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Ignorance is Bliss- my substack audio · The Spiritual Shitshow Podcast

• 0:00
  Coming home to yourself is something I've been repeating over and over and over, and it feels so utterly cliche.
• 0:07
  and honestly, half the time I catch myself thinking like,"What the fuck does that even mean?" But as I sit here in real time trying to untangle it all, what I'm learning is that coming home isn't some mystical picture perfect destination.
• 0:21
  It's literally a messy as hell art form that requires insane amounts of self-compassion, space for self-love, and a whole lot of unedited truth If you've listened to my podcast, The Spiritual Shit Show, you know I don't really do polished versions of anything.
• 0:41
  I try, it just doesn't work out.
• 0:44
  And that show was birthed right after I walked away from my business after 17 long years.
• 0:50
  I won't go into all the gritty details here, but leaving was the ultimate catalyst, the thing that shoved me straight onto the dance floor when I didn't even know the steps, which ironically happens to be a reoccurring nightmare of mine.
• 1:07
  I always have this dream, and in this dream, I show up for a big dance recital, and I'm forced to be on stage in front of everyone, but I haven't been to a single rehearsal.
• 1:17
  So I literally just smile, and I'm standing under the hot lights realizing I have to completely fake it to make it through the song.
• 1:24
  Looking back now, holy shit, this hasn't just been a nightmare.
• 1:29
  It's been the overarching theme of my entire life.
• 1:36
  And this is what happens when you actually sit down and write.
• 1:40
  Strings of awareness you didn't even know were lurking in the dark start dancing right to the front of your brain, helping you piece together the giant, weird puzzle of who you are.
• 1:51
  Yeah.
• 1:53
  It's so nice to come back to writing again.
• 1:55
  I have missed blogging.
• 1:58
  With all of that being said, let's take a quick trip down another rabbit hole, which also happens when you're writing.
• 2:04
  All right, so three days after I graduated high school, I packed up my cherry red 1989 Ford Escort, and I drove out to Denver, Colorado.
• 2:16
  I maybe had three cardboard boxes and a comforter to my name because who actually owns anything real at 18?
• 2:24
  And I will never, ever, ever forget driving through Illinois with the windows rolled down on the highway.
• 2:30
  Pearl Jam is blasting rear view mirror, and I am feeling this overwhelming, intoxicating sense of absolute freedom.
• 2:42
  I was literally watching myself drive away from my old life in the rear view mirror and into a world where I could become whatever the hell I desired and that sense of awe for the unknown, it lives underneath my skin forever.
• 3:02
  And damn, do I crave that exact type of excitement again.
• 3:08
  I always say ignorance truly is bliss And that moment in time, that sense of freedom, literally watching my past get farther and farther and farther away from me as I watched it move in the rearview mirror, and I literally was heading into this really incredible unknown of my life was one of the most incredible experiences of my life.
• 3:40
  And I want to pause there just kind of honoring Such a beautiful, blissful blip in life Where you can look out and you just feel the exhilaration because the story is not written yet and you can do, experience, become anything So I make it to Colorado And fast-forward a year later my beloved red Escort with my favorite Pearl Jam sticker on the back, completely broke down and every last cent of my savings went straight to the repair bill At the time, I was really looking forward to becoming a professional dancer.
• 4:32
  My big dream was to move to Los Angeles or New York and try to make it big.
• 4:38
  And in that moment, that dream died.
• 4:43
  I was dead broke and forced to get a job teaching dance.
• 4:50
  Luckily for me, the owner of a local dance studio where I took Friday night tap classes had always begged me to teach for her.
• 4:56
  I seized the window of opportunity to make some quick cash, and boom, that was my official entry into a brutal world of competitive dance My first day teaching, I remember standing in that studio lobby I was bright-eyed, naive, and ready to go.
• 5:14
  At the time, I was strictly a tap dancer, but this woman hired me to teach hip hop and jazz, two genres I knew literally nothing about.
• 5:23
  Cue the theme song, Fake It Till You Make It.
• 5:27
  Honestly, it was only by the grace of God and the support of some serious guardian angels that I survived nothing, literally nothing, from ages 18 to 25 make a single lick of sense.
• 5:40
  But we'll save those horror stories for another post.
• 5:44
  Back to the studio.
