“I have a lot of things to prove to myself. One is that I can live my life fearlessly.” Oprah Winfrey

I’ve always had this deep compassion for people struggling with addiction or mental illness. We are all struggling with something, at least they have the courage to live their struggle out loud, for the world to see. Most of us just secretly struggle. Putting on a pretty face and underneath the fakeness is the acuteness of our pain.

Everyone has a secret pain.

Everyone is addicted to something. Maybe your addiction has a prettier colour to it or looks more appropriate in social settings, but addiction is addiction nonetheless. How we judge one as better or worse, as hierarchical to another matters not. Who are we to judge that one person’s pain is worth more or less than another? Pain is pain and addiction is addiction.  Addicted to vanity, praise, constant stimulation, ego, work, working out, anger, drama, consumerism, the perfect house/life/mate, gambling, drinking, drugging. The list goes on and on.

We seek out antidotes to our pain – anything to make it go away. Addictions. Ways to not have to be fully present. Ways to not have to feel.

The difficulty of it is that the only real way out, is through. Trying to outrun yourself never works – because everywhere you go, there you are. If you really want to transform it, whatever your addiction is, you have to do the thing you are most inclined not to do. You have to choose to feel, choose to be uncomfortable, choose to go deeper and connect further and be vulnerable and conquer yourself. You have to retrain your brain, and make a different choice and be willing to face yourself and tell the truth and fight your way through to a new normal, a healthier normal.

Struggle can be an addiction, too.  And as we crest out of what has been an arduous, challenging and unbelievably difficult journey for the past 18 months to build this company and right this ship and we are moving into a new dimension of stability, I can feel my own inner conflict around it.

Truthfully, I don’t know how to be in a place of stability. I’ve been fighting and struggling and working hard my whole life to get to this place. I know how to fight. I know how to work hard. I know how to conquer insurmountable odds and maneuver through crisis after crisis. I know what it feels like to be struggling to get somewhere, to be constantly at war and to never be at rest.

And I see myself, here, at this place I have been pushing to get to my whole life, and unable to fully be here. I am afraid to let go of struggle. Afraid that if I relax, if I trust, if I let go of the fight, something will come and hit me like a freight train. I have to keep my guard up. Struggle is an environment I have swum in, drank up and slept in the nook of. Struggle has felt normal, oddly, safe.

Adrenaline my constant companion, suffering always at my side.

Now I have to let it go.  I have to get uncomfortable again and face myself again and find a way to recontextualize what normal is and redefine myself.

Who am I now?

It feels shameful to say it all outloud like this. I don’t know why. Maybe I think as a CEO I should have it all together all the time, or that I’ll be crucified on someone’s cross who thinks I should. But as one of my favourite mentors and coaches says, “leaders are easy to recognize, they’re the ones with arrows in their backs”.

The truth is, none of us has it all together. And until we start telling the truth about what it really takes to build Greatness, I truly believe we are doing our younger generations such a disservice. 10% of the challenge is having a good idea, the rest is building who you are as a leader and your leadership – and that means constantly redefining yourself, being willing to go first, being brave enough to tell the truth and pivot and go to the scary places to be completely uncomfortable and have to let go of  everything you think about yourself and everything you define yourself by, through or from.

All we can do is get up each day and give our best, be our best, strive for our best and forgive ourselves when we mess it up, do what we can to make it right, course correct and keep going. Letting go of anything that no longer serves us, like shedding layers of inauthentic self in a lifelong quest for who we really are.

I feel the freedom in my heart as each layer fades away. Sometimes that freedom is close, sometimes it is just a whisper calling me to be brave enough to let more go. Let struggle go. Embrace stability. Find a new normal. Redefine, recontextualize, renew. Start again.

Krystine McInnes is CEO and Project Director of Athena Farms and Grown Here Farms. Stewarding purpose-driven, change-making projects with a focus on Planet, People, Profit and a commitment to Sustainable Business models.

“I always knew I was destined for greatness.” Oprah Winfrey

Just take the next step.

