anything off the track was shameful, and threatened my entire existence…
What's my purpose and who am I if I’m not “good”?
Maybe you, too, can relate?
But still... the liberating feeling I experienced offered me a glimpse of a new way of being.
Oliver’s words burrowed a light deeper than the fear I had built my perception and behaviors around.
They illuminated and exposed the fissures of my beliefs:
“What IF I don’t have to be good?”
Oliver’s words are truth…
You/I do not have to be good.
And I could feel that truth pulsing in my veins, clearing the route to my heart, and truly introducing the fact that I was …. inherently… unconditionally… allowed to BE, to “let the soft animal of my body love what it loves”... and that is enough.
“Good” has been defined by fitting a standard outside the unconditional love we can tap into within. Being “good” keeps one in a state of running from oneself, seeking love desperately from anywhere- painstakingly longing for acceptance, repentance, validation that they’ve earned the fragile conditional notion of love.
That isn’t LOVE.
Love is unconditional.
It catches you and meets you where you are. You don’t have to DO anything to earn this love.
I not only know this now, but also I believe and (more often than not) act according to this belief. It has taken some time to rewire the 47-year old subconscious belief(s) that love is earned, that it can’t be trusted and is based on being good according to standards that I never played a part in crafting, but certainly was successful in reinforcing.
I've learned how to create safety in my body around this new belief that love is unconditional, and practiced showing just that to myself- that I will not abandon, reject, or speak harmfully to myself– ah… and if I do… I will listen to the request of this pain, meeting it with curiosity and compassion again and again and again.
I created a new default of being my parachute, my home, my refuge, my best friend - because I am worthy of love and truly am the only one who can create a stable foundation and definition of love. I practiced identifying with that love, and worked at the subconscious level to adapt to this new belief of inherent worthiness.
Thankfully, the subconscious life script CAN be rewritten.
Thankfully, you can more deeply experience this liberation, this freedom from the burden of conditions, and embody the coziness of loving yourself unconditionally.
Feeling and listening to the emotions in the body, dropping the past stories at the subconscious level, you can learn to rewrite your subconscious program/script and learn to meet yourself, no strings attached.
And then finally, you LIVE and act as the love you always wanted.
Thankfully, in simply loving what you love, “letting the soft animal of your body love what it loves,” you create space for embodying your best life- the one you desire most and feel most at home in.
Want support?
Let me guide you in reclaiming the love of life, your love for yourself.
It is inherent. It is unconditional.
Come home to yourself.
