More Than One Crown

There is a particular kind of vertigo that comes from being in transition on two levels at once, your own life reorganizing itself while the wider world does the same. Old institutions are dissolving or being questioned. Old categories of work, relationship, belonging, are loosening everywhere, and in the middle of that double unraveling, there is real pressure, from within and without, to arrive at the other side already legible and nameable. Already something you can say in thirty seconds at a dinner party without anyone’s eyes glazing over.

I have been living inside that pressure for months now. Describing who I am becoming without collapsing the new version of myself into some structural framework feels, most days, genuinely daunting. The traditional roles I have occupied were specific, and useful, and I understood exactly how to explain them: teacher, manager, director. Each one came with its own thirty-second answer, ready-made, low-risk, immediately understood.

The space I am stepping into now has no such answer. It is expansive, and multifaceted, and every time I try to compress it into a single sentence, something essential gets left outside the frame.

What usually happens next is predictable. I reach backward, toward the old paradigm. I reach for something that sounds enough like a title that people can accept and understand without judgment. Of course, I recognize these reaches for what they are: assumptions, defense mechanisms, years of practiced strategy. It is years of learning to fit, to belong, to be accepted and loved. Years of earning love, rather than honorably taking the space I already belong in.

Lately, every time I naturally fall into situations when I am being asked to explain what my new role is, as much as I have started to resist the title Therapeutic Coach or Spiritual Coach, I land back there because it has some weight and explainability. When asked to elaborate, I stumble. Not because I don’t have a clue about what I am doing, but because I feel I need to fit into a familiar framework in order to be accepted. Last night, while sitting by the fire with some women I just met, I found myself describing one of the approaches I draw from to summarize my venture instead of more broadly stepping into my multitudes and embodying them boldly. It feels safer to wrap myself into a cocoon of someone else’s discoveries and well-practiced approaches than to spread my wings into my new identity which is much larger than any single title, modality, or theory.

The Queen of Wands steps in when I enter the territory of embodying myself. She begins with, “I am here.” She radiates rather than reaches. She tends the fire which generates from within. She is deeply embodied and present in her life. She enjoys beauty, creativity, hospitality, conversations, gardens, color. She reminds us that beauty is one way life becomes visible. She can fully inhabit herself without the need of justifications. She tends the fire and those who are cold are invited to come closer, but she doesn’t persuade them.

Part of me expresses through writing, a part wants to theorize, another part wants to teach and guide, and yet another one to create transformative containers…and to force myself into a single role, to decide to describe myself with just one title, would eliminate large parts of me that matter.

Many of us have learned to believe that a single title is easier to trust than a living, evolving identity. The world wants to shove us into what it considers the appropriate pigeon-hole, but many of us feel uncomfortable being shut in, labelled, the key turned, so that we are not able to evolve as all the multitudes we contain. Our deepest longing is to be free.

Francis Bacon writes in De Augmentis, “If we begin with certainties, we will end in doubt. But if we begin with doubts and bear them patiently, we may end in certainty.”

So instead of labeling myself, I have been exploring a variety of metaphors that come closer to how I desire to serve others. One is the Muse, “let me open a door, and if you feel enchanted, see what resonates and inspires you.” Another one is the bridge, “I simply exist. I cannot carry you, but I can help you cross from one side to the other.” The Weaver is present too, weaving stories, symbols, places, ideas, traditions, and experiences. The Hierophant as the translator between two worlds- the ordinary and the sacred; the seen and the unseen; the mysterious and the human. And Vesta, the keeper of the fire.

Even as I write this list, Muse, Bridge, Weaver, Hierophant, Vesta, I notice what I am still doing. I am still reaching for language sturdy enough to be believed. I am still offering a small collection of borrowed crowns instead of simply standing in the room without one.

Maybe the real work is not finding the right metaphor but not needing one at all.

The Queen of Wands does not introduce herself with five names before she is trusted. She simply says, I am here, and tends her fire, and lets whoever is cold decide, on their own, whether to come closer. She does not perform her multitudes to earn her place beside the flame. She is already the flame.

Maybe that is the actual invitation underneath all of this. It is not a better title, nor a truer metaphor. Just the willingness to sit by my own fire, radiating instead of reaching, and trust that what I contain does not require translation to be real.

I am here.