The world is so loud sometimes. Conflict, demand, pressure. Everyone wants something from me I can’t give them, or if I do give them what they want, it will break me. Too many demands, not enough units of me to go around. Forgiveness is in short supply, there’s no room for error. Any sign of weakness, some vulture is prepared to rip it apart. Demand for this, demand for that.

The pressure and the weight of the expectations can be stifling at times.

And the noise gets louder, in my experience, the closer you are to a breakthrough.

Sometimes it can be blinding. Debilitating. Paralyzing. Suffocating. But only sometimes. Most times it is exciting, challenging and empowering to meet pressure with focus, chaos with clarity and to make the impossible possible and push yourself to grow to the next level of leadership, stewardship and consciousness. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

But I would never tell someone to build a company they kind-of cared about. If you don’t love it, if you aren’t prepared to surrender everything you are, everything you have in you and to push yourself to a breaking point again and again and again – don’t do it.

I should qualify that. Something most people often don’t understand, particularly those who have many opinions about who, what and how I’m doing things, is that I am not in the game of business. I hate business, frankly. Can’t stand it for the most part. View it as a necessary evil. Something I’m required to do in order to get what I want. I am not in the business of business. I am in the business of building Greatness.

And Greatness isn’t for the fickle, the faint of heart, the weak stomached or the half-committed.

Each new level brings more challenges, more problems, more pressures and more conflict. Are you prepared for what it will take, what you’ll have to give and how much of yourself you’ll need to transform to get there?

You cannot build Greatness and not completely transform yourself in the process. It is impossible. You will turn yourself inside out more than a few times along the way – you have to push yourself, discipline yourself, focus yourself, manage your mind, direct your thoughts, believe in yourself, set your consciousness and conquer your sabotage. Or you won’t make it.

The lines are not blurred at this level of the game. Black and white. An inch out of alignment, at this level, is a mile in consequence.

Everything matters. Every step matters. Every distraction has consequence.

And when you hit a wall and you can’t go around, under, over or move it. You will have no choice but to go through it. One painstaking, heart-wrenching, bone-crushing step at a time.

Walls can be made of all sorts of things. They can be made of your history, your belief systems, your fears, your insecurities. Your haters, your mistakes, your bad choices, your failures. They can be made from external sources or internal. They can be 5 feet thick and 10 feet tall, or 2 inches in all directions.

Walls are designed to keep something in or keep something out.

And the thing about most walls is, you can’t really move forward when you’re faced with one. They keep you stuck. You can spend a lot of time being stuck. Trying to figure out a way around, but in the end: the only way out, is through.

And so forward we go.

Just taking one more step. And then another. Like breathe. In…and out. Forward.

Krystine McInnes is CEO and Project Director of Athena Farms and Grown Here Farms. Stewarding purpose-driven, change-making projects with a focus on Planet, People, Profit and a commitment to Sustainable Business models.

“I know for sure that what we dwell on is who we become.” Oprah Winfrey

Perseverance. Discipline. Patience. Sacrifice. Consciousness. Focus.

These aren’t words that make me very popular with young entrepreneurs. No one wants to hear the truth about what it will really take to build a purpose-driven company. Most young entrepreneurs just want to hear the positive affirmations and the excitement rah-rah, how to be the next Facebook or Google. But that will only get you 2 feet in the door. What it really takes is a whole other ballgame.

You have to govern yourself by a new set of rules. A set of rules they don’t teach you in business school.

Be willing to let everything go. Understand how to prioritize, what constitutes a real problem looks very different depending on the stage of the game you’re at and the consciousness you’re in.

Recognizing when you’ve outgrown your current structure and have to recreate it again and again. Just when you get comfortable – game change. There is no comfort here.

When to push more firmly, when to pull back. When you have to be the one to do it all, roll your sleeves up and get the job done. And then in the blink of an eye you’re past your capacity and need to get a high level team in yesterday.

How to surround yourself with people who vibrate at your frequency. To be totally ok if your entire team is recreated 3 or 4 times before you stabilize. That the people you started with may be a whole different group of people you finish with.

And that every, single day, you start from 0. It is an illusion to think that somehow we earn a bank account of accomplishments that we can hit cruise control on and ride the tide to retirement. Every day, you earn it. Every day, you start from 0 and you work for it. You have to recreate yourself every…single…day.

