(Chapter 5) The Blame, The Buildup, and the Breath Between

Sitting at the table with my ego, again — this time with guilt, grace, and a lease coming due

Chapter 5 has arrived not with finality, but with a quieter tension — as if the next thread has gently unspooled itself across the table. And I must follow it.

It’s strange, in a beautiful and unnerving way, to be writing this in near real time. There’s very little distance between the moment I’m living and the words I’m writing. This is not hindsight wisdom or polished understanding, instead, this is the space between. Literally, the middle of the process; the still-beating heart of something alive and not yet resolved.

And if you’re here, still reading, still holding space for me and my life journey, thank you. You are not witnessing the summary; you’re sitting inside the unfolding.

I didn’t expect the aftershock of peace to feel like this.

After Chapter 4 — after sitting with my ego, with the debt, with the collapse — I thought something might begin to shift. And it did, but not in the direction I imagined. What came next was a wave I didn’t quite see coming: guilt.

It rolled in slowly at first. Subtle. Almost ceremonial. The kind of guilt that doesn’t scream but speaks in whispers, and only when you’re quiet enough to hear it.

That night, I stayed up too late.

I let myself journal, not from clarity, but from overflow. I didn’t try to fix anything. I didn’t try to find the lesson. I simply let the ego say what it needed to say. The spirals, the should-haves, and the circling doubt. It came out in layers — not frantic, but persistent. And I allowed it to pour out.

The next morning, I went back and read what I’d written. I wasn’t looking for answers. I was listening for threads. Through all of the loops and loops of logic, through all of the rants and regrets, the core that kept surfacing was simple: I felt ashamed.

There was guilt for the debt I’d carried. Guilt for the decisions that felt foolish in hindsight. Guilt for not catching it all sooner. Guilt for letting it become so tangled.

And the truth is, there’s no undoing it. There is no going back. There is only the understanding that this was the path. This does not automatically mean that I am a failure for being here. Instead, there’s a strange sort of freedom in no longer trying to undo it. It’s almost as if I am able to redirect that energy toward observation instead of attempting a full deconstruction and remodel.

As I shared in Chapter 1 — where I let go of almost two terabytes of digital files I had carried for over a decade — that sense of lightness is hard to explain until you feel it. You think letting go will destroy something, but instead, it opens something.

It’s almost like the perfect reflection: my digital release is now mirroring my emotional releases, too. And now, on the heels of that digital release, I was being asked to let go of the emotional weight, too. It’s almost like the perfect reflection. And it’s also an opportunity to name the guilt and see it, but not to become it.

And to think that all of this happened the same day I had cleaned every inch of our home — every vent, every baseboard, every crevice and corner. No dust bunny was safe that day, and any remnants of one had been removed. A deep cleaning had refreshed my entire environmental space.

I didn’t know yet I was refreshing my soul for the new ‘dirt devil’ storm that was about to hit.

But the void didn’t stop there.

There’s a very real, very tangible situation that is now pressing on the edges of our lives.

Our car — the one my husband and I share — is on a lease. In just a few short weeks, it’s due to be returned. Or purchased. But in order to purchase it, we need credit. And ours, especially mine, has taken a hit.

The irony is not lost on me. The car itself is the same. The value, more or less, is the same. But the financial landscape around it has changed so drastically that the payment terms now would be nothing like they were before.

The representative at the dealership was gentle but clear. The rate we once had is not an option. Interest rates are higher. The amount of the loan would be relatively the same, but no matter what, our payment will go up (and could go way up). The credit score tiers matter and are the anchoring factor.

And the person who once would have qualified with ease… no longer does.

They reassured me that they could get us a quick answer, as they’d just need to run some numbers and make some calls. They’d give us a call back shortly.

The waiting has become so very familiar, yet so has the uncertainty…

But this time, something is different: I am not spiraling. I’m sitting.

The ego, of course, still has something to say. It always does. In moments of stillness, she rises up again with her old mantras:

• “If only you had just kept your job and gotten over the abuse and control of your superiors, you would be strong and in a better financial position…

• If you didn’t mess up your credit, you’d be doing other things instead of being stuck in a financial hole…

• If you didn’t overspend on god-knows-what, you’d actually have a salvageable situation…but you don’t…

• If only you had saved more money, you wouldn’t have run out so early…and you have no one to blame but you…

• If only you hadn’t made those choices that financially smart people do, you’d be okay (and worthy of being called ‘smart’)…

• If you hadn’t walked away from your comfortable life, you wouldn’t be here, I mean basically at this point you’ve asked for it and that’s all on you…

• If only…”

She wasn’t stopping at blame; she was now lashing and pointing, poking and prodding. Yet I’ve known her long enough to recognize when her panic is really just fear wearing armor…

In the past, I would have reacted to that voice. I would’ve rushed to silence that voice. I would’ve panicked. Hustled. Over-corrected. Applied to anything and everything, just to silence the voice. Just to prove I was trying.

