Creating Safety for the Human Spirit Adulting on Autopilot We spend so much of our lives learning how to behave. Be responsible. Be productive. Be mature. Be practical. Don't be too loud. Don't be too silly. Don't act younger than your age. Don't be weird. Don't embarrass yourself. Eventually, we can become so practiced at editing ourselves that we forget what we're actually like when we're not trying to make ourselves acceptable. And sometimes the things we edit out are the very things that make us feel alive. And then that little voice appears: "That's silly." "You're too old for that." "People are going to think you're weird." "You should be doing something more productive." We can become our own harshest critics without even realizing when it happened. Creating safety for the spirit means learning to notice that voice without automatically believing it. This is about giving yourself permission to become curious about where those rules came from and whether they still belong to us. For me, that question arrived unexpectedly in 2021. I was following the rules, crossing the street, I waited for the pedestrian signal and watched the timer begin counting down before stepping into the crosswalk. I had made it a little over half-way. Twenty-one seconds left on the clock. Then an SUV making a left-hand turn struck me from behind at about twenty miles per hour. I was knocked unconscious on impact. When I woke up in the ambulance, I was shocked that I had been hit by a vehicle. I could have died. And in the middle of that realization came another one: “There were so many things I still wanted to do before I die.” One of them was publishing my book. That had to happen! Another was realizing that I was still living according to rules I had learned from my parents when I was a child. I was an adult living on my own now. Why am I still living in the shadows of my past by rules that never fit me to begin with? What was I doing? That realization opened an old wound. As a child, I had been curious about witchcraft. I was told it was evil and that it had no place in our household, so I stopped exploring that curiosity. I abandoned that interest out of fear of familial repercussions. I wanted to explore the elements, magic, and the sense of wonder I had once pushed away. Getting hit by that SUV brought back my curiosity. Curiosity became a doorway back into wonder. I began observing nature again, paying attention to unique plants, researching and identifying them, then cross referencing their folklore and correspondances. Connecting with my imagination and creativity in ways I hadn't before taught me more about what brought me joy. I had always been curious and adventurous. Looking back, that felt like my spirit reawakening and something unexpected happened along the way. My mother, the same person who had once told me that witchcraft was evil, apologized to me. She told me she was proud of me for choosing my own path and finding what made sense for me. I was surprised she wasn't condemning me or telling me that I needed to change. However, over time she understood witchcraft wasn't simply what she had once feared it was. She saw that, for many people, it could be a way of connecting with nature, finding meaning, and developing faith in themselves and their circumstances. She told me she felt badly that she had made me so afraid of something that had once come naturally to me. I had returned to a part of myself I thought I had lost, and someone who had once helped me bury it was now proud to see me finding it again. That acceptance didn't stop with an apology. Over the years, my mother has started sending me crystals and other witchy things for birthdays and holidays. I love opening those packages because they represent something much bigger than what's inside them. My mom is supportive and accepting of me being me now and I'm deeply appreciative that she's no longer trying to put me in a box I never fit in. Creating safety isn't always about discovering something that was never there. It can be about giving ourselves enough room to hear something that has been quietly present all along. There is nothing inherently immature about play. There is nothing frivolous about curiosity. There is nothing embarrassing about getting excited about something simply because it interests us. Not every interest needs to become a business, a skill, or something useful. We can enjoy something because we enjoy it. That matters. Our spirit doesn't have to justify its existence through productivity. It doesn't need to earn the right to experience wonder. There isn't one correct way to express the human spirit. What feels authentic, nourishing, and aligned will be different for each of us. Safety begins within and it can extend outward. External safety gives the spirit somewhere to breathe. Internal safety gives it permission to come out. None of this has to happen all at once; there is no requirement to reclaim every abandoned interest or uncover some grand expression of the self. It can begin with simply allowing ourselves to wonder. Life is not only about surviving responsibilities, meeting expectations, and becoming who everyone else thinks we should be. We are here to experience our lives, too. Our spirits don't need to perform. They don't have to be productive. They don't have to prove anything. They need room and safety to express themselves fully.