And failure will be a constant companion. Not only will you fail in your commitments to yourself, your friends, your family, you’ll make epic mistakes that will cost you financially, followed by more screw ups, even more screw ups and eventually you just have to get comfortable with a constant state of failing forward. Everyone will want something from you you can’t give them and the weight of their expectations and your inability to meet them will feel enormous at times.

And if that isn’t enough, you’ve got to prepare yourself for a level of attack from everyone under the sun who wishes you ill, has a judgment about who, what and how you are, what you’re doing, how you’re doing it and will question your integrity, your character and plant seeds of doubt that will not only trip you up, they’ll paralyze you. You’ll be hung on someone’s cross on more than a few occasions, held up by someone’s judgments and crucified against someone’s gods.

But all of that will pale in comparison to what lies ahead. It will all seem like a cake walk compared to the depth of fear, discomfort and anguish you’ll experience in having to confront yourself. Because the only way to get to where you’re going is to completely transform yourself – your history, story, emotional maturity, discipline, accountability, commitment, deepest fears, darkest inadequacies.

The only way out, is through. And depending on your path, your karma and your purpose – that can be a gut wrenching, painstaking, heart breaking, process.

This is where the rubber meets the pavement. This is where true leaders are born. This is where our free will is truly at work in our lives – because we have to become so disciplined in what we focus on, what thoughts we allow into our consciousness, who’s commentary on our lives we’re going to listen to, what priorities we’re going to set, what we’re willing to sacrifice because we are committed to a deeper purpose.

We are confronted with choice in every, single moment. Who are we going to choose to be here? Now? Am I going to choose to let my past run me or focus on the future I am creating? Am I going to choose to let my critics define me or listen to my deeper knowing? Am I going to choose to forgive and let go or keep myself chained to unforgiveness that poisons my heart just so I can be right? Am I going to choose to let these challenges break me and blame life for my own inadequacies, or am I going to see them as tools, all working for my greater good to support me in achieving and becoming the fullest expression of myself in this life? Am I going to be brave enough to tell the truth, the real truth, to myself about my ego, my unconscious behaviours and negative patterns to bring them to light and transform them, however uncomfortable or ugly they may be, and choose to build forward, or stay unconscious and let those patterns run me, control me and take me out at the knees?

What we focus on, we become. What we give power to, has power over us. What we choose to be, we will be. What we choose to let define us, will define us.

Life is designed to push us, to test us, to earn what we desire, not to have it handed to us. We cannot steward what we do not resonate with. And we have to grow our consciousness to become aligned with the thing we are creating. And there are only a few words that will take us there – they aren’t popular, they aren’t easy, they require depth and integrity and they are driven and lead by Purpose.

Discipline. Focus. Consciousness. Commitment. Perseverance. Sacrifice. Patience.

Krystine McInnes is CEO and Project Director of Athena Farms and Grown Here Farms. Stewarding purpose-driven, change-making projects with a focus on Planet, People, Profit and a commitment to Sustainable Business models.

“My constant prayer for myself is to be used in service for the greater good.” Oprah Winfrey

I used to pray every, single day, “God please use me for the purpose you created me for. Let me know it, live it and be who you intended me to be”. Every day. Since I was a child.

Every day.

I was suffering. Deeply. And I continued to suffer for years, decades. None of it made any sense. I thought success would fill it up. It didn’t. I thought wealth would make it better. It didn’t. I thought giving of myself would ease the pain. It just ended up burning me out. Overgiving can be a terrible habit when you are handicapped in your receiving units. I just kept giving until I had nothing left, thinking if I kept giving it would somehow make me worthy. It didn’t.

An endless list of superficial fill ups, trying desperately to find happiness and fulfillment. But it didn’t come through things or people or doing. I didn’t understand. Why?

Why did I have to suffer so deeply? Why couldn’t I find my way Home? Why wasn’t anyone listening, I prayed every single day….and still I suffered. Met more loss. Saw more monsters in people, and in myself. It felt endless.

