I'm not as small as I thought
Hailey Marino • December 1, 2021
I really believe that a huge part of being a human is the constant cycle of remembering and forgetting.
Forgetting and remembering and forgetting and remembering and releasing and discovering again
Our magic, our worth, our uniqueness, the vastness of our hearts, our true power.
In many ways in the last two years, I have been Remembering. But in order to remember, I’ve needed to forget.
To forget so many pieces of who I am in the name of discovering what is underneath them.
Asking myself:
Is this part of my personality actually a protection?
Is this part of my work actually designed for me to hide?
Is this desire that I have actually from scarcity and fear?
Letting it all go.
To expose the raw pink flesh underneath.
And building the muscle to be with it.
In this process I’ve developed a bit of a false humility. 😜
Wondering if maybe I am smaller than I thought I was.
Accumulating doubt and distrust for the truth of my size and power.
And I had just been believing it. As part of my phase of forgetting. 😉
Maybe I don’t know as much as I think I do.
Who am I to assume that I can do this.
I need to go back to the basics.
I didn’t realize how untrue it was until I realized that I consider myself to be a beginner at yoga. Even though I have been doing yoga every day for literally four years straight.
False humility is not holy. It is actually a delusion. False humility is actually just as egoic as blind arrogance. Not occupying your right size, playing small, identifying with the smallest part of you is NOT truth.
In dropping off the false humility, there is this incredible REMEMBERING AGAIN.
It feels like the remembrance I have been waiting for, some big pieces clicking in where I’ve felt them wobbly around my work, my medicine, my magic.
My teenager helped me there.
A few weeks ago she handed me back my sword.
“You dropped this,” she said to me.
The remembrance is that I am actually bigger than I think I am.
And then even bigger than that.
That the things I love the most about myself are True. My sharpness, my selfishness, my confidence.
That I am capable of far more than I believe.
And that no, I am most definitely not a beginner at yoga 🤣
The cycles of remembering and forgetting will probably never end altogether, they are so delightfully human.
But the forgetting becomes more subtle over time.
And we would never want it to end, really…
We secretly do it for the great fun of it.
Like the great jigsaw puzzle of being a person.
But every forgetting brings us closer to remembrance
And every remembrance brings us closer to Truth.
And while we like to play, we do so with the knowing that we can never
truly
forget.
fuck... I think I have something to lose
Distortions of being the "cycle breaker"
Everyone close to me knows that one of my biggest desires in my life is to be timeless To exist completely outside of a clock, moving entirely in my own way, to forget that time or any external measurement of my life exists at all There is a part of me that yearns for that kind of surrender and flow in a way that is totally unrealistic for this world. There are a million reasons why this deep yearning desire for timelessness is unrealistic Reality and business and plans and life and blah blah blah. And yet there are also a million ways to have it. A million ways to honor the desire. The forever practice in relationship with Desire is to open to the wanting that feels ridiculous, impossible. The desires that make no sense, and the ones that you don’t believe you can have. The ones that bump up against your value systems and what you think you believe and what you have always subscribed to being important. And especially the ones that absolutely contradict your perception of yourself. What would it mean about you if you admitted that somewhere in there was an aching searing want for something that would burn down who you have always proclaimed yourself to be? It really is a forever practice. To sink into an embodied practice of Desire, where you respond lovingly and openly to the whispers, the ones that feel crazy and the ones that you don’t like and the ones that terrify you. To move the mind aside and sit in the turned on electricity of Desire. I’ve been thinking a lot about my relationship to Desire recently… because of how vulnerable it truly is. I was wrestling with myself to admit a desire that feels so gut wrenchingly vulnerable. My desire for partnership. Claiming this desire while being fully aware that I am not actually ready for it. My god. How fucking raw it felt to unravel each and every protection against that desire. To open to something I know is not mine to have yet. So exposing to admit. And to not brace against the grief of it… or the sweetness of it. I stood in front of the ocean totally stripped down with myself, my heart bare, finally unfolding into the tenderness of the wanting. Wanting without the victimization of not having. Enjoying the wanting. Basking in the aliveness. Letting the yearning in my heart nourish me. The path of Desire is so vulnerable because it is not actually about the having of it. It’s entirely about who we become in the process of surrendering to the whispers of wanting inside of us. Admitting them. Finding who we really are inside of them. I don’t have everything I have ever wanted by