Caught in the web of our lives.

We’re all caught in a web of our own making. We live in it feeling somewhat safe. It’s a creation of stories and beliefs and experiences. But it’s got us trapped. Isolated.

On my woods walk today, I saw it as clear as anything. A bag web on a tree branch. It reached out at me and said, “Laura, this is how most of you crazy humans live your lives.”

Ack! I realized it was true.

Bound up in our own “stuff.” Stuck inside. A sense of separateness. All of our junk in there suffocating us. We can see outside that there’s this entire other world waiting for us if we could just break free of the gooey mess we call our life.

We kind of accidentally created that web. We just weren’t paying much attention. Life took off and we started building it haphazardly. We believed we were separate from All That Is, from each other, from nature.

We had to spin that bag of silk to feel safe, even though now, all we feel is scared, alone and stuck.

I am cutting an escape hole through that sack of silk.

As I am excavating my own escape, I find that the web is an illusion and each thread is just a story I’ve told myself. My ex-husband hurt me, my dad hit me, I’m not worthy, and on and on.

I stitched myself in, one dramatic story at a time.

What I now know is I can re-spin it all. Feel all those moments, and then change the feelings and stories around each “event” that shaped me. I let them burn through me and out of me. I see each, a wisp of grey smoke, float out of my heart center.

And when I do that, and release all those stuck emotions, it’s like cutting a hole in my web. Slowly but surely, the walls come down and I emerge. Strand after silky strand. Me. Authentic. Imperfect, but good to the core. No longer comparing myself to “those” people who have their shit together. (Because the dirty little secret is no one has their shit together.)

I’m me and I love who I am and all those stories and experiences made me that person. Flawed and human and beautiful. Now living in the larger human web of connectedness I realize was there all the time.