But as I look back now, from a place I have grown and transformed into, I can see how each struggle was really Love in disguise. Building me. Shaping me. Forging my character, to become who I was intended to become.

It hasn’t been easy. My faith has been tested again and again.

But you cannot build a strong house on a faulty foundation and my foundation wasn’t just flawed, it was rotten and decomposing, morally questionable, full of rage, bound with self-pity and riddled with ego. I needed to become. I needed to grow in my capacity, my morality, my judgment of right and wrong, my integrity, my stewardship, my responsibility, leadership, discipline, devotion, experience.

Sometimes growth hurts. Sometimes we don’t understand. Sometimes we suffer. Sometimes, the Light turns Its back on us, we feel completely alone, betrayed, abandoned and we have to find a way to move forward in the dark.

It is easy to have faith when life is going your way. But what of us who have been tested? What of us when Life has turned Its back?

If we could see it all as Love. It is the Great Love that we all are at our core. That we are all being called back to, eventually. Sometimes that Love is concealed from us and we can’t see It’s face. But just because it is concealed, does not mean that it is not there. It conceals Itself, to teach us trust, faith, lessons, build our character.

In my experience, when I look back now at how far I have come, at how clear I am on my purpose, on my absolute connection to Spirit, unshakable and irrefutable, I know with certainty that we are not alone. And even in those times when we feel abandoned, unheard, lost, in pain, there is something Greater that is helping us to evolve, to become. If we are brave enough to stay the course, confront our fears, transform our egos.

Willing enough to do the work, even when it feels like Life has turned its back on us. To trust when our hearts are breaking. To open when we feel like we’ve been gutted with a knife. To feel love when we are confronted with loss. To let go when we are uncertain. To move forward even when we can’t see the next step.

We are not alone. We are all created for a divine purpose. And, I believe, our job is to find that. To do our spiritual, emotional, karmic work in order to become who we were intended to become. To align with the consciousness of the thing we have asked for, so that we can steward it. We cannot steward something that we do not resonate with. Like can only attract like – resonance to resonance.

For some of us, that work is hard. I know. And I don’t know why. Maybe it was what we chose, maybe it was our karma, maybe it really doesn’t have a reason at all. It just is. Those questions are beyond my pay grade.

All I know for sure is that every place I have suffered, over time, has become my greatest strength. Every time I cried, every heartbreak I thought was going to kill me, turned into something beautiful…eventually. And I moved from darkness to light, over time, with commitment and willingness and a deep, unquenchable desire to know my own purpose and to find my way Home.

We are all light workers. Transforming what is dark inside of us into what is light and love. Loving our broken parts. Bringing more love and more light in the world through our works both inwardly and outwardly. That is our work.

The vehicle we choose to use for it could be a business, a job, motherhood, art, religion, family, relationship. There are many different ways we can choose to do our work. No one better than the others.

They are all just vehicles that manifest our journey to becoming who we were intended to be. This life or the next.

My choice is a purpose-driven business. Truthfully, it started out as a business. Now it and I are intertwined, it is a calling and a Higher Purpose. My work, my commitment to my path and becoming who I am called to become translates into our success, the work we do, the products we create, the projects we engage in. It is all one in the end.

I cannot separate myself. It is a pursuit of deepening consciousness. Of transforming dark to light. Of bringing more Love into the world and resonating that Love through every, single product, project and business we deploy.

It isn’t for everyone. I’m certain there are many critics, judges and juries that would have my head on a platter. There are so many arrows in my back, I’ve lost count. And there is certainly enough public opinion about who, what and how I should or shouldn’t be. The noise gets so loud sometimes.

But none of it matters.

All that matters is that I continue this journey to becoming and living my path with as much integrity as I can, from where I am now – not from yesterday. To let go of my failures, to make amends where I have done wrong, to trust myself and keep moving forward to become a better person, a better company and doing more good in the world with projects that matter. To keep my eyes firmly fixed on the bigger picture and not allow the noise to distract me from this greater purpose.

To stay the course.

Krystine McInnes is CEO and Project Director of Athena Farms and Grown Here Farms. Stewarding purpose-driven, change-making projects with a focus on Planet, People, Profit and a commitment to Sustainable Business models.

