Oh my goodness, I don’t even know how to begin to answer the questions of how much I have changed and how my perception of myself has altered since I started working with my Gene Keys! I feel as if I am a completely different person. I feel connected to myself in a way that I have never experienced before, even with 25 years of journaling under my belt before I began this Gene Keys journey.

So much has changed.

My heart is open. I guess that’s a big part of all the changes I can feel. I’ve dropped so many barriers, and I allow my heart to be open. And there is so much more love in my life now. I have discovered a great secret, or that’s how it feels … opening my heart has allowed so much love to flow into my life, and it’s allowed a great wave of love to flow out of me too.

I love my husband even more, as if that could even be possible!! But it is! And it’s an even deeper love. It’s like I’ve dived deep into our relationship without even really needing to look at it (or involve him in the dive!); it’s as if my open heart has connected with his heart on a level that is beyond conscious thought. There’s just so much more love than I would have believed possible.

So Much Love

There’s more love for other people too. Meghan, my Crone Companion, and Hayley (our gorgeous Gene Keys Guide) have become my sisters by heart. I may not have met them in the flesh, but I am connected to them, and I love them in a way I’ve never experienced before. This is sisterhood, and it is new for me, and it is incredible.

There’s the love I feel for the other women I am making this journey with, whom I feel so connected to. This connection is like strands of pure love. It doesn’t matter that I have never met any of the women in my milieu, these glorious women are part of my life now. I have shown them my heart, my truth, my journey, and I feel supported and safe with them.

I Am Safe

Safe! Safety is the other massive shift for me since starting this journey. I have gone from waiting for the next bad thing to happen, from feeling scared all the time, to feeling safe. I have discovered the mind-blowing truth that I am my own safety net! I carry my safety inside myself. It is not something external. And that means that bad things may well happen, but I’m not scared any more. I am safe. I have my roots so deep that I can weather any storm.

To get practical here, I can see this in action with some physical pain I have been experiencing in my joints. Two years ago, if this had happened, I would be freaking the fuck out. I would have been catastrophizing … I would have been imagining bone cancer, or some crippling disease that would see me in a wheelchair. I would have been terrified. Now, I am listening to my body. I am seeing that she needs care and attention and love. I’m not angry or frustrated with my body; I am saying, I hear you, I’ll take care of you. I actually have compassion and kindness for myself, and that is a monumental paradigm shift for me.

I also feel safe to be myself.

I feel safe full stop.

I cannot describe it, except to say that as I sit here, contemplating safety, I feel a warm bubbling in my chest, I am smiling. Understanding that I carry my own safety inside makes me feel alive, so that even at this moment, when I am tired, aching and have a headache, I feel wildly alive. It sounds a bit crazy, but I don’t know how else to say it.

Trust Is Woven Through All of These Changes

The other big difference (and of course, all of these changes are woven together, and are all facets of the woman I am becoming), is that I trust.

I trust myself. I trust Life. I trust this unfolding journey. I trust the Gene Keys’ map. I trust the people in my life. I trust that I have all the answers I need, they are inside me, swirling in that great well of wisdom.

I would never have believed I could feel this level of trust. I’ve been so hurt and used by people in the past, that’s why there were so many damn walls up, that I never would have believed this level of trust could be available to me. But here it is, like a golden treasure, sitting in my heart.

I am safe to trust.

Self-Belief

Self-belief. All of these myriad changes … my open heart, love, safety, trust, compassion, my well of wisdom … oh, and so many others that I haven’t even thought of yet, have led to a great well of self-belief opening in me. So much of my life was spent beating myself up for the mistakes I’ve made, the bad choices, the unsuitable relationships, the wasted time. I believed myself to be a fucking failure, who was just not good enough, in any area of life or aspect of personality. I had a very low opinion of myself, and negative self-talk was the norm. I would call myself stupid, lazy, a bad mother, a useless person. I would call myself all the critical names imaginable. And I would fucking believe it.

I don’t believe all that bad stuff about myself any more. I believe in myself. I believe I am a good person. I believe I have so much strength and goodness in me. Of course, there are still moments of self-doubt, moments where the fear is there again, but now I have this incredible tool, the Gene Keys; now I have this language and this new way of looking at myself, that I can catch those doubts and those fears pretty quickly. I can see the Shadows at play, and I can trust myself enough to know that the Shadows hold the seeds of the Gifts.

There Is Always A Lesson To Be Learned

I can trust Life enough to know that here is a lesson for me to learn.

And I may not learn things right away. Life might need to bring me lots of lessons; I may need to sit with my Shadows again and again; but that’s okay. I know that all I am doing is going deeper, all I am doing is peeling back another obscuring layer, and I believe in myself enough to know that I CAN do it. I can do anything.

I have the most incredible Gifts in my chart. And, because I can see how absolutely spot on every single shadow is, because I can see those Shadows at play throughout my entire history, I have to believe I have all of those beautiful Gifts too.

So, I think it’s fair to say that I am an entirely different person to the one who started this journey. But I am still the same, because this strong, loving, trusting woman is the real me.

She was just obscured.

But she’s shining brighter every day.

I am becoming the woman I was born to be.