But now, I’m choosing a different approach. Instead, I am sitting at the table and allowing her to speak. I’m watching her, and I’m not becoming her.

These are all invitations for me to listen. These are all invitations for me to seek to understand, which, as I shared in a previous post, is the guiding principle of my life: to seek to understand before being understood. And as I continue to open and deepen into that posture of observation, I’m learning how to hear these internal voices differently — not as truth, but as teachers.

This, I believe, is the true work.

In the midst of all of this, something additionally curious happened.

While we waited for the dealer rep's return call, I had already been in the midst of some new ideas to help expand the footprint of my Career Clarity business. It had come to me that building out a page to offer recruiting services (aka full-service agency) would help expand my footprint. This would also help me start building income, too.

As I opened up a fresh page to start writing down some sample copy… my internet went out.

Sitting there, almost in awe, I thought to myself, ‘How the heck is this happening?’ Thoughts started to cross my mind that possibly this wasn’t such a good idea? I could feel an upshift of confusion arising within…

Then suddenly, my phone rang. It was the dealer rep again, getting some additional and detailed items needed for our credit application. Happy to provide those, I did so.

Then, as I popped off the line, I checked in on the internet. It looks like it was back up and running?

I thought I’d let it sit for a few moments more, just to be sure, and dove into the other task on my list. It was the awesome (and exciting) writing for an upcoming post here on Life Journey: empowered on my journey to Channeling. My creative process in writing often involves me sitting at the keyboard, writing out long-hand, or I’ll leverage a voice note to start to get my ideas out and “onto paper”. I figured I’d give the internet a little bit of time to recover and dove into recording a voice note.

Not even 2 minutes in, my phone rang…again.

It was the dealer rep calling once more, asking about one additional straggler question. I appreciated their kindness in making sure every last detail (and every single last rock) was uncovered and discovered. I feel like we are in exceptional hands. Their kindness was above and beyond (and uniquely, very different from anything I have experienced in auto finance).

As I hung up the phone, a simple thought came to me, crossing my mind in passing: “What if I worked at the dealership?”

I laughed it off at first, but it lingered. Crazy enough, I spent seven years in the automotive industry. I know the world very well. I’ve also held a Service Advisor role (outside of my usual recruiting and HR). I was a Shop Manager, managing multiple techs and bays while building the marketing and customer service infrastructure. I deeply lived and learned inside that ecosystem.

I shared it with my husband. As he often does, he looked at me with this, “If this is what’s best, go for it — explore it!!” positivity.

So I snagged my phone, popped up the open finance page I had in communicating with the dealership rep, and instead, clicked on the “Careers” link.

And there, on their website, was a posting for — you guessed it — a Service Advisor.

Suddenly, there was a flicker of familiarity, then swiftly followed by a flicker of ambition. A feeling of ‘maybe this could be it’ as a solution, possibly a bridge. I sifted through the requirements for the job, and they didn’t include any automotive requirements (I remembered this challenge so well — you often had better odds of training someone up than hiring someone with experience). Clearly, maybe some things hadn’t changed much.

My husband then remarked, “This would also be a spiral!”

Same industry. Same role. But I’m not the same woman.

An article I read a while ago from Cynthia Hayes described a spiritual spiral as this:

“…We don’t ever come back to exactly the same place we were before.

Even when we’re repeating experiences or patterns of behavior we are not in exactly the same place. As spiritual beings we are always evolving and shifting even while doing things we have done many times before.

We may be circling back around to something familiar but we are at a different level of consciousness and priority.”

I took a moment to contemplate:
Was this, then, my signal to apply?

Despite being ‘right in the middle of’ the process of both preparing the new copy to expand into agency services, and gathering my thoughts for my upcoming letter on channeling, there popped up yet another push.

My phone rang…again.
It was our dealer rep…again.
But this time with a new ask.

An ask to wait. The earlier promises of a ‘quick answer’ turnaround then turned into a couple of days. They were heading into the weekend and were not fully staffed, and they had a planned Monday day off. So this meant we’d need to wait until Tuesday to hear back. Then we’d understand what options we had available to us.