“Energy is the essence of life. Every day you decide how you’re going to use it by knowing what you want and what it takes to reach that goal, and by maintaining focus.” Oprah Winfrey

There is a wisdom that us women used to know, used to guard like a secret, but has been lost.

A wisdom that only us women keep. It is our sacred privilege, our charge and our duty to protect. As the bringers of Life, this sacred knowledge is in our DNA. We have a knowing about the Life -Death -Life cycles and rhythms, a natural understanding of the Heartbeat of Life Itself. A sacred connection to something that can only be described as Divine.

If we only knew how far we had fallen from this sacred knowledge and how deeply we have wounded ourselves, our daughters, our grand-daughters, our future generations, as a result.

Generations of being objectified, we have learned to objectify ourselves. Generations of being treated as property to be owned and compared to like pieces of equipment – this one has a solid trunk, that one has a good front end. Generations of religion, politics, culture and society subjugating, demeaning and forging dominion over the feminine. We have forgotten who we really are. Thinking, instead, our self-worth is measured in men’s views of our appearance, that somehow God’s will for us is to be subservient slaves and “good wives”, that our waist size is more important than what we have to say, that as long as we aren’t too smart, too threatening or too opinionated we’ll be acceptable.

Until the wisdom that we once held is buried so deep and so far, most of us don’t even realize it exists. We start to think of ourselves as objects, weaponize our sexuality, use manipulation as a form of warfare and start to believe the stereotypes that are played on every media outlet across the world are the only forms of femininity that exist.

It’s awful what has happened to us.

And it’s time that we reclaim that sacred wisdom once again.

That wisdom, in part, is that as women we are a sacred and precious gift. To be cherished, to be honoured, to be held in reverence and with respect. We are the bringers and the givers of Life. We are the keepers of the sacred knowledge of the Life -Death – Life cycles of the universe. We are the ancient holders of this sacred wisdom that brings us closer to God. Men have to search for God, they have to intellectualize and philosophize and logically deduce. As women, we hold a sacred understanding of God that men will never, ever truly understand.

We are Holy ground.

And until we can remember who we really are. Until we stop dismissing our innate wisdom and trying to get ahead by playing a superficial game of botox and fake breasts, we will never, ever truly win.

Business is no different.

There are 3 types of women in business. There are those women who have forgotten who they really are, learned how to pick up their swords and shields and go to battle on the war field with the men. They are hardened. They are angry. They are exhausted and burnt out.

There are those who have learned how to toss their hair and smile pretty and manipulate men to get what they want. Turning their sexuality into a weapon. Objectifying themselves as a form of leverage to get ahead.

And then there are those who have evolved. They have discovered their Purpose, tapped into their sacred feminine, learned how to empower themselves without overpowering, lead without dominating and own all of who they are as women – with Grace. Understanding the rules of the game and the battlefield, but rather than suiting up in armour and battle gear, using that understanding to embolden their feminine gifts, empower their teams, and get results.

At one time or another in my life, I have definitely had the experience of being all 3. And, after decades in business, it is my firm and unshakable belief that where our real power, strength and ability to succeed comes from is in the latter of them.

I have often described business in this way: I think of myself as Queen, the company as Country and it is my privilege, job and duty to empower, inspire and lead my troops in to battle. To protect, preserve, defend and prosper Queen and Country.

Men don’t view business that way. Men view business as a game and a battle. They suit up, get their swords out and go to war. And they love it. And I truly, deeply respect, admire and revere, the way they do it. I think empowered men are amazing, love how business men communicate and get things done and reverently respect their process and their game.

But as women, if we think we can go to war with the men, we will certainly be setting ourselves up to lose. And if we don’t lose on the business playing field, we will certainly lose in what we have sacrificed in our femininity to get there. The hardening of our hearts and the denial of our sacred feminine.

When we deny our feminine, we are in essence saying that we do not believe the feminine has any power, we do not believe it is strong, we do not believe it has value or worth. We feed the same system of thought that has subjugated, demoralized, repressed and dismissed our power in the first place.

Back to the sacred wisdom.

