The Fortitude of Fear


Fear is the worst feeling I’ve ever felt in my life. Sorry for the drama, but just being real. It hurts to feel. Your body curls up and your mind goes apeshit and breathing either gets super fast or nonexistent. You can’t eat right and your stomach hurts and you shake or you check out completely. You are sweating then cold then hot all over again. Our bodies have the most blatant reaction to this sensation.

It is a toddler in your ear talking nonstop about everything that is wrong or that could go wrong. Call it anxiety, call it fear, justified or not, it is absolutely consuming. What the f@#$ is the point of feeling like this?

When I felt this fear overpowering my life, I turned to a lot of teachers and spiritual groups to help me figure it out. What I got was a lot of “stop thinking this way or you’re going to attract it” —which, guess what, just prolonged the experience of fear by frantically shoving down the thoughts until fear blasted out like a mento in a coca cola bottle.

See, so many spiritual practices don’t consider trauma in their work, which leads to a lot of fear and frenzy about a natural thought process that is bound to come up when you are a human being. I think it would be a cruel joke if there was a divine source up there that had zero grace and made us do everything on our own with fear hardwired in our brains for survival. Doesn’t make much sense, does it?

Fear, as painful as it is sometimes, is this badass gift in this really uncomfortable package. The world works in opposites. The amount of love you feel is the amount of loathing you can feel. The happiness is equal to the sadness. I think that the opposite of anxiety is passion. However much fear you feel can blossom into raw passion.

Fear is the gatekeeper and guide to surrender. It is the ultimate initiation into the unknown. When do you feel fear? When you are fortune-telling the future and coming up with every single negative ending in order to prepare for the worst? Or when you fucked up and you realize you might get caught? The point is — we fear the things we can no longer control. Then we must turn to surrender, which if you heard me talk about before is the hardest concept to truly grasp.

Fear is your guide to your ultimate humanity and to your complete connection with divinity. Sweet one, it’s a calling to surrender. Lean into it. Breathe into it. Try being held and letting go, and tell me what happens there. There's magic afoot.