“Escaping the Matrix” refers to breaking free from societal control, limiting beliefs, and illusions to live a more authentic and self-directed life. It involves questioning societal norms, seeking knowledge and truth, and cultivating self-awareness to live by one's own values rather than conforming to external expectations.
The escape I’m planning feels like it’s 50% mine, a world I spent decades creating because at a certain time in my life, it was what felt right. The other half of it comes from societal norms and the pressure of being an adult in 2025. In some way, there’s a matrix we’re all trapped in.
Sometimes I forget how good it feels to write. My journaling practice has been a little inconsistent, finding I’d rather spend my time with my feet in the grass and my hands on my animals rather than holding a pencil. I’m not shaming myself, just recognizing that in this season, healing has taken a different shape.
I don’t ever want to forget how good it feels to write. For the last 17 weeks, I’ve been releasing a chapter at a time of my book, BARE, here on Substack and truthfully, I am doing it to partially promote the book and partially because I felt like I needed a break from sharing the details of my life. It felt like every week, I’d share all the beautiful details and I just really wanted to start keeping some things to myself.
I’ve found this saying to be quite true.
I want to build a home with the love of my life.
I want to sit for an hour with my chickens, just watching them.
I want to watch the horses as they run full speed across the pasture, soaking in their magic.
I want to close my eyes and feel the morning Georgia sun on my face.
I want to stay in pj’s for two days.
I want to bury my face in Archie’s and smell the smells.
I want to be held by MJ, allowing emotions to come up as they may.
I want to bake.
I want to water my plants.
I want to mow the yard and help him with projects on the tractor.
I want to flood him with home projects and ideas, watching the look on his face.
I want to wake up without an alarm and go to bed when my eyes tell me it’s time.
The life I want to live isn’t found anywhere else, other than right where I am.
I spent years searching for anything to fill the gaps in my life, not realizing that I just needed to release the grip on what I had been told I should want.
I’ve been told this is what happens as you approach 40 years old: you have a true knowing and understanding of what you want and what you don’t want. There are fewer games to be played and more clarity to be found. I have had the thought in my mind for a long time of: Oh, I can’t wait till my 40’s — for those reasons alone.
Anyways— life is lifeing lately. Twisting and turning yet all beautifully orchestrated in a way that brings me peace between the “oh fuck” that tends to slip out. I know I’m right where I need to be, I know that what’s coming is meant for me— I also know that everything will work out.
While the majority of my life feels so surreal, there’s a part of me that’s always waiting for the shoe to drop. History has told me two things:
There’s always another shoe.
I can survive (and thrive) on the other side of hard things.
My therapist once told me, “Raina- what if there’s no other shoe? What if all of the bad things that are going to happen during your lifetime have already happened? How would you live each day?”
I think about that often and it helps ground me. Not in a naive way that makes me think everything is going to be rainbows and butterflies, but in a way that reminds me to just be here- today. MJ does a great job of reminding me of this too. Today. Be here today. Do what feels good today.
He constantly tells me, “Baby, you worry about all the wrong things…” and I smile inside, wondering what it must feel like to be in his brain. One that’s not running 100 miles a minute and creating scenarios about how life’s rug will one day be pulled.
Imagine the peace he must feel within himself.
That’s where I am, working to grow that peace within myself.
If we really do absorb our mother’s-grandmothers-all of the ancestral stories, energy, and beliefs, I’ve got generations of “I don’t need a man” and “I can do it myself” stories that need to be broken. I’ve got a lineage of women that have been forced to live in their masculine and it shows.
That’s where I am, working to allow my feminine back in without judgement.
I wonder if I’m the first in my family be fortunate enough to feel the kind of love I get to feel every day from my partner? I wonder if I’m the first to be held, the first to be kissed slow? I wonder if anyone else has got to experience the grounding peace that comes from a man who says, “I know you can do it, but you don’t have to.”
I wonder if I’m the first who’s found someone that can hold the masculine container, so beautifully, that there’s no choice but for her to soften and allow her feminine to rise - finding the perfect yin and yang?
Exhale. I don’t ever want to forget how good it feels to write. To invite thoughts outside of my head, to live in real life. It doesn’t even matter if anyone reads, I needed to write.
Now— lemme just share a little life update.
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