For a brief moment, I sat there in the silence that followed and thought: “What is this?”

A test? A redirect? Or just an invitation to pause?

My sacral, that internal compass I’m learning to trust more deeply as a Pure Generator, didn’t light up. Not exactly. There wasn’t a full-bodied yes. There wasn’t a full-bodied no, either. Just… a pause.

This is my discovered rhythm of ‘the void’. Openings. Closings. Stillness. Motion.

And in between them all, choice.

I shared with them that if this was what was needed, we’d absolutely wait until Tuesday. I wished them a wonderful long weekend ahead…

And so here we are — waiting again.

The next morning brought more motion. I found $200 in gift cards that I had forgotten about from 2 years ago.

As I dove into completing some financial consolidation of bank accounts and cards, all I saw were repeating numbers, appearing again and again, within every account number or card number: 111… 222… 333… 555… 777.

Again, a moment and a sense of overwhelming peace washed over me.

But while some doors seemed to swing open, others continued to shut.

I sat for a moment and reflected on our call to our mortgage broker. We spoke with them just prior to our call with our dealer rep.

My husband and I made a commitment to see all options through, regardless of our initial confusion or hesitation. We wouldn’t lose anything by seeking to understand, and even if those options weren’t available, we’d be able to start to sketch out and understand the bigger picture.

We explored refinancing, or the possibility of a second mortgage. Those turned up as a no, and a no…

It continued as a cosmic push-pull. But through it all, I kept asking my sacral: what feels true? What feels right? What feels like peace?

And most of all, I kept remembering this: I am not my ego. I am not these facets or ‘beings’. I am the one who sees.

What Eckhart Tolle wrote continued to illuminate in my mind:

“When forms you had identified with, that gave you your sense of self, collapse or are taken away, it can lead to a collapse of the ego,
since ego is identification with form.”

And so, I continue to collapse.

But I continue to do so willingly. I do so consciously. I do so with my Soul Support Squad beside me, guiding me gently inward.

What is rising now is not clarity, but presence.

What I know is this: these moments (the ones that bring up shame and ambition and memory and hope all at once) are sacred. I’m witnessing the remnants of an old system unravel. I’m sitting with the guilt and not running from it. And I’m watching the ego throw a fit and not answering the call to action.

I’m instead listening and observing. And I’m remembering that in order to truly move forward, I must stop pretending that collapse means failure.

Sometimes, it means foundation.
Sometimes, it means space is being made.
Sometimes, it means I am finally letting myself become.

I'm still in the void. I don't know how long I'll be here.

But I keep releasing.
I keep connecting and setting the guilt, the frustration, and the anger free.
Does it come up? Yes.
Is it raging? Very often, yes.
Is it really tough to navigate sometimes? Yes! They're very real emotions.

I’m reminded of a quote from George by B.J. Neblett:

“We are the sum total of our experiences.

Those experiences – be they positive or negative – make us the person we are, at any given point in our lives. And, like a flowing river, those same experiences, and those yet to come, continue to influence and reshape the person we are, and the person we become.
None of us are the same as we were yesterday, nor will be tomorrow.”

So, despite my path currently being very rocky, it’s my own unique, beautiful transformational path.

For those of you who might now be at a similar ‘tough path’ point in life or have been in the past, I want to stand here and very openly share:
It is very challenging.
Yet it's also incredibly illuminating.

And so, with this light, I continue to walk.

Until Chapter 6,
💜 Lavender

Hello, sweet friend! 👋 Yearning for connection and deeper meaning?
I'm Lavender, and I have a deep passion for unearthing the wisdom woven into life's tapestry. ✨ My own Life Journey, from navigating childhood complexities to a 20+ year corporate career with 55,000+ hours of interviewing (deeply studying humans), has honed my ability to discern human potential. Now, I share stories (past to present) that illuminate our paths, exploring resilience, transformation, purpose, and connecting with the magic within. Your deeper exploration begins here.✨

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My last Stories from My Own Life Journey post, if you’d like to wander through it:

After the Candles, Before the Answers

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💗✨ If the content here at Life Journey: empowered has resonated with you, if a story sparked a moment of self-discovery, or if the shared wisdom illuminated your path, I welcome your kind support. Creating this space is a heartfelt endeavor, fueled by a desire to connect and empower. Your contribution, be it the cost of a tea 🫖 or the joy of a new book 📖, directly nourishes this work and allows me to continue sharing these soulful explorations. 👇