What I’ve been learning—and what is finally starting to click inside me, not just as an idea but fully in my body—is a different way of understanding and working with fear. I’m beginning to feel that I can actually move with it and use it as a tool naturally, rather than constantly working against it.

For a long time, I understood fear in a very simple way: if you are afraid of something, you have to do the thing you’re afraid of doing in order to overcome the fear. And there is truth in that. “Just do it” is a wonderful slogan on many levels. We don’t want to become stuck, stagnant, frozen, or give up on our dreams simply because we are afraid.

And that philosophy has served me well. It allowed me to do many things I was afraid of doing: compete, perform, speak publicly, lead people, teach children, use my voice, write this blog, and continually challenging myself.

From the outside, I probably looked very courageous. And honestly, I have always been courageous, considering how terrifying everything felt.

But what I didn’t have was a way to work with my fear.

So “just do it” gradually became “do it anyway”—even when my body was clearly saying stop.

My body was giving me signals that I interpreted as something to overcome rather than something to listen to. The stop was trying to protect me from something: from feeling fear, from feeling exposed, from the possibility of failure or embarrassment. But because I wanted to do the thing out of passion, I pushed through.

The problem wasn’t that I did the thing.

The problem was that I dismissed the fear completely.

I’m beginning to understand that the answer is not to give fear the power to drive my life, but neither is it to silence it.

🦭 Selkie says: "Fear doesn’t get to be the driver—but it does get to be heard."🦭🦭

That distinction is changing everything.

Because if fear were driving, I wouldn’t do anything. There are so many things I would never have done. But if fear is completely ignored, the body eventually pays the price.

And for me, that price has often been injury and physical pain.

This is particularly significant because my body is also my instrument. As a performer, dancer, physical theatre artist, musician, teacher, and facilitator, I depend on my body to do the work I love. There is already tremendous pressure around having a body that works in a certain way, produces certain results, performs well, gets jobs, earns money, and allows me to survive.

I had built even more pressure on top of that because of fear.

I wanted to follow my passions, but I wasn’t able to experience them lightly or wholeheartedly. There was always something underneath:

How do I feel about being in front of people?
How do I feel about taking care of children that are not mine?
How do I feel about learning something new and performing it perfectly?
How do I feel about winning?
How do I feel about expressing myself in front of judges?
What if I mess up?
What if I embarrass myself?
What if I disappoint my coach, my parents, my team, the audience?
What if I’m terrible at this and I’m wasting everyone’s time and money?

And there was another layer of fear that I didn’t always know what to do with: the fear of being seen doing well. The awareness of harsh judgment, envy, jealousy, competition, and all the dynamics surrounding the environments I was in added another layer of pressure, that quite honestly often stopped me before even trying or right after shining.

None of this disappeared just because I said, “Okay, you trained. You’re good. Go!”

I would go anyway, often with a nervous system that was already fried. I would use adrenaline and my discipline. I would use my skills. And over the years, I became better and better at doing things with less visible fear.

But my body would always present me with a check.

Sometimes before. Sometimes during. Sometimes afterward.

There was rarely a sense of all of us agreeing.

It was more like an agreement between two parts of myself:

“Okay, we’re going to do it—but expect pain. Expect discomfort. Expect that this won’t be as enjoyable as you want it to be. Expect that your body will hurt.”

And often the fear would build and build during the process leading up to the performance. My body would try to stop me along the way. Then the actual performance became a kind of liberation: finally, I could let everything out, give it everything I had, share it, and be done.

Then I would give myself time to recover.

Physically. Mentally. Emotionally.

And eventually I would gather myself again and start the cycle over for the next show, the next job, the next concert, the next workshop, the next idea.

At some point I began to realize:

Do we really have to keep doing it this way?

Because this pattern had consequences. It became difficult to trust my own body. It became difficult to approach a new adventure without thinking, Oh God, are we going to do this again? Is it going to be this hard? Am I going to get hurt? Am I going to have to stop everything afterward?And for what?

And when the wheel had gone through that entire cycle—push, perform, crash, recover—it took a long time to get it moving again, often requiring an even stronger push.

I began to wonder whether there might be another way. With age comes some wisdom!

This is the new way I've been learning slowly for the past 20 years, gathering more and more ways to let what is within me rise to the surface, become conscious, and find its way into words.

The new way invites continuity, sustainability, compassion, kindness, communication, whole-self involvement, equality, and equanimity.

And I don’t mean equality and equanimity in the world or between me and other people. I mean equality and equanimity within myself.

All the parts of me get to be in the room.

The afraid part.
The ambitious part.
The excited part.
The tired part.
The part that wants to hide.
The part that wants to be seen.
The part that wants to take the leap.

Nobody is forcing anybody to do anything.

We take time to listen. We encourage. We talk to all the parts in a way that is kind, caring, and true.

It’s like self-parenting or self-coaching.

And it is not the same as saying, “It’s okay, you don’t have to do anything. Just keep sleeping. You don’t have to eat your greens, eat only cookies, if that makes you feel better. You don’t have to present your project in front of your class if you don’t want to.”

That isn’t what listening means.

Listening to all parts requires discernment.

It requires observation.

There is a wise part of us we can access. An intelligent, highly intelligent part of us that can lead us toward health, resilience, abundance, meaningful relationships, and the things we truly want, asking ourselves the helpful questions at the right time.

How am I talking to myself?
What am I saying to myself?
What am I not listening to?
Where am I going “la la la la la” and putting prosciutto over my eyes and ears because I don’t want to see or hear what is actually happening?

What move can I make now?

