Over the past several months, I’ve taken some time away from social media and creating content. Before COVID-19 went into full swing, my plan was to return this week and get back into writing and engagement. Yesterday I sat down and attempted several times to write. I felt torn between simply returning to my usual content or stepping headfirst into coaching around COVID-19. For a while I was unable to locate a middle ground and thus, I hung out a bit frozen, feeling stuck in the extremes. In my mind the either/or was either I addressed the virus and risked offending people with my views, or I didn’t address it all and risked offending people with a business-as-usual air/lack of acknowledgement for what’s going on.

I felt myself moving from being connected to my body and sensations to a headier more egocentric-type energy – the energy that I often experience with any type of fear. I felt frustrated and judgmental of myself. What the hell I’ve posted hundreds of things, why was this so difficult? And seriously, is this really what I’m going to struggle with amidst a global crisis?

I made the decision to stop trying to force something that wasn’t working, to go out for a walk, and to relax the rest of my evening.

Then today before I attempted any further writing, I hopped on a group meditation with @theshevamethod and found clarity within minutes. I teared up at the encouragement to release fear and return to Love. I felt myself breathing out the heady energy and returning to a more grounded state.

When I stepped back into observer mode of my situation, I could see that an old fear of worrying about what people think about me had subtly crept in and manifested in a content dilemma. This situation was all very new – I’d never had experience writing content amidst a pandemic. Now I see that of course I was reverting to an old fear – to my ego, doing and risking nothing felt like the safest move, so it kept me stuck here. The problem was, my old response to this fear of hiding out and keeping quiet was no longer in alignment with how I choose to show up for myself today. I knew this situation was tapping into a deeper fear and older belief I thought I’d put to rest: if people don’t like you or what you have to say, Sarah, maybe it is true that you just really aren’t all that loveable.

As I continued to reflect on my dilemma, I began to hear another voice gain some volume: I don’t really think a crisis like this is the time to play it small. Maybe there is an opportunity for growth somewhere in this?

I began to feel a shift within me. I considered that maybe it was time for me to step out of black and white thinking in order to find the gray area; to embrace the both/and. Instead of judgement and frustration, I chose to call on compassion and acceptance for the parts of myself that were scared and doing the best they could. With so many other very real, very big fears flowing around – like the fear of illness, death, disconnection, economic collapse, etc. – maybe this old fear was something I was ready to take head on. In the grand scheme of things this fear that had historically really wreaked some havoc in my life just didn’t seem all that big anymore.

While I did genuinely feel stuck and afraid and frustrated yesterday, I can’t help but also notice how facing a pandemic can slide so much of what we thought was important into a fiercely irrelevant zone. In my case I found myself countering my ego’s attempts to keep me small: What’s really the risk here? So what if people don’t like what I have to say? In the bigger picture of life am I really going to let the fear of not being loveable stand in the way of me speaking from my heart and sharing my truth?

The vulnerability that this crisis is calling us into is unlike anything any of us has ever experienced. There’s no rule book, no guide, no right or wrong way to be coping, making meaning, or ultimately rising up from. We may believe we should be feeling or experiencing or responding in a certain way to ourselves, our families, or our communities. We may feel afraid, in denial, angry, frustrated, annoyed, or maybe we aren’t feeling much at all. At the end of the day, it’s all okay. It’s all always been okay. At any given moment, each one of us is always doing the best we can. And, we always have a choice between feeling constricted, limited, and playing it safe, or finding the courage to feel into the scary places, getting curious about their messages, and then finding opportunity to heal and grow amidst the crises.

Please know that I acknowledge that none of this is easy. I’m not minimizing anyone’s experience or the reality of what we are facing. I acknowledge there are very tangible things we need to do to take care of ourselves, our families, our communities, and the world, and that amidst the constant existential fears of scarcity, control, death, and uncertainty, taking some time to look inward can seem irrelevant.

And for some, it may be. And that’s okay. There is no right or wrong here. Now is a time to be gentle with ourselves. Doing what feels good and in alignment is unique to each individual and his or her own needs. If you are someone who feels a deep inner calling to be rolling up your sleeves and digging into personal growth despite the external circumstances, getting curious is the first step toward uncovering the parts of our lives that are calling to be healed.

We can begin to ask ourselves: How and when does fear show up? Is it after watching the news? Looking at groceries? Talking to a friend? After a certain thought or emotion? Is it when we are vulnerable with a partner? Telling someone we love them first? Sharing our thoughts publicly? Is it when we’re experiencing physical pain or worried that we’ll never meet that special someone?

Getting curious helps us to first clue into the external parts of our environment that might be unnecessarily exacerbating fear and needing some adjustment. We can choose to turn off the news if after an hour we start to feel our heart racing. We can limit the time we spend talking to the friend with all the conspiracy theories that make our head hurt from having to think too hard. We can choose to put down our phone an hour before bed instead of reading story after story of the same thing that takes us out of the moment and into scenarios that haven’t happened yet.

Then, once we have an idea of the external parts of our environment that we can adjust and allow to work better for us, we can choose to take the curiosity even deeper. Are there common themes where fear is showing up the most often – like with scarcity, control, health, relationships, attachment, or death? Did these fears exist before the pandemic? Is there something underlying this fear that’s pointing to an area of our life that’s calling to be healed?

For me, the old fear of not being loveable showed up in the surface experience of writing publicly. My ego had me wanting to throw my hands up because my writing in response to COVID-19 was sure to ruin me professionally. Instead, when I chose to meditate and get quiet and then adopt a curious stance, I saw that this fear was all just part of a really old story, one that I didn’t have to subscribe to anymore. As a result, now here I am, after 3 months of no writing, finally feeling it flow through me and embracing the courage to publish.

So I’ll leave you with this thought: when the news is turned off, the tasks of the day are done, and you’re left with the quiet inner stillness of yourself, what is your fear asking of you? Is there opportunity for healing and growth for you, somewhere amidst the crisis? And ultimately, can you find the courage to turn toward your fear, befriend it, and allow it to be your teacher?