Day 18: let it be...

doing alone will not heal us

Jun 18, 2025

“there will be an answer…

let it be…”

-the beatles

Hey hey and happiest of Wednesdays, dear community,

I hope you can take this time, while reading these words, to feel your feet and/or body connected to the ground, the breath rising and falling within your belly, and that resilient melody continuing to thump and triumph in your chest. I hope you know with absolute certainty — and if not, I hope you can at least greet the very truth — that you are here, you are now, made on purpose, dear one, with great purpose. And may curiosity continue as you consider what that means for you.

Could purpose be alive right here in the pause and pulse of this moment?

Could purpose be alive in the blood moving through your body and the breath within your lungs?

Could purpose be alive right as you, right here?

And although these questions are for you, I have to answer with an astounding yes, yes, yes! Purpose is present — and in this presence, there is so much purpose. Let that be held. Let that be true.

I witness oh so often in this world an ambitious attitude that says we have to acquire it all to be living into some sort of purpose — and I want to challenge that a bit. I feel purpose is alive and present in the subtle, in the soft, in the spaciousness of every moment of every day. We just have to root in. We just have to remember. We just have to choose to let it flow through.

I have lived in ways where I tried so badly to make the ideas in my head — of what I needed to do and who I thought I had to be — become the truth. Yet the truth was, none of that was working for me. It was only causing me more distress, more disease, more disheartening. I have lived in ways for far too long where I saw myself as less, due to the lack of my ambitious beliefs coming into fruition. When I compared, when I contrasted — shoot, where I compare, where I contrast — I am not living the whole of me. I dissect. I divide. And in no way do I ever conquer.

And what if we are all here to conquer those ideas — not with force, but with the absolute truth that we already hold the keys? We already embody the codes. We already have the seeds planted deep inside of us. Can we allow them to grow? Can we allow ourselves to grow? Can we be patient and present enough to actually feel, remember, and know — it’s all here — within?

I write all that, and I realize that it’s counterculture. I, like you, grew up with capitalism. I have been enmeshed in societal ideas of dominance and superiority. I have been brainwashed in a multitude of ways to strive outward and abandon inward. And all of that limits me — while it fuels the gains of systems built on greed, belief systems of ignorance, and hierarchies ruled by harm and hate.

It wasn’t until I had nowhere to go — and complete surrender was the only option — that I finally fell out of those knots and tangles. I learned that the only way I could make it through was to be, and be with it all: without control, without fixation, without expectation. It was in the surrender to my body and all she held… my mind and all that stirred… my heart with all that felt so fatigued, so in flux, and without space — it was in that very terrifying, yet courageous, moment that I knew:

There really is nothing I can do right now.
I just have to be.

I found that in the monsoons of grief.
I found that in the frightening aftermath of trauma.
I found that in the losing of so much — including who I thought I was, who I thought I’d be, how I thought it was, how I thought it’d be — and without knowing how, I let the collapse carry me through.

I let the tears rinse me and release so much weight and worry and woe I was holding. I let the anger out in scream sessions I would take down in my basement. Doors closed. No one else home. Just me and the human sounds of what it is to lose and be lost, all at the same time. And when I gave in to those needs — when I let go of the resistance within me and even the performance I was embodying for those around me — when I let those guards down, I found myself alive inside that portal of time and space and presence.

To be is what saved me.
And maybe it will be the very salve for you.

And here’s the thing, kids — I know, I know, I know: there is so much we are here to do. And it can feel counterintuitive to slow down when we want to make big strides and moves, all in the betterment of ourselves and our shared humanity. I know it can feel contradictory to make that switch from doing to being. Yet I gotta tell you: the more I flip that switch, the more I challenge that narrative and go deeper within myself (and far beyond), clarity has a way of showing me through.

The things meant for me, find me — without my need to control or grasp, or keep pounding that square peg into a round hole. My nervous system gets regulated. I am able to respond instead of react. I can rest instead of overexerting myself. I am able to tune into the ways the Universe and Divine Consciousness are supporting me through the signs, the synchronicities, the songs… the stepping stones placed along my path… and it takes me to even greater places. It returns to me the purpose of my soul — this lifetime, this healing…

When I lost my parents almost 12 years ago traumatically, that wasn’t the only thing shattering my heart. I was in my final year of college at CMU and had every ambition, every focus, every determination, that I was going to be a Registered Dietitian. It was the only thing I wanted to do. It took me 8 years to obtain my degree — school was super difficult for me. I made some shitty choices, and I also had unnamed and unsupported ailments like anxiety, depression, and PTSD. My parents were struggling and the pressure was on — it was up to me to save them. And this degree, this career path, was the very thing that would and could do just that.

My parents passed on July 4th, and in a little over a month, my final semester of college would begin. I knew if I didn’t attend, I’d have to wait an entire year to finish my credits. Somehow, some way, I did it, y’all. Although most of it is a blur, this one day is vivid — I was already feeling lost, empty, concave — and I was called into a room with my advisor and the head of the internship program. Dietetics is a hard-as-fuck degree to obtain, and you not only need high grades, but also to secure an internship — which is very competitive. I only wanted one: CMU’s.

I had a very bad feeling when they brought me in, speaking gently as I sat down. And then they told me: I would not be getting the internship.

That moment will stay with me forever — it was the bleakest of bleak. I was fixated on that outcome. But that is not what the stars had aligned for me.

I didn’t think I could survive the disappointment. I drove home from Mount Pleasant to Saginaw in the rain, sobbing, screaming, contemplating ending it all. I knew I had people and animals around me who loved me, and yet… it just all felt like too much. Way too much. I didn’t know if I had the capacity to continue on with so much sorrow, so much hollow, so much pain.

I felt like it was all over for me. And in that, I wanted to be done too.

But — as you know — I am still here.

So I didn’t go the route my insecurities and deep, deep depression wanted me to.
I withstood.
And I felt the storm.
And with time, and with a heaviness I sometimes forget I carried for so long… I made my way through.

If I had held on to the notion that that was who I was supposed to be in this world, I would have missed all the blessings and opportunities that found me — and led me here. Like the work I got to do in community nutrition in Saginaw County, which opened my eyes and heart to the great deal of inequity living right there beside me. It stretched me to places and people I never would have met — and from whom I learned so much. And the leap to land in Midland, where I stepped into a studio that gave me life again — in my lungs and in my body. And just a few short months later, the opportunity to purchase and lead the ship and space that became sanctuary to me and so many.

That led me to trauma-informed certifications.
That led me to teaching yoga.
And the way the void transformed into a vortex of blessings, opportunities, and ways of being in my body and community I never could have imagined…

I had to be with that heartbreak to be receptive to such blessings.
I had to let go of the ambition to finally find and feel my purpose.

I am here to love.
I am here to heal.
And I am here to inspire those around me to be the same — in all their own unique and authentic ways.

I am all I am now because of the many workings of great devastation behind me — and something that has always been present, just not always centered, not always heard, not always believed. And that is my Spirit, always showing me a way through.

I just wonder who we all would be — and how the world would flow and move — if more of us surrendered to the ideas that no longer serve us. If we let ourselves fully feel the disappointments that arrive not as punishments but as disguised blessings. What if detours weren’t delays but direction? What if the collapse is actually the chrysalis? What if being — just being — is the doorway into the most Divine, aligned, and truest version of ourselves?

Maybe that’s the answer, after all.
Let it be.

With Great Purpose by Keri Kenney

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