I Failed You & Found Love

*** From now on, I will be transitioning subscribers from this Substack to an email list, where I will write shorter, more frequent emails about how to master & heal your nervous system, leave toxic & extractive work environments & build community that is profoundly transformational. This Substack will be reserved for occasional longer articles. If you do not wish to be a part of that email list you can unsubscribe at any time***

Hey :) It’s Annika from “The Road Home” Substack. You might remember subscribing to me, or you might have completely forgotten which is understandable…

• Because I have not released any podcasts like I had hoped I would (they are sitting in garage band)

• And I have not written a bi-monthly article like I said I would. Last article I sent was in April

It wasn’t for not trying… it’s that I got tired of treating myself like a machine, and my body protested massively against my ideals (and my calendar). Which is a scary thing for your body to do in a world designed to drop you if you aren’t on top of your game.

In the world of business and writing, I would be considered a failure. Not consistently engaging your audience is a well known no-no. How are you going to provide value and build trust? Build a funnel? Convert leads?

But my heart didn’t give a fuck. As hearts can do. They are designed to love you, and to protest when you treat them poorly, or allow others to treat you poorly.

They get you to feel emotions that seem adversarial to your goals. “Oh ya, you wanna go to the coffee shop and write today? Here is some brain fog and depression to help you out with your fancy goals.”

You know exactly what I’m talking about right?

When this happens, I know it’s in my best interest to surrender to my body and to listen. All internal prisons have trap doors that lead to your liberation. They only exist in the darkest corners. The degree to which you become free, is the degree to which you have the courage to go and illuminate those dark corners and find that trap door.

What this practically means, is that you make space to feel your challenging emotions because they are tied to memories or experiences you haven’t properly digested and loved yet. They are waiting to be integrated with love.

Your body remembers everything that your mind forgets, and reminds you during the ***most inconvenient of times***…and I mean truly ONLY the most inconvenient of times…of the real work you are here to do.

In my case, that meant that even though my mind thought I was here to build a successful online business to subconsciously prove to my parents that I am valuable and can make it on my own despite their historical lack of support or ability to see and support me… what? Did i say that outloud?

THE REAL WORK that I am here to do, is to follow these sensations of brain fog and depression into the recesses of my memory where I could see the look of disappointment on my mom’s face when I got anything less than an A in every class. The feeling of dismissal when I didn’t place in a dance competition. Her embarrassment when I missed the penalty kick in a soccer tournament.

And to see how the grief and anxiety stored in my body from when I was young, was rooted in the fear that I would not be loved or supported when I failed.

THE REAL WORK is to sit down, cry, talk to little Annika, and say “Hey, you didn’t deserve to be treated that way. You deserve love no matter if you fail or succeed. In fact, when you fail you deserve even MORE support and love. Look at how courageous you were at getting in the arena! What if I give you some snuggles? And then we can get ice cream to celebrate your courage and talk about how we can do things differently next time? And I will love you so hard through your successes and failures, you will never have to question my love, how about that?”

So no, my job isn’t to write articles. My primary job is to love little Annika, to mature her, when her caregivers weren’t capable of it. To have compassion for my parents who just learned their ways from their parents… and to break the cycle of removing love from myself when I am not performing optimally all the time.

When I love myself better, I love you better too.

It was only through surrendering to my hearts wisdom, could I then begin to see the insidious ways that even though I had exited toxic external economic and education systems a long time ago that forced me to produce like a machine…

I was still trapped in an internal prison of belief systems and body impulses/behaviors that kept my nose to the grindstone.

After horses get broken, they no longer need a rope to be strongly tied to the fence. They will stay there if you loosely swing it around a post even though their bodies are very capable of breaking free.

Another way to say it, is that their minds will acquiesce to the conditioning and imprison themselves. There is no longer a rope tethering them, it is their own minds that are tethering them.

Our brains are designed in the exact same way. And learning the art of freeing yourself from that kind of prison is 10x more trickier. Especially in a culture that notoriously suppresses the only way you can liberate your Nervous System- by feeling your emotions. Double imprisonment.

So, if you want to break free of a toxic work environment, a toxic relationship, or a toxic culture, it’s not enough to just intend to leave. To set goals and will yourself to act. You have to simultaneously do the work of internally liberating yourself.

Which means surrendering to the wisdom of your Nervous System and not override its sensations and signals to slow down, listen, grieve, and from there choosing a new loving behavior over an old dysfunctional one.

Once I freed my mind, emotions, and body from the internal prison of over performing in my business, magical shit started happening, as it always does.

• My mom and I had a great conversation where she apologized, realized how she was doing to me what her parents treated did to her, and offered to be more supportive towards my calling. She even started reading books about my line of work!

• People started asking if they could work with me with little effort on my part

• People started pointing out how they appreciated my heart, my playfulness & messiness, over my competence and started offering more support in general

• I’m even writing this article within a couple of hours instead of 3 whole weeks because my perfectionism is deliciously sliding

Bless the sacred trap for bringing me to where I actually want to go!

So how does this lead back to you and this Substack? Well, I realized that even though I love writing, I don’t care to actually build relationships online. I’m sorry but there is too much time staring at a screen, and not enough real time looking into your beautiful face

Perhaps you have noticed this little problem about media too ;)

I prefer inviting people to in-person experiences. The work I do afterall is embodiment (better to experience than to write about). And I will still love writing occasional longer articles as a cherry on top.

You can expect to hear about in-person workshops or retreats in the future that I will be inviting you to.

I will also be transitioning the intention of this Substack from a place that was supposed to produce podcasts, video courses, and articles about restoring body intelligences in general, to an occasional blog that releases articles specifically on

• Internally liberating your nervous system from trauma and conditioning

• Externally liberating yourself from toxic work environments (help finding stellar jobs with great work life balance, or entrepreneurship coaching to start your own small business)

• How to build the kind of community that provides deep belonging and transformation beyond your wildest dreams

As I mentioned at the top, I will be adding your emails to an email list that sends shorter, more frequent valuable information, and invites you to in-person workshops and events. You can unsubscribe at any time!

As always, thank you for journeying with me on this glorious road home to our truer natures.

And thank you Substack for being the vehicle upon which my apathy and frustration could illuminate a path to deeper connection to my heart, to my mom’s heart, and to my liberation.

I will see you when I see you my friend!

<3

Annika