For most of this lifetime, I struggled to receive.
Love.
Blessings.
Gifts wrapped in paper and gifts wrapped in moments.
Soft words.
Open arms.
Even the simple grace of a door held open.
Receiving made my body bristle. My skin would prickle, my chest would tighten, and something ancient inside me would try to flee. It was as if my nervous system didn’t recognize being met as safe. I felt the energy before I felt the meaning — and the energy felt like too much.
When someone offered me a gift or a compliment, I often disappeared. I deflected. I became smaller or colder. From the outside, it may have looked like ingratitude. From the inside, it was survival. I didn’t yet believe I was allowed to hold what was being offered.
And when I did allow myself to receive, it came with an invisible contract: I must give more in return. More effort. More energy. More proof that I deserved the exchange.
For years, I thought if I could just understand my worth, this would change. I wrote the words. I breathed the affirmations. I sat with the trees and the ocean. I devoted myself to healing spaces and sacred practices. They nourished me — but they did not unlock the gate. My body still recoiled. The resistance still lived in my cells.
Somewhere along the way, I absorbed a belief:
If I do more,
If I give more,
If I become more,
Then I will be worthy.
The truth is, I was born worthy. I entered this world already whole. But worthiness that lives only in the mind does not dissolve a bodily vow. I knew the truth — but I could not feel it.
Then August arrived like an initiation.
It was as if the Divine turned me upside down and shook loose everything that was not aligned with my soul. Relationships fell into clarity. Old belief systems cracked. Patterns that once hid in shadow stepped fully into the light.
I felt God close — intimate, unmistakable — whispering through my bones:
“I made you unique. There has never been and will never be another like you. This was not a mistake. I am not testing you. I am inviting you. Stand in who you are and claim what you came here to do.”
Something ancient unlocked. I felt myself drop into my body, into my frequency, into my true place in the world. It was a remembering — not of something new, but of something eternal.
And from that place, receiving became natural.
Not forced.
Not earned.
Not negotiated.
Receiving became devotional.
Because, when I finally stood as who I am, I no longer needed to prove my worth — I could simply allow life to meet me.