• 5:45
  Okay, my very first thought walking in, standing in that lobby was,"I do not want to be in a competitive studio." All those dance moms buzzing outside the observation windows all night, the cutthroat toxic energy seeping through every nook and cranny like ghost hauntings, it was overwhelming.
• 6:06
  Then my second thought was,"Fuck." That was my internal reaction when I met my 24-year-old assistant.
• 6:14
  Boy, oh boy, was I really going to have to pull off the ultimate fake-out.
• 6:20
  I knew absolutely zero about jazz.
• 6:24
  Nothing except what I'd watched on other people's recital VHS tapes.
• 6:29
  I had grown up dancing in my teacher's basement in Cincinnati, focusing heavily on classic high-heeled shoe tap dancing and maybe 30 minutes of ballet a week.
• 6:40
  And yet here I was, stepping up to the front of a room, faking it.
• 6:45
  And how I made it through those classes, equal parts magic and total disaster, still makes me shake my head in disbelief none of it makes sense.
• 6:56
  Which brings me to the whole damn point Of sharing this work tonight.
• 7:00
  As I do the work of coming home to myself, again, what the fuck does that mean?
• 7:05
  But I've realized something heavy.
• 7:08
  I've been carrying around a massive weight of hidden shame.
• 7:13
  Shame over all the times I had to lie on my resume, shame for fluffing up my skill set, stroking my ego so I could pay my rent.
• 7:25
  Shame for pretending to be an expert when I was secretly terrified out of my mind.
• 7:30
  Shame for the times that I did have to fake it until I made it.
• 7:35
  And what I've realized is healing has required me to turn back around, to really see that 18-year-old Julie, to be able to look her in the eye and practice loving her instead of judging her.
• 7:55
  It means dropping the shame, and that's where the Hawaiian practice of Ho'oponopono comes in for me.
• 8:03
  Coming home to yourself, back to your heart, back to your story requires huge doses of self-forgiveness so we can release the guilt our older selves hold against our younger selves.
• 8:17
  The Ho'oponopono prayer is this:"I love you.
• 8:20
  I am sorry.
• 8:21
  Please forgive me.
• 8:22
  Thank you." And I have to repeat those words almost daily now.
• 8:27
  "I love you.
• 8:28
  I am sorry.
• 8:28
  Please forgive me.
• 8:29
  Thank you." It helps me let myself off the hook for not knowing what I didn't know back then.
• 8:37
  It helps me see the sheer unadulterated courage it took to step into rooms I desperately wanted to be in because I did love dance and I did love teaching.
• 8:50
  Did I have a resistance to the competitive part?
• 8:53
  Yes.
• 8:54
  Did I have zero experience when I started?
• 8:57
  Yes.
• 9:00
  And maybe tonight I can finally start honoring that part of me because the truth is there has always been a piece of my soul that courageously stepped into spaces She had no business being in on paper and she made it work every single time.
• 9:19
  And what I'm realizing as I am writing this, that maybe 47-year-old me needs and gets to learn from 18-year-old me I'm realizing that the girl who courageously fumbled her way into success is waiting to come back into the game of life.
• 9:41
  in my current life rebuild, I can see where I've become too afraid to fail, and I don't know if that's on the onset of social media and having to be curated and perfect and follow the formula, but I definitely know I don't have that ignorance is bliss umbrella to hide under anymore.
• 10:01
  I get terrified to step into rooms where I lack experience, even when I do crave to be in those spaces because I know I have a lot to give.
• 10:11
  My ability to create something out of literally nothing used to be my magic, and somewhere along the line, that magic got lost That is the absolute power, and this right now in this moment as you are listening, this is the power of writing down your story.
• 10:29
  You figure out things about yourself that would've stayed buried otherwise.
• 10:33
  I'm having so many realizations of, man, look how courageous I once was, and how hopeful and excited I was of the unknown, and now the unknown is terrifying to me Ignorance was bliss.
• 10:48
  I didn't know any different in my early 20s.
• 10:52
  I just knew I had to do it And so now the question is, what spaces do I want to step into next?
• 11:05
  And can I do it with the fearlessness?
• 11:09
  Ignorance is bliss that that 18-year-old girl in the red Ford Escort had combined with the hard-won wisdom of this 47-year-old woman now And I think I'm finally ready to find out