One of the things that I decided to sunset in 2021, was my Time to Shine community.
When I opened the doors to it in October of 2017, my hope and only intention was for our space to be one of genuine connection. One where it was safe to show up real and vulnerable. To lean into all those uncomfortable places that hold us back from shining brighter.
That is, living, leading, serving, innovating, contributing from our WHOLE HEARTS. Serving from joy.
I could never have imagined then what actually came to be, or where we’d end up.
In 2017, I had only just journeyed through some dark times. Not only had I lost family members through death and abandonment, other people had disappeared when my grief was too much to bear.
It’s fair to say that I was lonely.
But in my heart was a small but powerful light.
A little light that longed for more. Longed for togetherness. A COMMUNITY.
To connect with like-hearted beings on a similar journey of healing and serving and leading in a true and authentic way.
FINDING our own lights in the midst of darkness.
BEING lights in the world.
But the truth is, I was scared.
Because there was a part of me that wasn’t used to community: a part of me that feared the vulnerability and the intimacy that comes with authentic relating. A space where we cannot hide.
I was fearful of being seen.
But no matter how apprehensive I felt, I kept hearing the words Time to Shine in my inner voice.
It wouldn’t let me be.
And then, one day the penny dropped: I wasn’t going to be able to ‘shine’ WITHOUT a community.
And I realised that no one can shine without others witnessing, loving, seeing, holding, celebrating us.
It’s impossible.
The very notion of shining bright requires community.
Requires intimacy.
They simply go hand in hand.
So in the end, even though the thought of starting and committing to a community was truly a big deal for me, in the end I felt like I had NO CHOICE.
The thought of NOT creating a community felt too bleak, too dark, too boring, too lifeless.
In the end, deciding to create community felt like CHOOSING LIFE to me.
Choosing to follow my heart and send out radio signals across the world so that the right people could connect with me.
And the magical thing was that when I chose to follow my heart, lean into my vulnerability and open the doors to this community – bambi legs, knees knocking and all – the opposite what my fears were telling me might happen, happened.
Because, one by one they showed up.
And not only that, they stayed too.
They shared and listened & received & gave, in absolute bucketloads.
Time to Shine was co-created through courage.
We were the misfits, the deep listeners, the highly sensitives, the heart-led business owners, the purpose-driven activists, the healers and medicine women (and men), who mostly felt like outsiders in life ‘out there’. Most of us knew what it was like to not be accepted for who we were in ‘the real world’.
Our deepest longing was belonging.
Yet we knew that the key to deep connection with others was connection, love and acceptance of ourselves first.
We gathered with the intention to support each other to be with our shadows, heal our wounds, come to know our purpose, message and offerings, and step out to be seen.
Because it’s only when we step out and practise advocating for ourselves and saying yes to who we be in every moment- even where we might receive push back- that authenticity becomes real.
Everything other than that perpetuates our personal and collective story of separation, through contortion, deletion and adaptation.
The thing was, I too needed to step out in order to practise this. And that meant stepping out of the very space I had initiated – but as the facilitator I remained.
And in the autumn of 2021 it was clear what I had to do, and the space was closed down. When I shared my intention there was both sadness and a realisation that it was the right thing to do.
We somehow knew that we needed to move on and leave the nest so that we could flap our wings.
I held a closing ceremony and lit candles to mark the end of Time to Shine.
We sang and we danced. We giggled and cried.
I was blown away and totally overwhelmed by the love and gratitude shared in the space.
It took me a long time to take it all in.
It was scary to close down a community I had co-woven over several years, born from a place of deep loneliness and yearning for real connection.
But I needed to let go and with intention start integrating different parts of myself: the scientist and the medicine woman, the business mentor and the artist, the educator and the nurturer: the mind and the heart, logic and intuition in the ‘world outside’.
Or, one might say: I wanted to be able to be the conductor of these instruments and play them all at once with people who could benefit from the songs that wanted to be expressed.
And that I could only do by practising- practise with people ‘outside’ the safe space of TTS.
The world needs places where we can feel safe and to be held, heal and to practise compassion, kindness and acceptance of ourselves, our life path and others. But we also need networks of people on a similar path who have our backs when we come to step out and exercise doing and being, living and leading from the whole orchestra inside.
This is when real big shifts can happen. From the inside out. Lighting the path of transformation.
For a whole world.
Community is one of the 4 pillars of the Wish Tree self-leadership model.
