Bentley All Along

You guys. What a wild few weeks.

I’ve been embedded in a puzzle and didn’t know what was going on — and today it all clicked. Don’t you love when that happens? I love solving puzzles. But before you solve it, things feel off. Weird. Slightly sideways. It can seem like maybe you’re losing your mind. Or having hormonal changes. (A daily occurrence for me, but still.) I kept thinking — is this just me? Or is something actually happening?

Something was actually happening.

This story involves dating, dreams, self-help books, cheetahs, the Spring Equinox, and some other things that would not normally be connected. But they all converged. Bear with me.

It started on a date last month, listening to this guy tell the soap opera of his ex. And somewhere in the middle of his telling I had this oh shit moment: we have this in common. I do this too. I villainize my ex. I have some pretty lame narratives about love and safety and what I deserve in relationships. I wrote a whole book about it and somehow still hadn’t fully solved it. Cried about that realization for a week.

Then I started paying attention to everyone around me. Who is complaining, who is not. Who thinks their life should be better than it is, who thinks their life is great as it is. And I started sorting people into two camps — not judgmentally, just observationally — and realizing I often have a foot in each.

Some people are just… living inside their lives. There’s a man in my orbit who lost a child in a tragedy that also nearly took the rest of his family. He rebuilt. He came to a new country. And I have never once — not once — heard him speak from the place of my life should be different than it is. He’s one of the most alive people I know.

Meanwhile I have friends who have everything on paper and spend every conversation in the gap between what they have and what they think they should have.

The difference isn’t what they have. It’s the story they’re telling about it.

And then I had to look at myself honestly.

I’ve been a really good lawyer for my own limitations. Building the case. Filing the evidence. Every rejection, every loss, every relationship that didn’t hold — straight into the folder labeled see, not quite right, confirmed.

→ Ok, brief side quest because context matters and also because I want to brag a little:

Some genuinely amazing things have been happening lately. Three back-to-back Conscious Palm Beach meetups with 70+ people each time. Nearing completion of a ghostwriting project for a celeb entrepreneur. Kicking ass as a relatively new homeowner. Feeling healthy and happy. Quit HRT back in July, best decision ever.

But! I wasn’t letting any of it in.

People would tell me how much the community meant to them and I would hear the words but not feel them. The good stuff wasn’t sticking. Because when you’re busy building the case against your own life, you can’t fully receive the evidence that it’s actually pretty fucking awesome.

Back to the unfolding.

I started having dreams. One was so satisfying — floating in a blue sky, looking down at my life, realizing I can observe the drama without being in it.

I am not the drama. The drama is not me.

Then a few days paddle boarding with my sister — back in nature, off the grid, nervous system reset. Then the community event, 70 people hugging and kissing on me. Then I started listening to Case Kenny’s book The Opposite of Settling and it was like click click click — there is the victim/drama version of me and the grounded, clear, alive version of me. Same body. Different experience.

And it felt like I was moving from one to the other.

I also did two practices during this time that cracked something open. A guided meditation — jungle vibes, mother earth, very familiar territory for me. And a guided hypnosis session where we slowed down time so I could actually be in it instead of rushing through it.

I realized I’ve been managing my urgency anxiety with behavior for years. Productivity hacks. Routines. Reframes. But behavior can only do so much when the underlying belief is still running.

Something shifted. I felt it in my body too.

And then last night I went to see the cheetahs.

You know how much the cheetahs mean to me — I wrote about them nonstop in The Last Ceremony, and that whole chapter of my life was one of the most magical. And I didn’t even realize until I was standing there — in a garden in Loxahatchee, twinkle lights, music, big cat sounds in the dark — that I was standing on the night before the Spring Equinox.

The threshold.

Between what was and what’s next.

So here’s where I landed, on this first day of spring, with the light and the dark in perfect balance:

I think I thought I was a Honda CRV when I was actually a Bentley all along.

Ghostwriter. Community leader. Two-time author. TEDx speaker. Homeowner. Person who shows up, loves hard, tells the truth, keeps going.

I never really let that be true.

And I love what Case Kenny says — that the things we’ve been shaming ourselves for are actually our strengths. The kindness. The empathy. The honesty. I’ve been self-critical about those things because they’re not always reciprocated. Easy to build a story from that.

But it’s still just a story.

The Spring Equinox asks: what are you ready to stop carrying? What are you ready to move toward?

I’m ready to stop resisting. Top down, music on, wind in my hair — willing to be swept up into whatever’s unfolding next.

Whatever you’ve been running — whether it started last month or decades ago — the length of time doesn’t determine how fast it can shift.

We have this idea that old patterns require years of work to undo. I don’t think that’s true. Sometimes you just see it. And once you see it, you can’t unsee it. The whole thing loses its grip.

That’s what an equinox is. Not a slow transition. A threshold. A doorway from one side to the other.

Happy new year. The real one.

I’m Dr. Gabby and I write really good books, teach transformative classes and run @consciouspalmbeach. Learn more about me at gabriellepelicci.com or @gabbyinpalmbeach