Your Living Legacy

What is your living legacy?

The countdown is on. In seven weeks our family will set off in our van for a trip of a lifetime. How long will we travel? mmm, not sure. Perhaps twelve months. Perhaps two years. Perhaps after six months, we decide we would like to take a break…  Where will we live after we are done travelling? We don’t know. Maybe we come back to Townsville and re-root ourselves in our soul home of Pallarenda. Maybe the South East corner, where the weather is delightful. Maybe we find a stop on our travels that sings to our hearts so deeply that we simply never leave. Maybe, we choose to travel into the far foreseeable future, and we find a way to make that work… What about money? Well, we don’t know. My work will be to write. Beyond that, we simply trust that life will show us the way.  What about schooling our children? Well, if we take a look around, we see that we can teach ourselves almost anything these days. Creativity is our natural nature.  Creativity and learning are inherently interconnected, so the idea that somehow our children will be ‘left behind’ doesn’t cross my heart or mind.  To live in this way would feel wildly uncomfortable for some. My husband and I have had to sift and shift through a world of mindsets and beliefs to get to a place where we feel more than ready to take this ultimate leap of faith. Our soul truth and desire to live our values have underpinned our successful navigation of each challenge we faced to find ourselves here. Constantly, I remind myself that we live and die. The consistent contemplation of death has helped to show me how it is I would like to live. I imagine myself at the end of it all, looking back.

The question that remains hot on my heart is ‘What is my living legacy?’

What I’ve learned is that my legacy is fluid. It will grow with me as I evolve. The consistent thread,  though, will be my soul.

What is my soul expression now?

How do I want to be?

What is it that I want to cultivate?

What ignites the most joy? What brings the most connection? What allows the most love?

What am I willing to sacrifice in order to create that? And is there any sacrifice at all?

If I could leave this world having made an imprint, what would I like that to be?

What is the change I wish to be?

I’ve never considered myself alternative or nomadic. What I do know about myself is that when I sense something is important to me, I will do everything within my power to honour that truth. Since becoming a mother, something deep has shifted within me. I have been gifted a new lens through which I see the world and my place in it. I think of my first birth as my heart opening, my second as my feminine awakening, and my third as an opportunity for deep embodiment. As I journey through my embodiment, it has become most important to me to lead a life of heart and soul. I’m so done with living from a place of expectation. That’s not what I came here for. And so, I consistently contemplate the contrast of the reality in which we exist. The incredible beauty that surrounds us, the magic that seems to effortlessly weave its way through life, the interconnection of it all, and the power of infinite possibility. This, alongside the heartbreaking sadness of how we treat our world, how we live in disharmony with nature, how we move from a place of entitlement without responsibility or reciprocity, and yet we carry a deep sense of unworthiness. As I sit with this daily, and as I feel into how I wish to raise my children and how I want to be in this life, any question of the ‘sensibility’ of shedding all that we know to start afresh with a new intentional lens dissipates. It couldn’t make more sense to me to consciously create a lifestyle where we move from a place of truth, lead with heart, and feel my soul dance with life. Anytime someone questions our decision, wondering “how will you sustain that?” or “what about work?” and “what about your children’s future?” I know in my heart that these are not questions for me, but are reflections of the people asking them. The need to predict far into our future, the need to shape our life rather than allowing life to shape us, and the need for things to stay ‘stable and consistent’ can often be birthed from a lack of trust in our innately creative nature and a lack of trust in the nature of the universe. When we feel stable in our own foundations and unwavering in our sovereignty, we can pave a path that is like no other. We stand in our uniqueness, whilst celebrating our oneness. We can appreciate what is for us isn’t for everyone, and our way is not the ‘right’ way, but simply a way.

As we burn down old ways of being and dismantle old desires that were seeded from a consumer ‘more is more’ mindset, I am realising just how simple I would like life to be. Not wanting the big shiny things anymore can feel somewhat confronting. Will I regret this when I am sixty years old and everyone around me has all of the things that I used to desire? If I stop filling my life with stuff, will it be sure to fill with love instead? And again, I come back to life and death and the legacy I would like to be living now.

It’s interesting to me how many times I hear people say “I wish I could do that” , quickly adding all of the reasons why they can’t. I know that there is a HUGE privilege that allows us to take this step, and at the same time, we have made many decisions that we were once afraid to make. Once trapped in the concept of security, working in jobs we hated, building a life that felt good but never allowing ourselves to fully relish our heart desires because it would be too irrational or irresponsible. Confined by our beliefs that this was a dream that we one day could live, but had to have things in order first. Looking back, had we got things in good order, we probably would have felt even more anchored in a semi-conscious life making it harder to uproot ourselves. I often wonder if those who wish to take a giant leap of faith really sit with their desires and give themselves permission to act upon them. Perhaps not even act, but at least dream. I wonder, if they sat with the question of their living legacy, and contemplated death, how they would choose to be?

I am no ‘enlightened’ human. I am simply a human that believes that if we all lived from a place of inner expression, our world would be a better place. I find it heartbreaking that we have humans on this planet with an abundance of creative talents and heart desires, that may never see the light of day, all because we try to place ourselves into a societal standard and a lifestyle model that relies on us feeling not enough. What if we all lived from a place of knowing we are enough and created a life that reflects our worthy uniqueness and unquestionable wholeness?

In seven weeks we will head off, and I will be here, sharing the journey with you along the way. What lies ahead, I don’t know. But when I think about life and death, and my living legacy, I know this is exactly where I am meant to be. I wonder what your living legacy is, in this moment?