Business is a game. And as women, it is not a game we invented. It is a game that men invented. It’s a good game. And its one, if we want to play it and we want to win at it, without having to sacrifice our femininity, we have to understand the rules, we have to know who all the players are and we have to find a way to leverage the rules of the game and relate to the players in a way that is authentic, respects, honours and supports the game, the players and our feminine gifts and purpose, all at the same time, in  order to get results.

That’s it.

If we can master that, we win.

If we try to go to battle, we lose.

If we try to play the game like the boys, we lose.

If we try to manipulate the game or the players, we lose.

The feminine has power, in fact, I believe, it is far, far more powerful than the masculine. And I think most men are truly quite frightened of how powerful we women really are. Truthfully, I believe that is why so many doctrines, dogmas, religions and societies have worked so hard to repress it. They don’t understand it. It isn’t logical. It doesn’t fit in a nice linear line. Our power is soft power, it is multi-dimensional power. It is exponential power. It plays in the realms of miracles and divinity because in our essential nature we are most closely related to miracles and divinity.

We are the bringers of Life. Bringing Life into the world is a miracle. And it is women who are the keepers of that miracle. We have a Knowing that cannot be put into words.

We are the holders of the sacred wisdom of Nature.

We are the birthplace of Love itself.

That is true power. And, I believe, it is our absolute responsibility to educate, inform, empower and mentor young women and girls so that they understand their true power. To be better women. To lead better men. And to build better companies that will take this raped and pillaged world and bring back Life and Nature, Harmony and Beauty…Peace, Kindness, Grace.

This is just the opinion of one woman, yes. But I know there is a truth being communicated that in one way, shape or form, echoes in the hearts of most.

Because we can feel in our being that there is something we have lost. Something sacred. Something divine. Something that cannot ever truly be explained.

It’s time, now, to bring it back.

Krystine McInnes is CEO and Project Director of Athena Farms and Grown Here Farms. Stewarding purpose-driven, change-making projects with a focus on Planet, People, Profit and a commitment to Sustainable Business models.

“You can have it all. You just can’t have it all at once.” Oprah Winfrey

There is a cost to ambition.

There is always a cost.  I know there are many motivational books and speakers who will tell you all you have to do is think positive, build a vision board and you can “have it all”.

I agree, to an extent. I believe that seeing the positive in every situation is a value system that successful people embody. It isn’t something you do, it’s part of who you are, how you’re wired. Every crisis is an opportunity to transform something. Every problem is an opportunity to grow. Every challenge, a building block in your foundation.

I think it’s important to have a vision and to connect with the energy of where you are going and I actually do believe you can have it all.

I think where so many people fail is they don’t understand what is in the gap between where they currently are and what it will take, actually take, to get to the other side where the vision is manifest and they really do “have it all”.

That gap – whether an inch or a mile – is the most important part of success.

That gap is where your insecurities live, it’s where your determination and will are tested, it’s where life will throw you down, chew you up, spit you out and ask you one more time if you still want what you want. It is your journey to becoming the person who can steward the thing it was you said you wanted. You have to become. You have to evolve. And in that gap is where all of the tools, experience, people, conquests, trials and gifts live to build you into that person.

Sacrifice lives there.

If you want to build something, create something, have a vision for your life that will stretch you to the next level. There will be sacrifice.

Anyone who sugar coats it is either selling you a handful of lies or hasn’t actually built anything substantial themselves.

As you start to build forward, as you begin to get traction, sacrifice will start showing up at your dinner table. It will become a constant companion.

There is a trust that has to unfold at this level of the game, a trust that deepens and widens the further in you go.

You’ll have to let go of so much, so much more than you could have ever imagined. Parts of yourself you identified with, people you thought were with you, ways of thinking that no longer define you. It will feel like loss. It will feel lonely. It will feel isolating and there will be constant judgment. Your world will get smaller. It has to.

So why do it? Well, if you’re one of the 3 people that will actually read this blog post and you have to ask why, then you may not be someone who understands a purpose-driven life. Only other crazy, wild, out of the box, norm-busting, purpose-seekers understand why. And words won’t ever define it.

