⭐️The Distance Between You and Yourself 🦋: A Map Written in Starlight 🪞✨

August 8, 2025

In order to play an active role in your life, bayad bekhai — you have to want to.

Each moment opens like a doorway.

You can step through with curiosity and care, or brace yourself in fear, control, or judgment.

The truth is: we’re always choosing.

Even when we feel like we’re not.

Character is not what we believe, but how we act—especially when we’re tired, afraid, unseen.

And being a responsible adult means learning how to stay with ourselves long enough to act with integrity, even when it’s uncomfortable.

Especially when it’s uncomfortable.

But that work doesn’t start with answers.

It starts with sitting beside what we don’t yet know.

And even deeper: what we don’t know we don’t know.

That’s the unconscious material. The dark soil. The root system of the self.

Hard to face—but it’s where all growth begins.

⭐️The Shadow’s Invitation (Jungian Psychology)⭐️

Jung called it the shadow—the parts of us we exile. Our shame, our rage, our envy, our hunger. The things we fear will make us unlovable. We are taught that we ought to ignore these parts of us, but they don’t disappear when ignored. They show up sideways—in judgment, in reactivity, in the way we see others through a distorted mirror.

To meet the shadow is not to shame ourselves.

🪞It’s to turn toward what’s been hidden and ask:

"What do you need me to see?"

That’s where فهم (fahm) begins. Translated from Persian/Farsi, fahm means understanding.

Not just knowledge, but soul-level understanding. The kind that brings dignity. A fahmide person is not perfect—they’re just honest.

Grounded. Willing to grow. Seeing their own imperfection with curiosity rather than defensiveness and shame.

Growing up, things can often feel all or nothing.

Good or bad.

Right or wrong.

Safe or dangerous.

Love or rejection/abandonment.

That’s what happens when we haven’t developed fahm (understanding) yet.

The nervous system hasn’t learned to stretch out time.

There’s no space between the trigger and the response.

Everything feels like it has to happen now. Immediately. Go go go! Quick answers. Quick solutions. Rushed decisions. All or nothing.

I know that this is what it felt like to me, and that I am not alone in having felt this urgency.

But growth is about learning to hold tension without snapping. Building resilience.

Like drawing a bowstring 🏹—you don’t just let go right away.

You pause. You breathe. You feel the resistance. You aim intentionally. You notice your posture. You lean into your discernment.

And then when you do choose to act, it’s with direction. With precision.

Not chaos. Not panic. But power.

That’s the work of becoming a fahmide person.

Someone who can sit with discomfort without immediately reacting to escape it.

Someone who sees the shadow and doesn’t flinch. No longer seeing the shadow as a threat, but a friend waiting to be made.

Because if we can't be friends with our shadow, is it possible to live authentically?

We don’t shame the younger parts.

They were doing their best to survive.

But we don’t let them lead, either.

Because now we know better. Now we can wait.

Now we know how to choose. We live life as a journey of growing in discernment. Growing in wisdom.

⭐️Freedom, Responsibility, and the Stars (Existential Philosophy)⭐️

Existentialism reminds us: freedom is not lightness—it is weight.

To be alive is to be accountable for the shape your life takes.

But there’s beauty in that burden.

Because when you choose with intention, your life becomes art.

A personal philosophy formed by what you’ve lived and how you’ve loved.

You begin to make meaning out of mess.

The question is no longer, "why me?"

Rather, "what now?"

In the same way that stars are born from collapsing chaos—fiery, dense, unstable—something luminous can form inside your hardest moments.

But only if you stay with them. Only if you ask:

What kind of person do I want to become through this challenge?

That is responsibility.

That is light, forged in pressure.

And you are allowed to shine.

⭐️The Nervous System’s Song (Somatic Practice)⭐️

We can fall into the trap of thinking that healing is only about insight.

But the body is the real poet. It remembers everything.

And sometimes, it misremembers—because trauma convinces it that the past is still happening.

So the heart races. The fists clench. The urge to run, fight, shut down, fawn, overwhelms.

In those moments, you can’t reason your way out. You have to regulate.

Not to suppress. Not to pretend.

But to stay present long enough to choose who you want to be.

This is a life long journey, but as Lao Tzu says, "the journey of a thousand miles begins with one single step."

Breathe.

Shake.

Cry.

Place your hand on your chest and remind your body: You are safe now.

DBT skills, somatic shaking, trauma-informed yoga—these are tools not for "fixing you", but for returning to yourself.

Hafez says, " I wish I could show you when you are lonely or in darkness, the astonishing light of your own being."

What does it do for us to believe in our own light?

That we are part of something greater?

I know for me it reminds me of my responsibility & the innate good in me. It empowers me to try to be better.

For holding the moment between trigger and choice.

That moment is holy.

That moment is where transformation lives.

⭐️Your Soul’s Work (Ancient Persian Wisdom)⭐️

Rumi wrote:

“Don’t get lost in your pain, know that one day your pain will become your cure.”

This work—of seeing the shadow, regulating the nervous system, choosing with intention—is not about self-improvement.

It’s about soul-tending.

It’s about becoming someone your spirit can live peacefully inside.

You are not separate from the rest of us. As Saadi Shirazi wrote centuries ago:

“بنی آدم اعضای یکدیگرند / که در آفرینش ز یک گوهرند”

Human beings are limbs of one body, made of one essence.

When one of us hurts, all of us collectively hurt.

When you pause instead of lashing out, when you breathe instead of blaming, when you choose love over fear—you don’t just heal yourself.

You ripple something outward.

You interrupt a lineage of harm.

You open a door for someone else’s softness, too.

Like a butterfly emerging from the cocoon—not because it escaped pain, but because it stayed through the dark—your becoming is quiet, but vast. 🦋

This is not about being perfect. Perfectionism will only take us off course. Rigidity is not power, Openness is.

It’s about being present. It is about failing and trying again.

It’s about saying:

I may not know everything, but I will try to respond with grace.

I will try to become who I’m meant to be, one sacred choice at a time.

You are here to grow.

To heal.

To soften.

To shine.

But first:

Bayad bekhai.

You have to want it.

The Stars :) Photo by my Husband <3