I've never cried so much in my life
Notes from the sunroom of a 100 year old machiya house in Kyoto.
I can’t help but laugh at the naivety in which I entered 2023. It’s always the same relentless optimism that begins like clockwork on the first of January. This is my year, I can feel it. Little did I know, it would be my year, just not in the way I thought it would be.
I started January asking for big changes. The previous few years had felt like one, very long, monotonous cycle. I was tired of living the same day. I craved excitement, unpredictability, and fun. Retrospectively, the naive optimism (see also: denial) I applied to my life at the time hindered me from feeling the truth. That is, when we ask for big change we are also asking to feel the steady earth beneath our feet shake.
And so the big changes came. I started a podcast, and then another. I confronted aspects of my psyche I never thought I’d see. I navigated a new diagnosis. I wrestled with health problem after health problem. I stumbled through relationship challenges. I quit my job. I started a new business. It has at times felt like one consecutive struggle after the other.
In May I signed up for a restorative yoga retreat hosted in a little town called Kamakura, about an hour’s train ride from the bustling Tokyo, Japan. At the time, I knew I needed something, anything, to propel me out of the zombie-like trance I had found myself in. I didn’t have any expectations, I just knew I was longing for something beyond the here and now.
Fast forward to September and here I am post-retreat having had what can only be described as a life-changing week (more on this to come). And yet I find myself alone again, really alone, for what feels like the first time in an eternity, in a foreign country with a foreign language with no choice other than to be with all that I couldn’t feel before I left. And I am grateful, and content, and open, and wounded. And, I’ve never cried so much in my life.
There have been moments throughout the last few months where I could physically feel my heart breaking. How can the world demand that I hold so much? There were, and still are, nights that I started to feel like my insides were being crushed from the inside out. When grief would claw its way out of my throat and onto the mattress next to me. No one told me that evolution could feel this agonising.
That’s the thing about growth; renewal and grief are two sides of the same coin. When life demands that we jump, and we resist out of fear and the desire for comfort, it is the not-jumping that hurts more than the freefall ever could. And although this particular evolution feels so intensely challenging, I’ve also anchored into a strength I’ve never come to know quite so intimately.
As the world around me started to shift, I began to shift too. Old aspects of my identity started to melt away and with them was a deep permission to undress and slip into something more me. I was left with the bones of who I am at my core and nothing more. It seemed like a good place to start again.
And so I rest in the shaky in-between; with one foot out of what was, floating in the air, and the other foot tentatively placed on newer ground. Although I feel like one raw exposed nerve ending, I’m starting to enjoy the feeling of my new skin. I am realising that, despite all the pain, I am falling deeply in love with this version of myself.
As I sit nestled in the suburban streets of Kyoto, propped up on a cushion writing by the subtle glow of the lantern next to me, I am reminded of how good it feels to become even more of yourself. It seems to me an incredibly accurate cliche that transformation requires (nay, demands) us to walk through the fire of initiation. Maybe one day shedding skin won’t feel quite so painful.
Your way of words is so exquisite Ella... I could read over and over again, thank you 😭❤️
This is so SO special 😭 I adore your writing. Here’s to your big changes and your incredible grace in the face of them x