Today I am having a hard day.

And I wonder how many of you reading this feel an inch of hesitation, like, ‘O, do I want to read about that?’ I know I find it hard to cope with my own hard days – it’s a struggle pretty much all the time – let alone share about it.

And yet that is exactly what I want to do. I am sat here in a little bar close to home, because I was going nuts inside my house and just walked out to do … something. Anything. “Rising Strong” by Brené Brown in my bag, and my laptop. My own crazy driving me out of the house and into this place.

Even after reading a few words of Brené’s book (which is awesome, I can already tell) I sat back and thought: how can I show up even more fully?

And the answer came: “Share your shit. Your hard days. The things you have no clue about. That half the time you don’t know what to do, and that on days like today even your inner compass is taking a holiday halfway across the world. That some days are misty. Foggy, clueless, with no clarity in sight. Share about messing up, or a fear of it that can be paralysing. Just share!”

So here is my sharing. This. Because I know I mostly share the awesomeness, which, aided by social media and my talent for words and cute pictures, probably paints a picture of “Hey, she is doing great! She has an awesome life!”

And even while I am showing up truthfully in those moments of sharing, I more often than not choose something happy or inspirational over “fuck, I really don’t know what to do. I am lonely. I am done manifesting and wish somebody would just help me and tell me what to do. I wonder if people know I spend many of my days alone in my house?”

I am not sharing this because you can all feel sorry for me, or for me to feel sorry for myself, I just want to share that this is real. That all this is also part of my life. That it is just as often hard as it is wonderful. That even though I like being alone, it also gets too much. That I struggle with inner judgement, outer judgement, a tender heart that tends to self-protect, stress around money, perfectionism etc etc. It’s a long list.

And today I just don’t want to make it better. Shift it all into a beautiful learning. Or put the cherry on top. This is part of my life. The struggle. The behind-closed-doors confusion, fear, anxiety, frustration, collapse, retreat, licking my wounds.

My showing up is being lost in layers, driving through fog, dates with painful places, sitting with loneliness, experiencing darkness with no light at the end of the tunnel.

And the fact that I have so many tools often actually gets in the way of acknowledging that all this just as much part of it as the rest: the beauty, contentment, happiness, peace, ecstasy, enjoyment. They both exist and are equally real. And actually admitting that fully, and showing up with that, has me breathe a sigh of relief. As Brené says: “When we push down hurt or pretend that struggle doesn’t exist, the hurt and struggle own us.”

My learning and living is not a clear road with only a few twists that leads me straight into heaven, it’s a not-knowing, a trying out, an alternating between a brave strong heart and a tiny, shy, hidden-away afraid little creature. One that binge-watches Homeland and when doing that feels guilty about not being on a continuous clean up mission. One that is often driven by the fear of missing out, or failing, or not living fully or not being loved.

One that needs to find her way home over and over again by realising this is also home, even though it feels like the dark danky attic or creepy cellar.

It’s all my life.

And writing about this feels good. It feels liberating. It feels true. It feels real.

This is me. All of me. Take it or leave it. But know it.