Happy Monday. Saturday was busy at the hat shop. A very handsome cowboy came in to buy a hat. He asked for my Instagram. I wasn’t sure if he was hitting on me or being nice? I feel like, technically, everyone in the service industry is hitting on you all the time. I guess in this case, the roles were reversed, but I was both definitely hitting on him and being nice.

On Sunday, I recorded the first prayer video. If you sent in prayers, and even if you didn’t, you can watch the video on YouTube. Sunday’s prayer was dedicated to all those who are being challenged by life and who might be working on celibacy.

Finding my groove

I spent a lot of Sunday in old patterns. Stressed about work and money, looking up jobs on LinkedIn, thinking about how I’m not where I want to be. This is standard for me. A career-driven anxiety swirl of my own making. This is one part of what burned me out in basically every job. It’s both a grass-is-always-greener and a total inability to just be chill, just enjoy what is here and now, and actually take it slow.

There’s something in me, and it’s not fun, that is always going, can’t stop, won’t stop. It’s agonizing and it’s awful. I become a slave to the constant poking of but what about this, what about this. It reminds me of my parents. My mom can’t sit down and watch a TV show or a movie to save her life. She’s up 10 minutes in, 20 minutes in, 40 minutes in, doing something else. Tea or laundry, maybe even on her phone. I say it has to be the same thing, because it feels the same. This same, nawing, always going, anxiety that keeps you from doing anything but being present with the here and now.

The low-level constant anxiety is truly the greatest leftover symptom of my upbringing. It’s the one that requires of me contstant work. It’s the one that plaques me the most. It’s the one that’s like, well, let's just go be a photographer for FOX News in Atlanta because it pays well and we can get hired. No, shut up, we’re doing this thing! It needs constant reminders of safety. It is totally unaccepting of the unknown.

Being okay with the unknown

Being okay with the unknown has been one of my greatest challenges. That is the anxiety at its worst and what it actually means. In reality, we never truly know what’s going to happen. So the anxiety worries and worries. It wants answers and security; it wants to know the island is 5 minutes away. It wants to know.

For a long time, I had no idea that that was actually my issue. The fear of the unknown. We’re raised in a culture to know. To choose the known, strategic, and standard next step. You do this thing, it takes this time, and then you go to the next thing. That’s most of the modern world. Our culture is obsessed with certainty. Data, 5-year plans, 10-step programs, algorithmic outcomes. We’ve built systems that tell us we can know, and that if we don’t, we’ve failed.

Anxiety lives mostly in the Manipura chakra (solar plexus). It's where the fear of "I can’t" and the addiction to control gets stored. The voice of anxiety is always trying to manage the unknown and get a full-body grip on reality, when in reality, that just makes things worse. It says, “If I don’t control this, it’s all going to fall apart.” But that’s the lie.

Being okay with the unknown requires surrender, which is exactly what a blocked Manipura can’t do. Control becomes a coping mechanism for a deeper fear that we’re not capable. The more dreams we have, the more terrified we become that we’ll drop the ball. And instead of trusting the timing or flow of life, we try to outwork the mystery. Even in intimacy—something that should be about receiving—you can be locked into this same tension of “doing.” It’s why when you meet a new partner, you might try to grip on. The need for them to stay (to feed your desire to control) is greater than the reality of what it is to be with another: to enjoy the mystery of life with someone for as long as you can.

But real peace lives on the other side of surrender. When you’re clear in this chakra, you stop trying to expand through contraction. You relax. You do what’s yours to do. And the unknown? It becomes less of a threat and more of an invitation. It starts to feel expansive and exciting not to know.

It’s also worth noting that Ajna (third eye) and Sahasrara (crown) touch the topic of the unknown too but in a more mystical way. Ajna is about will—seeing a vision and trusting it, even without knowing how it’ll happen. Sahasrara is about trusting God. When that one's open, you’re not just okay with the unknown—you’re in love with it. You surrender fully and get something better than what you were trying to force. This is what I’m truly trying to be with every day right now. What I remind myself of when I get in a swirl. God has us. Trust God is bringing us to exactly where we need to go.

Trust x1000

Anxiety is often a control response to the fear of the unknown. But the real antidote isn’t more planning, it’s trust. It's telling your body, your energy, and your past: we’re safe now. We don’t have to know how this ends. We just have to say yes to now.

It’s good to remember, too, that the soul doesn’t operate on timelines. God doesn’t do quarterly reports. I think a lot of people are silently panicking, trying to live in a world that rewards control, while their deeper self is crying out for trust. For surrender. For the quiet knowing that can only come from not knowing a damn thing and being okay anyway. For the simple enjoyment of being with the flow of life and the mystery of it. Nature isn’t rushing towards anything. It controls nothing, and it doesn’t even try. What a disservice to ourselves that we’ve gotten off that natural rhythm of being.

Love,
Val