Identity Work Is Not Image Work

Releasing Resistance on The Path of Becoming

Photo by davisuko on Unsplash

The last time I wrote to you, I shared a reflection from my experience at the Katie Geneva Cannon Center for Womanist Leadership’s Biennial Spring Conference. Since then, I’ve thoroughly celebrated my birthday, attended the 1LoveFestival locally in Winston-Salem, and visited Chicago for a live webcast hosted by my seminary. Both of those events interfaced with the Sacred Memory Project. If you’d like more information or have considered going back to school but wanted to do so with purpose- check out the MTS program here.

This article is part reflection, part energy reading, and part timeless coaching. In it, you’ll find astro-spiritual leadership guidance alongside practical ways to deepen your work and expand your impact. Supporters at paid tiers will get access to coaching assignments and contemplations. To go deeper you can become a client here.

Over the weekend on my personal IG, I shared a download I received from the co-conspiring energies of the Full Moon in Capricorn, and Capricorn’s ruler, Saturn, stationing retrograde. Saturn’s annual retrograde is from July 13th to November 27th. This article is an expansion of my assessment of those energies, alongside the medicine we can make of the upcoming Mercury retrograde. I described this time period as a hard reset. The download was as follows:

The moon illuminates people, places, and positions that are in desperate need of dissolution. The attempts to restructure at the pace of your personal growth have reached a tipping point. There is not enough capacity in whatever currently stands to hold space for your rebirth. Pay attention to the new and what stands in the way of you developing it. Self-deception is a form of spiritual dishonesty that is met with stark realignment at this time. Respond with obedience to your deep knowing and surrender to the unfolding.

We are asked to evaluate situations and pathways in a radically honest way. Our relationship to what has been, what is, and what will be is all in divine conversation. But the tension that emerges internally is mirrored externally by circumstances that either exacerbate, bring relief, or inspire hope. All three are present.

The tri-fold nature of the circumstances is a direct correspondence to multiple versions of us. The first is the wounded but healing(ed) past version, the second is a present but disconnected, disenchanted, and potentially disempowered Self, and the third is the fully chosen and honored Future Self.

In the paywalled section of this article, I’ll walk you through a coaching exercise called energetic inventory to aid the necessary release. I’ll define the three categories, explain how they show up externally in relationship to your inner world, and provide an alignment activation assignment.

The next several weeks of Mercury’s retrograde in Leo empower us to reorient ourselves in harmony with who we are becoming. The trap that you can avoid, especially since you’re reading this right now :), is confusing image work with identity work. Who you want people to believe you are and how you want to be perceived is not the same as being the thing. The people you are trying to serve will feel, intuitively, that something is off about the story you’re telling.

Be clear, there is absolutely nothing wrong with effectively and magnetically communicating the Truth of you, but when you try to tell the story of you, your organization, or a particular project based on an aspiration and not a Reality, you invite resistance internally and externally. And that resistance comes from a refusal to evolve into the next version of your identity.

What we colloquially call leveling up is an Initiation into new roles, new responsibilities, and new relationships. For clarity’s sake, we will call this next version of your identity an archetype.

The core of you isn’t shifting. You are who you are, and the essence of YOU is not bound by age, social location, assignment, or even incarnation. But the you that may be creating resistance to the next phase of your evolution is doing so because of a clinging to an old, never materialized timeline. Part of you may be unconsciously trying to bring that which is expired into the new, which causes creative blocks and energetic stagnancy powered by blame, regret, and shame.

And because the version of you that wanted to experience certain things still exists, the you that is emerging has to accept that experiencing those desires must happen in a way that matches and flows seamlessly with the new archetype. It may also require releasing any and all attachments to those desired outcomes.

The 5 months of Saturn’s retrograde begin with an opportunity to get so clear about who we are becoming that we can go in that direction boldly, bravely, and with a devotion so embodied that the release of the unaligned is easeful and requires no rebuff from the Universe.

Let’s get started.