Is "Why" Keeping You Stuck?

Does “why” always matter?

This may come as a surprise considering almost everything I do incorporates a version of “why” but I want to highlight something that I don't think gets talked about enough.

Sometimes the quest for “why” keeps us stuck.

Sometimes wanting to understand “the reason” keeps us in this loop of digging and digging and burrowing and burrowing- looking underneath every stone.

Somewhere along the way it turns into a sort of justification paralysis.

Not analysis paralysis- justification paralysis.

That super specific flavor of not being able to move because you’re weighed down in needing to have a “logical” reason to justify your actions/beliefs/traits.

That feeling of needing to diagnose something in order to move is so powerful that sometimes it can make us forget the power we already have.

Seeking justification in that way demands your feelings to speak in facts.

It’s demanding this deep, wise, fluid, organic, pure sense of you to defend itself with language that it doesn’t speak. (and frankly, supersedes.)

Just the same as there is toxic positivity, there's also a point where wellness can become toxic.

(have you watched a cult documentary lately?)

The ability to pinpoint the root of an issue can release so much weight and empower us in the most beautiful way. The craving to understand this root provides fuller context and more information to work from.

But then there's this other thing that can happen where you're searching for the root so that you can justify to yourself why you are the way you are.

It becomes less about understanding and wanting to discover different aspects of yourself. It’s less about the satisfaction of being able to put your finger on all of these different things that make up who you are as a person.

It turns into, “I need to figure out why I'm broken in this way.”

“I need to figure out whatever it is that is the reason why I've done this up until this point in my life.”

Such a thin line.
It can be hard to figure out when you've plopped over to the other side.

I plopped.

I was sitting at my desk and had this thought come across my mind:

It feels like I'm climbing out of a well and I keep losing my footing every time I discover something else. I fling my head back to look behind me so desperately.
I lose balance and just slide all the way back down.

I realized then, that I’ve started looking for why for justification’s sake.
To justify myself rather than for empowerment and love.

I don't want that to be the case.

Deepening our understanding of our lives is such a beautiful thing.
I don’t want to weaponize it.

This morning, I just completed my monthly Nostalgia, Now visual journal and I uncovered something so incredibly healing and life changing-

I’ve been committed to this practice of monthly reflection for the last 3 years now and I’ve never specifically shared my personal findings but I’m feeling called to start. I know how valuable & healing our shared revelations can be through hosting this as a live intimate container in the past. The visual journaling happens in one of a kind prompted photo templates that I create in canva- super easy & intuitive to use. This practice helps you create space to consciously sit with yourself and see what you saw in the past month of your life and give yourself the space to make your subconscious wisdom conscious- bringing your wise hindsight to your now. Nostalgia, Now lives on through this substack.

When you become a paid subscriber you get access to these monthly, one of a kind prompted photo templates where you can create delicious space to witness your life in this powerful way. You then take that invaluable bread crumb that you have gathered and move forward with deeper intentionality and self awareness to the next month (and so on and so on- think, one degree turns on a ship.)

I sat down like I normally do & opened up my Google photos for the month of August.

I read the template prompts, went looking for the images, and boyyyyyyyyyyyy did I find them.

I found exactly what I needed to let go of this fixation.
When I witnessed the myself in this way I was able to release my locked “WHY AM I LIKE THIS” jaw.

This is the power of guided self discovery.

No one is giving you profound breakthroughs because no one has your answers but YOU.

You are giving them to yourself.
You are literally looking at the photographs you took.
With this innate wisdom that only you have.
You took those pictures not even knowing how important they were in the moment.

Just pure instinct.

And then creating the space, this reason to go back and look and listen to yourself in this way is what brings all of that instinctual wisdom to the surface so that you can actually

LIVE with it. MOVE with it. ACT on it.

I'm a visual person.
Creating these templates helps me talk to myself.
It helps me connect to my life in a way that feels way too big and overwhelming to do so without this as the vehicle.

This monthly practice is the most grounding and instinctual way for me to live intentionally inside of my wisdom and convictions.

When I looked at the pictures I chose, it made so much sense-
like a fucking stepladder, one after the other after the other.
of course, of course, of course.

This ambiguous complex blob of emotional and logical confusion became instantly simple and clear- because I was talking to myself in my own visual language.

It connected on such a deep level INSTANTLY.

Here are some of the actual findings/journaling from the template:

I’ve recently realized how impacted I was from something growing up that’s been really frustrating for me to try to figure out why.

But I don't have to know why anymore. I can let that go. (and perhaps when I do, it’ll come to me as most things do when you stop strangling it.)

Just by seeing it and feeling the impact on me through the picture that I used in this template, I was able to know.

“my children get to see them the way I never did.
I get to keep conscious the idea that my children need to see that.
I get to understand how important that is because of my own experience.

And then because of that,
I get to remember that I need to feel that first in order to give them that.”

Recently, there's been this viral reel going around talking about how “the number one indicator of a child's wellbeing is the quality of the mother's happiness.

