Since my last newsletter, several of you have reached out and asked how I powered through a surgery of this magnitude: accepting it and moving through fear into courage very quickly. I want as many women as possible to “get” this.

And my intention is never to spiritually gaslight you into thinking I didn’t feel fear. Heck yes, I did, and sometimes still do! Fear was right there with me, and it still surfaces. I’d be lying if I said otherwise.

But here’s the secret: I accepted it, I sat with it, I felt it. All of it. I didn’t run. And I didn’t resist.

Yes, I allowed fear into my “car.” I even let it drive me home. Fear walked right into my house alongside me. But instead of pushing it away, I allowed it to be there. I sat with those emotions inside my body, letting myself feel the tightness, the trembling, and the tears. Honestly, this surgery is a LOT to take in and process.

It’s in resisting where things go awry. When we resist emotions, we try to push them away because we’re afraid of losing control or we don’t want to face them. But emotions don’t leave just because we deny them. They settle in our bodies. They wait. Here’s a video by my good friend, Genea, that will illustrate this concept:

Louise Hay spent decades studying this connection between emotions and the body. She believed every symptom carries a message. The spine, especially the neck, is about flexibility, support, and seeing all sides of a situation. When we feel burdened, pressured, or afraid to “bend,” pain can lodge there. In her book You Can Heal Your Life, she even wrote affirmations for each part of the body. For the neck, she suggested: “I am flexible. I welcome new perspectives. I trust life.”

Whether you take it literally or symbolically, there’s truth here: unprocessed emotions don’t just disappear. The body keeps the score until we’re ready to feel and release them, meaning they remain in our energetic/spiritual bodies until we feel and process them.

That’s why courage doesn’t mean we never feel fear. It means we feel it fully, and choose to act anyway.

Courage is the ability to do something that frightens you because you’ve found the strength to surrender and release. And in the release and surrender is how we power through fear, pain, or grief. Resisting the emotion can cause emotional pain, anxiety, depression, digestive problems, or however/wherever they show up in your body.

Like any virtue, courage must be cultivated, nourished, and practiced. Awakening courage means holding your feet to the fire (sometimes literally, sometimes not!) and trusting that the Universe (or whatever word you use for your higher power) will place you exactly where you need to be, even if the path looks terrifying.

✨ What I Know About Courage

Here’s a painting course I created to support you in this practice:

Self-Love Warrior: Loving the Skin You’re In
If fear lives in the body, then so does love. This recorded painting course, Self-Love Warrior: The Goddess Archetype of Ishtar, is an invitation to meet yourself on the canvas - body, heart, and soul. This is where courage turns into color, and self-love becomes a practice you can see and feel. No art experience needed! I guide you through the whole thing and even include a simple drawing template you can trace if you need/want it.

My hope is that you’ll not only read this newsletter, but actually practice it. Because courage isn’t built in theory; it’s built in the fire of your lived experience.

Fear still visits me, but I’m over here choosing JOY every single day! And courage grows every time I choose to feel fear and move anyway. That’s what a daily joy practice is about: building micro-moments of courage, trust, and love into your every day.

With love and lots of courage,
Debby