No Authority

Nobody is coming to save you. The first time I laid eyes on that message, we were in the thick of the COVID lies, and I was working hard to find someone to save us all, grasping at any and every message that offered hope of deliverance from the tyranny that had settled over the world. Ian Smith, an ex-con gym owner in New Jersey posted the message on Instagram. He was in the thick of things: keeping his gym open despite unconstitutional mandates (which are not laws) from a puppet governor that had police officers showing up on a regular basis and slapping him with fines that eventually totaled (if I recall correctly) more than $80,000. He ended up not paying a cent of them, because a court eventually found that the puppet governor was, indeed, in the wrong.

Nobody is coming to save you. I hated that message when I saw it, and those feelings had everything to do with why I stopped following Smith. He’s not the only who’s ever put it out there, though. Now, I see and hear it all the time: mostly from myself, because I finally understand it.

Nobody is coming to save you. Because you need to save yourself. How can you save yourself, though, when you don’t even trust yourself? And if you’ve ever gotten defensive because of something someone has said to you, you don’t trust yourself. But why would you? From the earliest moments of our lives, we are told to distrust ourselves, usually by the parents we imagine are gods. And the funny thing is, that even when those parent-gods are no longer with us, either because we’ve moved out of their homes or because they are dead, we continue to “worship” them and defer to them. The messages that they planted in our souls do not disappear just because we consciously imagine that we are now sovereign. Until we dig down into our souls, into our unconscious selves, find what’s there, look at it, SEE it, and deal with it in some way that exorcises it, it controls us. So much of that unconscious stuff comes from our parent-gods, that we cannot even disentangle their voices (in the form of the messages they delivered over and over) from the one inside our heads. What’s more, we transfer their voices to other people: friends, bosses, siblings, in-laws, partners, teachers, strangers on the Internet, effectively making them into authorities we are afraid to disappoint. Just this morning, I read about a top coach in college sports whose team lost a playoff game because, around mid-season, the coach hadn’t trusted himself and, instead, deferred to an assistant coach.* In that moment, the assistant had taken on the role of the parent-god who had consistently and regularly asked her son, “Are you sure?”

Nobody is coming to save you. That, however, does not mean that you are completely on your own. Guides are out there for you when you’re ready to listen to one. For some of you, that might be me.

Anyone who has been reading along here for at least a year (I guess) likely knows that I’ve been on a significant healing journey for the last four years. What I don’t think I’ve shared is that it has become more of a hero’s journey, complete with descents into the underworld (more than one, but I’ve survived), and a whole lot of soul growth. Whether or not this qualifies me to help others navigate their souls remains to be seen, but I’m giving it a shot, anyway, with Poetic Anatomy Coaching Services, LLC. In the last year, I’ve gotten certified as a life coach, an Emotion Code practitioner, and a flower essence therapist. I am in the process of acquiring further certifications in flower essence therapy and Psychosynthesis coaching. If any of this piques your interest, I invite over to poeticanatomy.com, where you can book an appointment or just learn a little bit more about the services I offer.

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*There’s A Hole In My Love Cup by Sven Erlandson will tell you all you need to you about why you (or someone you love) just can’t quite manage to get it together.