It is a calling. An obsession. A commitment that supersedes any other. And sacrifice, having to constantly be faced with what you have to give up in order to move forward, it keeps you humble.

And in the end, it really isn’t loss. It just feels like it when you’re in it and you haven’t made your way to the other side yet.  When you’re in it, you have to risk. You have to choose you, let go and release whatever it is that you have to let go and release and step into the unknown. Even if that thing you have to let go of is something you love, someone you love.

Trust is the bridge of a sacrificial life, a purpose-driven life.

To keep showing up with your knees at the altar.

So many people settle for less. And secretly, I envy them. How I wish sometimes I could be a simpler woman, happy with a simpler life. I wish I didn’t have to push myself to the depths of my own consciousness. It feels so vulnerable and uncomfortable to have to do this. I wish I didn’t have to keep letting go of all these things I love and risking my heart and stepping into the unknown. It is terrifying and I often feel very, very alone.

But I was never built for ordinary. And even when I have played small and tried to pretend I was ok with less, deep in my heart there has always been this call. To go to the depths of my being and push myself to grow my consciousness. A constant commitment to my own growth. It is incessant. And it is unkind of me to the people around me to pretend I am less than that. Because they love an impersonator. When I am not honouring my truth and my heart, I am pretending to be something I am not.

And I spent years trying to cover that up, pretending I was less and thought less and wasn’t as deep as I really am. I have been afraid.

The cost has felt too great. The risk too high. The fear too strong.

Why do I write this silly blog? I constantly question myself, feel my deep vulnerability, love and hate what I am called to do. Fight myself all the time. Because truthfully, I don’t understand why. I have no evidence or agreement for why. No one is standing up to tell me it’s the right thing to do, or to keep going, or that it all makes sense. It doesn’t even make sense to me. And it particularly doesn’t make sense when where it leads me is to more loss, more sacrifice, more letting go.

I am a woman who is somewhere in the gap. Trusting, without certainty. Pushing forward without proof.

But go I must. Who knows why. Who knows where it will lead me. All I know for sure is on the other side is everything that I want. And all those losses, all those sacrifices will have made sense, will have been worth it. And whether in the end I’m viewed as some ridiculous woman who wrote a blog about some pretty out there concepts that didn’t make sense to anyone, well, it really wasn’t about anyone else anyway.

You see, it’s selfish. It’s always been about me. It’s about me and my connection to the Spirit that calls me. And I will continue to listen and go where it leads and risk my heart again and again until the end of my days. Because that is my purpose. That is my calling. That is who I am.

Come what may.

Krystine McInnes is CEO and Project Director of Athena Farms and Grown Here Farms. Stewarding purpose-driven, change-making projects with a focus on Planet, People, Profit and a commitment to Sustainable Business models.

“You really haven’t changed, you’ve just become more of yourself. That is really what we’re all trying to do: become more of ourselves.” Oprah Winfrey

We are all called to be the fullest expression of ourselves. Not just some of us, all of us.

We all have something we were born to do, called for, intended to be. If we just get still enough to listen, and brave enough to follow our hearts.

I look around sometimes at all the incessant busy-ness, how distracted, unconscious, heartbroken so many people are. Running.

Never noticing how disconnected we are. A million things to do, places to be, spending all this time in motion. Never stopping to ask why.

Purpose.

Without a deep sense of Purpose, reverence, gratitude, commitment to something greater than yourself, it can be so easy to get lost in superficialities, busy-ness, life coming and going.

Paying the bills, paying the cost, never paying attention.

Distracted existence is like a disease, robbing us of a real, awake connection with life. It is false life. And then we wander around trying to fill the emptiness that’s left behind. Wondering why we can’t find happiness – wasn’t the car, the job, the wedding ring, the 2.5 kids and white picket fence supposed to fix all of that? How about a bigger house, nicer car, more diamonds. Keep filling the emptiness with more stuff and when the high of that stuff inevitably wears off, find more stuff and more stuff. Consumerism – disease. We are a society filled with unwell people, empty people, superficial people.