following the path of desire. But I have become a woman who can dream big, hold visions beyond what my mind believes is possible, break free of false limitations, and then create larger than life, letting everything untrue die in the radiating heat of my true desire. So often the desire comes and it is better than I could have imagined. Or different. Sometimes it is a gateway desire.. leading to the creation of something I didn’t know was even possible to want. My desire to be timeless is completely and utterly unrealistic. And I have and hold this desire anyway. I feel the deep aching wish to surrender to life itself in my womb and my heart and my p ussy. The first way I found to be in alignment with this desire years and years ago was to stop wearing my watch. It was a gorgeous designer watch that I wore every day. I laughed so hard when I realized I have a desire to be timeless… yet I am glued to my watch. I haven’t worn it since. A small, yet world changing honoring of the desire. And I realized today that this desire is integrated into my life in ways I did not try to create, but naturally came to be through my unconditional holding of the desire, and the reverence and appreciation for it. I often lose track of days. I move by my internal clock, sleeping and waking when it’s true. I naturally set up my life and business around this desire. My calendar holds me! And tells me what the deal is. I literally never miss a thing. Yet I don’t even know what day the garbage or recycling goes out… I just put the cans out when everyone else on the block does. Timelessness. I’m coming off a long holiday staycation by myself, and I actually have no idea how long it’s been that I was in my bubble with myself, or how many days it’s been since I “did” anything. I feel so full and nourished. I realized this timelessness happens naturally in my world now and it is so impeccably the desire I have had. Desire is gorgeous and glorious. It works in mysterious ways, bringing us to our knees, reinventing our relationships with ourselves and each other and the world. It’s one requirement is that we don’t let the mind kill it before it can move us. To honor it, when it makes no sense, when it asks you to be naked. And to trust it. Even the act of writing this, being in creation, is an experience of timelessness. There are so many ways to have it. And I receive it fully.
Body bare on the fuzziest blanket My fingers dripping in oil I run my hands over my skin Slower than I have ever before Fully taking in the presence of my own touch And touching with the intention of pure love Reverence and respect and worship Being with the body as a lover should Adoration and cherishing of Each and every toe The arch of the foot The ankle and heel Present with the sensation and pleasure Skipping nothing, nowhere Receiving it all the way through Into my cells I’ve spent my life Touching my body as a Task Something to do, somewhere to get Pressing buttons and following formulas To show off, perform, and satisfy Sucking in and hardening Holding the breath, weathering the discomfort Pain Is beauty As long as it looks good It doesn’t matter how it feels Abandoning her for the Approval of another For the likes and whistles To be a fun girl, cool girl, hot girl In fact, leave your body behind altogether So you don’t even notice How much it hurts When you kick the goddess to the ground Avert your gaze So you do not see her Piercing, fuming truth Her magnificent No Her gaze follows you though From the ground she is steady Her roaring can only be silenced For so long One day she will claw you down with her The reconciling of a lifetime of neglect It not forcing her up again, no fucking more You join her at the bottom now. Laying in the cold wet dirt together Wailing the tears of the world Your sacred cries as you get lost in her eyes And the tears of the women who cannot yet let it go Who will live a lifetime of Leaving themselves Our ancestors taught us all well How to fake it to survive The reconciling Can only be done on your knees Finally, at last, on your knees for yourself In total devotion to the truth inside of you Feeling the Devastation That it is Leaving Her behind Millimeter by millimeter You rise from the earth, together Building the muscle to hold the weight Of a being who does not leave herself Learning the body Listening to her inventory of Feelings unfelt Desires neglected Caring for the being Like you would care for your child And loving the being The way you wait for a lover to Touching the skin With patience and care Touching the skin To enjoy feeling and being known For the glory of Loving her Delighting in her Appreciating her To simply be here with her The ultimate gift of this lifetime To be here fully Melting into the worship of your own being Of being embodied on earth Of embodying the goddess In human form And never leaving her again As I gently run my hands over my thighs (The thighs that have grown three sizes this year) With a pristine, glorious attention my lineage has never seen My heart flutters open and I soften fully Breath flooding my world I open deeper to the knowing That everything I want is here Between her and I There is nothing out there for me Not like this Not until I know This is all there ever was And all there ever will be. 1:1 and SELFISH are open for enrollment. Send me a message.
