To listen to this guided meditation, please click here.
Take a few deep breaths and ground down.
I want to take you back in time.
Imagine you’re about 3 or 4 years old. What do you look like? What are you wearing? Where are you? Your childhood home? Your favorite hiding spot? At school? With your friends? Where?
I want you to imagine you’re wearing a backpack. It’s your favorite color and not yet filled with a single thing. It weighs almost nothing… You start to walk along the timeline of your own life. Still wearing the backpack. Passing ages 4, 5, 6…
Now think about you at age 7 or 8. How have you changed? Has anything in life been difficult yet? Maybe there are obvious answers – family issues, loss of some sort, or death. Maybe you just don’t feel completely seen or understood at this age. Whatever it is, you place the weight of that worry or grief into your backpack. And you keep walking…
You meet your 12-year-old self. She or he is deep in that awkward stage. Glasses, bangs, braces, acne. You haven’t quite hit your stride yet. You feel shame for not being prettier, skinnier, smarter, more athletic. You throw the weight of that shame into the bag - you’ll deal with it later.
Now you pay a little more attention to the bag - you notice its weight more and more.
Walking along, envision 17- or 18-year-old you. You’re finishing high school and maybe headed to college. Lots of big shifts are on the horizon. A lot more responsibility is being placed on you + no one has really taught you how to deal with that. Take the weight of that + place it into your backpack. Now the bag is more noticeable – not yet unbearable. But carrying that around with you is exhausting + limiting.
You walk along… think about being 21 or 22. Maybe you’re out on your own for the first time. You’re attempting to make something of your life + maybe trying to get your first job but you’re met with rejection after rejection. You start to think you just must not be good enough. So you add in a little more weight for the worry of what your future holds. The weight of shame for not measuring up to what has been expected of you. The weight of isolation of feeling lost + not enough but being unable to share that with others.
The backpack gets heavier with each step. Your shoulders are tight—burdened by the weight of the pack filled with disappointments + fear + pain + loss. You continue walking… past mistakes + let downs + people you kept in your life for far too long. There’s a heaviness in the pack. Some of it doesn’t even feel like yours to carry. Your shoulders ache, you are tired from walking.
You carry on, collecting more fears + rage + confusion + isolation. Each emotion adds more weight to the bag.
Then you meet yourself at your current age. The pack so full, so nauseatingly substantial- you’re not sure it’s worth going on.
Pause. Take a few deep breaths. Close your eyes for a moment.
Just up ahead you see the edge of a cliff. You walk - still wearing the pack - to the ledge and pause. You see a sign nearby that simply reads “unload bags here”. You are hesitant. You’ve carried this bag with you for years… decades. Its heaviness has become a part of you. You even identify part of yourself as the pack. But then you ask yourself - what do I gain by holding onto this bag? Do I really need to hold onto the years of worry + fear + anger + suffering? What am I so afraid of happening if I release this worry + control?
You finally decide to empty the contents of the pack over the ledge. A lifetime of burdens lift from your shoulders. You stand taller. You breathe easier. You feel free from the worry + fear + sadness you’ve been carrying around. As you walk away from the cliff, you make a decision.
From here on out, you choose to fill the pack with positive moments + peace + ease + joy. Things that are much lighter + easier to carry with you along your journey. The fear + worry + pain – they’ll still show up in your life. But you learn to sit in those moments + just feel your feelings rather than adding the weight of them to the bag to deal with later. In those moments, you imagine the weight of the heavy + dark emotions simply falling off the ledge of the cliff.
And so you forge ahead, backpack in hand – light as can be.