Reflections from the Layers The Month I Stopped Avoiding Myself
- blagaandreeaelena
- Feb 26
- 3 min read
March has always carried energy for me.
It’s my birthday month.The 12th.
A date that used to mean movement.
In my early twenties, celebration meant noise. Music. People. Being surrounded so I didn’t have to sit too long with myself.
Later, celebration became distance. Solo trips. Airports. New cities. Reinventing myself somewhere unfamiliar. There was something powerful about that — proving I could be independent, that I didn’t need anyone, that I could always start again somewhere else.
But this year… something softened.
When I looked at the calendar and saw March approaching, my first thought wasn’t “Where should I go?”
It was:
I want to hold space.I want to breathe.I want to gift myself presence.
And that thought felt both beautiful and confronting.
Because holding space is not glamorous.
It’s intimate.It’s vulnerable.It requires me to be fully in my body.
When I guide a session, I don’t stand outside of it. I go in. I breathe the journey before anyone else does. I meet the layers first.
And if I’m honest, the March journeys were the ones I kept pushing away.
Healing Ancestral Lines.
Releasing Guilt & Shame.
I delayed announcing them.I delayed scheduling them.I told myself I was just “waiting for the right time.”
But underneath that… there was resistance.
Not dramatic resistance. Not fear screaming at me.
Just a quiet tightening in my body.A subtle “not yet.”
And the thing is — I respect that part of me.
My nervous system has done an incredible job keeping me safe throughout my life. It has learned when to shut down, when to push through, when to avoid, when to distract.
Avoidance isn’t stupidity.It’s protection.
There are parts of my story that made me cautious.
Parts that made me hyper-aware.
Parts that made me decide, at one point in my life, that I didn’t want children.
I didn’t want to bring someone into a world that felt heavy.
I didn’t want to repeat patterns I hadn’t yet untangled.
I didn’t want my child to suffer because of unresolved pieces in me.
So the easiest solution felt like: don’t go there.
Don’t open that door.Don’t risk repeating something painful.
For a long time, that felt wise.
But over the past year, something has been shifting.
Not loudly.Not suddenly.
Quietly.
Through better choices.
Through breathwork.
Through conversations.T
hrough sitting with discomfort instead of escaping it.
I’ve noticed more softness in me.
More responsibility.
More willingness.
And recently… I felt something I didn’t expect.
An openness to the idea of having a family.
Even writing that feels tender.
Because it’s not just about wanting something sweet and beautiful. It’s about knowing what that requires.
It’s about knowing that if I choose that path, I want to meet it consciously.
And that means I can’t keep postponing the deeper work.
I can’t keep saying “I’ll deal with that later.”I can’t keep protecting myself from the very layers that are asking to be seen.
When awareness arrives, we don’t get to pretend we don’t see it.
My nervous system protected me.
And I’m grateful.
But now I have awareness.
And awareness gives me choice.
I can feel the resistance and still lean in.
I can feel the discomfort and still breathe.
I can honour my protection without letting it run my future.
Growth, I’ve learned, is rarely comfortable.
It’s moving through the tightness.It’s staying when your instinct is to distract yourself.It’s breathing when your body wants to shut down.
It’s trusting that on the other side of resistance is not danger — but integration.
When I hold space for others, I feel it in my whole body. It’s a rollercoaster. Sometimes I leave the room emotionally emptied — but always something floods back in. A grounded fullness. A quiet knowing.
It feels like nourishment.
So maybe it makes sense that this year, my birthday gift to myself isn’t a party or a plane ticket.
Maybe it’s this.
Facing ancestral patterns.
Meeting guilt and shame instead of circling around them.Breathing through what once felt too heavy.
Not because I am broken.Not because I need fixing.
But because I want to give my mind, my body, and my future the best of me.
And that requires doing things differently.
If I want change, I have to create change.
If I want healing, I have to participate in it.
If I want a regulated nervous system, I have to move through what dysregulated it.
Not in one session.Not in one month.
But consciously.
So March feels less like an event.
And more like a threshold.
Healing Ancestral Lines.
Releasing Guilt & Shame.
Not themes I chose randomly.
Themes that chose me.
And this time…I’m not postponing.
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