Live From the Inside

“When I discover who I am, I’ll be free.” ~ Ralph Ellison

This month is all about the theme Return to Center. It has me rounding up and reconciling before December instead of waiting for a year-end review. This year, December will be a peaceful time to simply be.

Writing these muses and journaling daily has helped me chart both growth and patterns. It led me to ask: How do I get off center, and why do I find myself returning so often if I’m doing the work? What I thought would be an easy answer took days to organize, let alone write. At one point it felt like solving a koan, a riddle used in Zen practice to point toward insight.

Then it became clear. I still spend a significant amount of time adjusting to the outside instead of aligning with the inside and letting life unfold from there. The healing process from late December to June, with a few remnants now, showed me subtle and not-so-subtle ways I pressured myself to rush parts of my healing to keep up with the busy world I created. My search for inspiration, because time away from my work made me feel disconnected, led me to places that often added stress and the fear of losing touch through comparison. I had to admit I wasn’t looking for inspiration; I was looking for proof that I wasn’t doing enough.

I once again gave myself permission to slow down. I cultivated a deeper understanding of how my nervous system was impacted and chose soothing activities whenever I started to feel anxious or scattered. It looked like gentle breaths, meditation, expressing gratitude, and reaching out to my trusted circle of friends. I stopped doom scrolling, stopped searching for motivational videos, and journeyed inside.

What we see is shaped by where we are emotionally and mentally. I’ve looked in the mirror and, in a single day, gone from contentment to picking at natural changes that come with more blessed years. What we see reflects how we feel, and trying to fix the outside first rarely works.

Returning to center means coming back to peace, clarity, and the truth of who you are — happy, healthy, love, worthy, and complete. It’s a call to turn inward and let the outside adjust to your inner being.

This is not a one-and-done. It’s a daily practice, one that cultivates deep self-awareness. The good news is that it’s simple. It requires that we pay attention to what we’re seeing. Before changing things outside, turn inward and ask what might be clouding your view. If nothing is clouding it, go within for the clarity to make a change that is within your power and that feels fair.

If the end of the year is full of reflection, pivoting and charting a renewed path ahead, I invite you to begin your process now. Moment by moment is all it takes.

With love and gratitude,
Dana Andrea

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