I’ve spent many years exploring different approaches, learning from teachers, artists, healers, books, practices, and traditions. But the way it happened for me was not that I studied something first and then tried to apply it to my life.

It was almost the opposite.

I was already following my own compass and bumping into lessons life was offering me.

Part of that process was giving myself permission to examine all the information, beliefs, expectations, and ideas that had been dropped into my head along the way. To look at them and ask:

Is this actually true for me? Does this make sense? Does this feel right? Is this something I believe, or is this something I was taught to believe?

And when something didn’t feel right, I began asking my soul.

It's been a process. It takes time, especially when you are still navigating life and, naturally, still relying on past experiences to help you make your way forward.

We use what we know to navigate what we don’t know, before we learn to trust the universe.

When so much of what you know has been handed to you by other people, it can take a long time to recognize which parts actually belong to you.

There is also the fear that comes with leaving home and beginning to create a life of your own, carrying so much inside your head that may not actually be yours, and may, in fact, be innacurate.

You are entering your own woods without necessarily knowing what is going to be waiting for you there. And straying from the beaten path can bring its own kind of sadness and guilt.

Because what if choosing something different feels like betraying the people who came before you?

What if doing things your own way feels like disrespecting your family, or hurting them, or saying that what they gave you wasn’t good enough?

And yet, in my case, I feel deeply grateful for the good things my family has given me, and continues to give me. So it was never about rejecting them. It is about finding a way to honor what I have received while also discerning what is mine to carry forward and what is mine to change.

That can be disorienting.

You are leaving the familiar path, but you don’t necessarily have a new map. You are still carrying the old one, questioning parts of it, and trying to draw your own as you go.

And this is where I realize how much fairy tales and myths have been woven into my own process.

I think stories are some of the greatest gifts we have been given.

They can live in the subconscious long before we understand what they are teaching us. They can become anchors. They can give us images for experiences we don’t yet have words for. And sometimes they give us the faith to keep going when we don’t know where the path is leading or when we found ourselves in deep trouble.

When I listen to myself telling my own story, I notice these images appearing almost on their own.

The crumbs.

The woods.

The little creatures venturing out into the unknown.

I'm reminded of Hansel and Gretel leaving home and trying to find their way. The Three Little Pigs venturing out on their own, each building their own house and discovering what can and cannot protect them.

The image of entering the woods has felt especially powerful to me. Because that is what happens when we leave what we know, when we face fear, when we change, when we begin to create a life that is truly our own.

You enter the woods.

You don't necessarily know the way out.

And somehow, you have to keep going.

For me, the guidance came in unexpected forms: a teacher, a book, a healing modality, a training, an artist, a person whose work suddenly put language to something I had felt but couldn’t yet articulate.

And when something resonated deeply, I would have this feeling:

Oh. So I’m not the only one.

It was confirmation. It was nourishment.

Sometimes what looked like a tiny crumb from the outside felt like a huge meal to me.

Because when you are disoriented, when you don’t have a clear map, a little bit of recognition can feed you for a very long time.

So I didn’t learn these things simply from books or teachers.

I experienced something first.

I followed it.

I let it unfold.

I questioned what I had been given in the past.

I experimented with something new.

And then I found language, people, practices, and traditions that helped me understand and deepen what I had already begun to discover in my own body and in my own life.

As a parent, and later as a teacher and facilitator with young children, I’ve had so many opportunities to observe what happens when a child is afraid, angry, overwhelmed, insecure, frozen, whining, or feeling like they’re not enough.

And I noticed something very clearly:

I never wanted to push them through their fear.

I never wanted to say, “I don’t care that you’re scared. I don’t care that you’re sad. You have to do this now, and if you don’t, there will be consequences.”

Instead, I naturally wanted to be the coach, the parent, the human being who says:

I want you to be well.
I want you to be strong.
I want you to become resilient.
I want you to succeed.
I want you to contribute to the world from your best self.
And I’m going to help you get there with healthy tools and lots of love.

And then I realized: This is the kind of coach, parent, and teacher I needed when I was afraid.

I didn’t always receive that.

In childhood, in school, in family environments, and even among friends, there were many moments when we were critical, impatient, or unkind with ourselves and each other. I never liked it. Even then, I felt there had to be another way.

As an adult, I began trying to create that other way, not just for other people, but for myself.

And that is part of why this current shift feels so profound. I’m not simply learning another concept.

I’m recognizing something I have been following for a very long time.

I’ve been changing deeply embedded patterns, learning how to become the coach, the parent, and the teacher that I needed when I was afraid, angry, or frozen.

I’m learning how to keep going without abandoning my body.

🦭 "We keep going, not by abandoning fear, but by taking its hand"🦭🦭

That is the real shift.

Not pushing through fear.

Not surrendering to fear.

But bringing fear with me.

Listening to it. Taking its hand. Cuddling it. Holding it. Giving it the encouragement it needs.

And then asking the whole of myself:

Are we ready?

Not just the ambitious part.

Not just the part that wants to prove something.

All of us.

And when the answer is yes, we move.

This feels like a new beginning. A new era.

A way of living and creating that is more sustainable, more compassionate, more integrated, and ultimately, more alive.

I am deeply grateful that I am finally beginning to understand how to work with fear in a way that allows my whole body to come along.

And I know it is an ongoing process.

But now I know there is another way.

Check a mini mantra recording to move from fear to faith. Namaste!

When you’re ready to explore this magic more deeply, come join me inside the Selkie Sanctuary. It’s a space for women who are ready to reconnect with their rhythm, release old stories, and rise through sound, movement, and creative ritual.

🦭 "The tide is turning, love, come swim with it!" 🦭🦭🦭