An old feeling settled into my cells over the past few days - I even felt a little comfortable with it, like an old pair of shoes your feet slip naturally into even if you don't like how they look on you anymore.
Fear has been a constant companion in my life and, over the many years of trips around the sun, I've both shunned and befriended it. This love-hate relationship has threatened to define or defeat me as I've realised that, the only way to stay close to the pulse of life is our ability to change, to shed off whatever we are carrying that is no longer alive. To cast off our dead skin because dead skin can't feel. Dead eyes can't see. Dead ears can't hear. And without feeling, there is no chance of wholeness, and wholeness remains our chance to survive the pain of breaking.
This fear encompassed and encased a deep fear that I wasn't, as my true self, enough. Whole enough, strong enough, rich enough, wise enough and, in showing my authentic self, in casting off the layers that no longer served me, would leave me exposed to the elements and the deep sense of abandonment would finally be realised.
I understand that this dead skin takes many forms, a dead way of thinking, seeing, relating, believing or a dead way of experiencing. In essence, shedding opens up to self-transformation. Those of us who refuse such renewal will, sooner or later, be forced to undergo transformation anyway as a result of being broken or eroded by the world. Very often both occur at the same time, we shed from within whilst being eroded from without.