That cannot be planned.
That cannot be constructed.
That cannot be faked or made up for in other ways.

The number one indicator of a child's wellbeing is quality of their mother's happiness.

The quality of happiness in one person…

in you.

in me.

It's not something that has to be articulated or even can be.
It has to be felt.

And that reverberates into every aspect of a life.
and not just our immediate loved ones,
but everyone that they touch.
(and so on and so on.)

The pictures show me how I've been braced for impact for my whole life.

Holding my breath

for what?

for why?

do I have to know why in order to exhale and move in my life?

No, I don't.

I need to decide.

And it's not mutually exclusive.
It's not one or the other.
It can be both,
but it doesn't have to be figured out
in order for me to move forward in my life.”

There was a prompt on this template that had me look for my representation of personal ether.

Ether- the epitome of space and weightlessness, container for all that ever is all,
space between everything.

For that image, I chose the same picture that I always get in my mind when I close my eyes and think of somewhere that makes me feel at peace: the rocky California coast.

That view, that view, everything is okay.
Everything, okay, with that view.

In reflecting on that view in this capacity:

“My ether right sizes pain.
It emphasizes its ability to hold all of it just as I can.
just as I do,
even if it feels like I don't and I can't.

There's a version of neutrality that doesn't have to feel cold or wrong or unloving.

It just is and allows breath to move,
life to move,
me to move.

It also shows me that the pain can be outside of me.
I don't need to swallow it.
It doesn't need to swallow me.

It is not wrong of me to make it separate, to have space from it.

The pains are like the beautiful rocks in the ocean that I love so much.
Life and space and nothing and everything washes over them.
They stay.
Sometimes drenched in life and sparkling,

and other times- too tall,
refusing to be washed over,
refusing to sparkle,
refusing to be covered and comforted
by the vastness of life and space.

But it's okay.

It's allowed to be that.
It is still a drop in the ocean,
no matter how protruding.

After all, the magnitude of its presence is only ever the depth of its love.

I can bear it all whether I see it or not.
whether I think it or not.

When I think about this landscape I think about the size of a grain of sand
next to a boulder of rock in the sea.

And yet how that boulder is actually held by the sand.

All of those tiny pieces of sand, those tiny pieces of life, all of our memories hold the boulders of pain and joy and bittersweetness that take up so much more space in our mind and in our heart and in our consciousness.

And yet all of it is only parts of the ocean
and the ocean itself is only a part of ether.
Weightless, transparent, frictionless, unsayable, unknowable, undetectable

space.

And my essence is unavoidably that.
that magnitude.
that capacity.
regardless of if I'm willing to see it or not.

So when I look at this visual journal and I think about what the prompt asks me,
“how will I move forward with what I've consciously uncovered?”

I know.

I feel that I don't need to know why all of those boulders are there.
I don't need to know the reason.

I can bear it whether I see it or not.
I can move whether I understand that or not.

I will consciously invite light into my heaviness.
not to deny the heaviness, but to not deny the light.

I will find the love in all of it. "

The impact of this work has empowerment and embodiment infused in every aspect of it.

We look to the subconscious because we know we already know.
We uncover, we remember our knowing without intent to “fix” but for the sake of a second seeing.
a conscious seeing.

The results of this gets to be as easeful and effortless as the process.

There's nothing “to do” after you see what you see.
You don’t need to make an action plan.
There's nothing that you need to do to upkeep it.

You cannot unsee what you have seen.
A rubber band stretched out beyond its original shape doesn't go back.

When I go and I pick these specific pictures that I could have never in a million fucking years planned with my brain,
now, because of this, they are all together on this page and I look at them clear as day- they are like my own language in hieroglyphics.

Four pictures on this page.

Because of these four pictures placed together in this way, I understand.

and I now know that that I don't need to know why.
I can see it and feel what I feel and know that there is space for all of it.
and I can still move and I can still breathe.

Four pictures.

a picture of a book cover I took in Barnes and Noble.
a snapshot I took on vacation with my family that I just edited this month.
a picture of my living room in the early morning
a picture of the California coast.

Those four pictures came together on this page

and made me understand.

You have that same well of knowledge and insight available to you.

Sometimes we're so preoccupied with looking for that sentence.
That “fact”.
The good enough sentence of why.
“But why am I like this? Why is this the way that this is? Why, why, why, why, why?”

We forget that we have the ability to decide something different.
We have the power to decide something that feels better. And just move.
And it's not running away from something.
We don't need to vilify the boulders in our landscape because at the root of it all,
it's all love.
all of it.

We don't need to justify ourselves.
We don't need to justify our needs, or the way we've lived our lives
or what we do with our time.

We are always doing the best we can with what we have.

Let's just look at what we already have a little bit closer.

What is an ambiguous presence in your life right now that you could shift instantly with a decision?

What comes to mind when you think of a big blob of overwhelm and weight holding you down?

Decide something different.

and move with it.

If you would like the Nostalgia, Now visual journal template for the month of August,
click here.