I actually had a plant that I named after my dead name last year before starting this rediscovery journey. Right around the time I started therapy and my journey with the craft, it started dying. My treatment of it hadn't changed, but it was a very clear sign from Spirit and my guides as to what was happening to my identity.

It represented the very real and slow death of who I used to be. The fear I lived in, the lies I had internalized as truth, the self loathing I held for never feeling like I belonged in my skin, let alone this world.

But over the past few months, I've allowed myself to feel, I've allowed myself to be uncomfortable with my past and the people in it, I allowed myself to be... Something my former self never knew how to do...As I allowed myself to rediscover the person that the world tried so DESPERATELY to kill, time and time again, I saw the version of myself who the world created, die.

I buried her today. I wept for her today. I thank her and blessed her for protecting me and keeping me as long as she did. And I released her to Gaia and Spirit. Buried her with a marker and everything. She doesn't deserve to be forgotten, she was too strong, too invincible, too beautiful, to be forgotten; but her purposed has been fulfilled. She doesn't have to fight anymore, she doesn't have to cry anymore, she doesn't have to loath the rising sun anymore; she can rest. Finally.

I feel more more myself now, than I ever have in my life. I feel even more comfortable in mind because I feel my heart letting those years of fear, go. Will I continue to grieve for her? Yea, I lived with her for 26 years, she was all I knew. But I'm ready to nurture Nikki, and allow myself to be all I've ever wanted to be.

What echoes of this former self await me here?