This morning I was journaling through my estrangement with my family that began a little over a year ago.

That is correct. Right before the holidays last year, just before the chaos of 2020 and after a year of getting divorced and coming out, I went no-contact with two of my parents.

Because, apparently, when I decide to make a new life for myself, I jump in fully surrendered to the process. HA!

This was not a decision made flippantly or in reactionary anger. I spent months in conversation with myself, spirit, mentors and coaches considering the consequences of such a choice. After years of boundary setting that resulted in perpetual confusion, pain and repeated cycles of re-traumatization, I knew in my core that there was a necessary rebellion and dissent that needed to occur. A rebellion that would, no doubt, send me into a year of deep grief, reckoning with loneliness and support me to more deeply reprogram stories of unbelonging and disconnection from my own power. A year that would initiate me into a life of my own choosing, deeper joy, presence and intimacy.

Choosing to isolate myself from family during a year of social isolation has truly been the hardest, most healing choice for me and my own sense of belonging, both with myself and others.

No-contact and more time alone to be in my own process has offered me a container to actually gain capacity for my fullness.

I feel like I’ve matured DECADES emotionally and can feel myself being fully in my own sovereign energy and my True Essence. I am approaching the holidays this year with actual joy, peace and self containment for the first time in my life.

I’m not recommending this as a blanket prescription, as it has also been incredibly difficult and it was a decision that took a lot of support to make. It is also a decision that brings up a lot of judgment and projection: “good girls“ are not supposed to set these kinds of boundaries. I offer this story not with the succession of cutting off family, but rather with the lessons learned in a time of my own willing initiation.

The biggest lesson I have gained this year: I no longer participate in that which I oppose. Instead, I attune to and choose to live from wholeness.

By participating in that which we oppose, we uphold it.

I now see that much of my previous “boundary setting” was still rooted in wanting them to change so I could be happy and still play the game of a dynamic I actually wanted to get free from.

Because I wasn’t tuned into wholeness, I was stuck perpetuating what I was opposing.

This cycle looked like:

Playing my part in the drama triangle, unconsciously, by giving advice and being the family mediator/therapist/fixer/savior.
Getting angry that I “had to” play the part because there was no room for me to be known fully.
Set a reactionary boundary that sounded something like “stop doing this to me!!” (and feeling like a victim to the dynamic).
Believing I was somehow better than, superior to or more evolved for having to be the one to set the boundary because I am “doing the work.” (LOL).
Talking some serious shit about my family to friends and partners, plus discharging and passing along my pain without really feeling it fully. This was followed by reading books, listening to podcasts and learning allllll the dynamics of what I opposed.
Forgetting myself once more (even with more intellectual information) and repeating the cycle.

You might ask, “Madison, why go right back to the cycle if it was so terrible!?” And my answer is:

When we are programmed to play a certain role in life, families, communities and society, we often play that role, even while we bang on about and research how bad the system is, until we actively divest from it by attuning to and living out blueprints of wholeness.

We often play the role we were programmed to play unless we are choosing to live from, what I call, our True Essence -- our deepest core which is whole, abundant, powerful and worthy. It's a part of us that can never be wounded and remembers what wholeness looks like.

I deeply know that these blueprints of health, vitality and flourishing often need periods of fallow; time where we are more boundaried than usual (a little lonely, even) where we can nourish our wholeness and we learn what it feels like to move from this place, without being re-triggered or hooked into old patterns.

It is kind of like a holy reset…

or energetic cleanse, where we slow down and starve the patterns that kept us in self-forgetfulness.

It’s challenging to live into wholeness when we are being perpetually hooked into our wounds, time and time again, or incessantly focusing on what we oppose (this can be seen in dooms-day scrolling, creeping on your x, complaining about what isn’t working or bitching about all the people who “just don’t get it.”). All of these behaviors keep us from remembering ourselves and living from our deepest truth.

I have discovered this year that part of the cycle I was in was me feeding that which I was opposing by focusing all my energy on it, instead of living the life of abundance, freedom and peace I had access to if I chose to water it.

That is why having a container of isolation, or chosen exile, actually supports us to get into our own energy, feel our truth again and stop engaging with what is causing harm.

This is not to say it’s been “easy.” It hasn’t.

Grief, holy anger and what we have been avoiding often rises in periods of exile. And, if we are well supported and intentional, they can also be portals to a life that is more free, connected, joyful and abundant.

“There is a pivotal juncture in every Heroine’s Journey when she stands alone. She is led by the depth of her convictions to take a stand, to name the unaddressed, to call out of hiding the secret malaise in her community. She arrives at a standpoint not without doubts, but in spite of them. And sometimes there is a hefty price to pay, like being the target of criticism, or worse, rejection from the group which is at odds with her truth.
The willingness to rebel from the expected norms, roles, and silent contracts of establishment comes out of knowing that one cannot afford to build resentment. Resentment, which comes from the decision to go against one’s truth, embitters the self. It somaticizes in the body and takes on the burden of pain as if it were ours alone. The whistleblower, on the other hand, reveals a shared complicity. It says, “I expect more from myself and from you.” And in that stance the pain becomes, in a sense, communal.”

- Excerpt from “Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home” by Toko-pa Turner

Your willingness to divest from what is expected of you- and break the silent contracts we have all made with how we “should” be - means you are actually moving into possibility.

And possibility only exists in the present.

Not when we are repeating the wounds of the past, nor when we are scheming about what we are going to say/do in the future, but here, now. What do you want, here, now? Can you attune to the blueprint of the most pure version of that?

For me this year, what I most want has been honesty, grace and true intimacy. None of which were possible as I played my part in the drama of the past. Nope.

It was only when I removed myself from the drama and got present to my true feelings, opinions, needs and desires, that I was able to start feeling into the vastness of possibilities available to me.

No longer hooked by shoulds.

No longer playing the part I’d been playing for years.

No longer beholden to unconscious cycles.

No longer a victim to others’ wants.

No longer holding myself as superior.

But finally remembering myself; living from my deepest core. I can access “the more beautiful world my heart knows is possible,” as Charles Eisenstein says, and actually live from that place.

I share all of this today because right now, it seems both harder than ever to remember our sovereignty while somehow also easier than ever to see the necessity of living from our truest selves.

Whether you’re entering or in a period of isolation due to lockdowns, navigating challenging boundaries with family and friends who disagree politically, having a personal awakening or healing from years of unboundaried relationships, your willingness to divest from what you oppose and actually create the world you long for is key.

Here are 5 questions I want to leave you with:

What have you been participating in that you actually oppose?
What would a period of necessary rebellion and exile do to bring you back into your alignment, maybe for the first time ever?
How do you need to be supported through this period of rebellion and exile?
What world do you want to create?
What skill, gift or energetic offering do you bring the world, simply by being yourself?

I hope all of this supports you deeply, wherever you’re at.
Sending you heaps and heaps of love!

xo, Madison

P.S. Have you checked out the podcast lately?

Here are a few powerful episodes that were recently released:

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