It’s painful to be Present. You have to feel all those feelings that are bubbling up underneath the distractions. Feel the hurt, broken-heartedness, anger, anguish, grief, loss, helplessness. All the things you never gave yourself permission to feel when the hurts or the wounds happened. Tough it out. Be strong. Don’t be vulnerable. Work on top of it. Until you’re in so much pain the only way to cope is to stay in motion, so you never have to stop to actually feel.

So much easier to run. Distract.

But eventually…whether it’s days, months, years, lifetimes…eventually, you run out of rope. Life will call you back to Itself. Back to Love. Back to Purpose. Back to what is real.

To live a life of deep Purpose, you have to be willing to feel, to connect, to commune.

Not everyone is ready for that. I struggle with it all the time.

It takes real commitment. A willingness to confront ourselves at the deepest levels. A constant commitment to open deeper, forgive more readily, stay Present when your heart is breaking and the pain is visceral and all you want to do is close, retreat…and run.

To stay Present instead. Conquer yourself.

It’s the only way through. There are no easy roads. There are no short cuts. There are no ways around it. One way or another, we are all making our way back to God/Life/Spirit. This life or the next.

And the only way through is to conquer those parts of ourselves that are scared, ashamed, broken, grieving, lonely, hurting. To slow down, stay Present and really be with ourselves. Love ourselves. Love our broken parts. Love our ashamed parts. Love our beaten down and lonely parts.

Because it’s on the other side of all those things we’re running from that true joy lives. True happiness. True connection.  The real stuff that all those superficial fill ups can’t reach.

Depth. Joy. God.

Through a willingness to feel all those things we’re running from, accept, express and release them – the ugliness, the imperfection, the deep sorrow, the anger, the vulnerability, the paralyzingly fears – only then can we move through them, let them go, conquer ourselves and become who we were intended to become. As whole people.

Not broken people filling ourselves up with superficial, egoic things to cover up our brokenness in the illusion that we’re whole.

It is so much easier said than done, I know. I’ve seen horrors that I would not wish on my worst enemies. Had my heart destroyed again and again. Been betrayed in the most wicked and vial of ways. Faced real-life monsters masquerading as people, often those closest to me. Clawed my way from the depths of hell and fought battle after battle for every, single, inch of ground. I’ve faced demons and villains and darkness that I dare not speak out loud. And when I have been down so low I did not think I could get up, I have been kicked again. I have known the dark side of life, far too much of it for my heart to bare.

But to live my life working on top of those things, pretending that I am fine, pretending that it didn’t hurt me, pretending that I had it all fixed up in a day because I’m super-human and nothing bothers me and nothing hurts me and nothing breaks me?

It is a lie.

And it is a lie I will pay for the rest of my life, unless I am willing and brave enough to face those things, feel those feelings, let those feelings go, forgive, find the light in every bit of darkness, the lesson in every struggle and the opportunity in every crisis, and free myself from the chains that bind me to an empty life pretending it all away.

Strength lies not in our pretending to be strong, but in our ownership of our fallibility and brokenness and a willingness to face our own vulnerability, head on, and surrender through to the other side. Exposed. Raw. Emptied of self to be filled with Higher Purpose.

There’s freedom there. Everything we want, deep in our hearts, lives on the other side of that kind of surrender. And when we face those deepest, darkest, most vulnerable parts of ourselves, we are not destroyed. No. Instead, we develop a strength that is so pure, so true and so vast – nothing can touch it. It is beyond human comprehension. It is beyond words and description.

It is a glimpse into the enormity, the depth, the heart and the truth of who we really are. Our wholeness. Our perfect imperfection. Our vulnerable strength. Where we start to see that all of it, every battle scar, wounded soul, crushed and broken heart was really Love in disguise. Even when we can’t see it in the moment, it is all Love. Love calling us back to Love. To find out what we’re really made of.

To find the Joy, Love, Happiness that is waiting for us on the other side. To build us. To become who we were intended to be.

If we can be brave enough.

Krystine McInnes is CEO and Project Director of Athena Farms and Grown Here Farms. Stewarding purpose-driven, change-making projects with a focus on Planet, People, Profit and a commitment to Sustainable Business models.