It always surprised her, how many layers there were. It seemed like a never-ending journey, because it was, and she could understand why so many people chose to live in ignorance of themselves. It seemed so much easier sometimes. To shut her eyes to her many, many 'imperfections', her wounds and her triggers, and pretend they belonged to someone else, some environmental reason that caused her upset. If it was something outside of her, someone else's fault, it was someone else's problem. She could just remove herself and dampen the feeling of discontent a while longer. But she didn't have that luxury anymore. She realised now that everything was on her. Everything was her choice - to choose how to perceive it. To revel in the gift or dispair in the poison. She had that power, and everytime she chose to deny it, she gave her power away: gave her power to the person, or the place, or the job, and put it outside of herself where she couldn't use it. She wasn't doing that anymore. She had allowed herself to breathe into situations, conversations, energy that challenged her every pore....and looked, with curiousity instead of fear, at which patterns she found herself wanting to follow. When she allowed herself to be curious, when she allowed herself the space to feel the patterns instead of fearfully burying them, she gave herself the space to choose differently, to give a voice to what was present, and honour it as part of her, before choosing a different path. This, she realised, was how to change the pattern