Reflections on Thanksgiving Eve.
I feel like I’ve had an exorcism this week. A huge excavation and clearing out underneath. It started with me touching a very old spot of grief with my little one, my inner child. I cried for her for days, unwinding it, being with it. Realizing how much time I have to make up with her. This is the very beginning of a long process. Then, a few days in, my teenager came in. We have been having a lot of fun. She is here to remind me of the rawness of who I really am. There is this scratchy unrelenting ferocity to her that I have been missing so much. At first I thought it was her friends that I miss. I was thinking about people I used to spend time with, reminiscing, wondering what they are doing, but also having this greater knowing… It is really never about anyone else. And at the bottom of thinking about other people and missing them, is a part of myself that I miss. The version of myself I was around these people. It is so easy to project ourselves onto our external worlds. To make it about something outside of us. To long for people, places, better times that felt like home when really the pain being severed from intrinsic pieces of our own hearts. It is more sober here, in coming back to self. There is some disappointment to it, the mundane truth of realizing it is not about anything or anyone else, as the shiny fantasies and nostalgia fall apart. But the beauty about coming back to self is that it is the freest and truest place that exists. There is real breath here. Because nothing inside of us is ever hostage to the specific conditions of the external. We have unconditional access to all the places inside of us, if we choose to be with them, unravel them, untangle them, to bring them front and center. So I am sitting with the parts of me that I miss. I had the most fun of my life as a teenager. And it was silly fun. Stupid fun. Climbing things. Stealing traffic cones. Sneaking into the back tunnels of the mall. Piercing people's ears in the mall family bathroom. Piercing my own face in my friends’ bathroom. And then throwing up. And then doing it again. I walked a funny line. But anyway. I’ve really put this part of me away. I’ve pathologized it and called it “burning energy” or “immature” or whatever judgement my ego needed. When really it might just be a young expression of a really true and deep part of me. A part I haven’t known how to make space for recently. The part that has fun wherever she goes. Who is completely obsessed with experiencing life. The impulsive feeling of being alive. The true Aries essence. At some point I switched from running all of my energy outside of me, externally, to running it inside of me. It’s switched from an explosion outside to an explosion inside. My ego liked this better as I got older. It was less messy and I could manage the appearances of it. As I started creating and landing in the world of consciousness and Orgasm and wanting to build my business it felt like that expression of me didn’t have room anymore. I didn’t know how to hold both. But now I can see both, side by side, and they don’t feel mutually exclusive anymore. I respect the path of remembering, forgetting, remembering again. I believe it’s just a part of the journey. I feel I had to put certain parts of myself on the back burner to really understand what was hiding, tenderly beneath them. And now that I know myself underneath, I can bring them back in. There is a process of remembrance here. Getting to know them again. So I’m sitting with all of this, reflecting on the past week, I have this feeling of awe of the process. This week has been me, sitting reclined and receptive, watching old versions of myself come in and out, feeling them dancing around me, crying their tears, laughing their laughs, letting them go, and opening to what is true now. (I went on a first date recently and a man asked me why I don't do drugs. "I am high without drugs," I responded. And this is what I meant. 🤣 ) And now, writing about the journey of the past week, there is not a feeling of completion. But there is a feeling of peace, and trust, right in the center of a big unfolding. A reverence for how it doesn’t need to make any sense. A deep faith in the energy to take me where I need to go. It’s a beautiful pose to hold. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to control my path, needing to understand it with my mind, gripping. I am sure I will do this again. Thank god to be in the surrender of just letting it be right now, not needing to understand to be willing to have the process, and trust it while I’m inside of it. It feels like a big homecoming, a deepening. And it’s right on time. My work is asking me to deepen and widen. My body of work wants to grow and it’s asking me to come with it. To put all of myself on the table for it. It is nauseating. And confronting. And deeply, deeply true. So cheers to the beginning, and the gentle return home.