Your Heart Magic

Transformations of the Sun: Finding Courage in Life's Transitions

• Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright • Episode 137

Share episode

What happens when we stand at the threshold of transformation, no longer who we once were but not yet who we're becoming? Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright guides us through this sacred liminal space, sharing powerful passages from her book "Transformations of the Sun" that illuminate the courage required to embrace change.

Key talking points include: 

• Reading from the poem "In Between" about no longer being the person you used to be while not yet becoming who you're stepping into
• Personal story of leaving Alaska for Kauai and the emotional challenge of following soul guidance others couldn't understand
• Exploration of "the wild unknown" - that spiritual wilderness where we must learn to trust our internal compass
• Discussion of how initial certainty in decision-making often gives way to doubt when transformation becomes uncomfortable
• Reflections on how our souls rejoice in the struggle even when our human minds resist change
• Importance of having small anchors during change while still surrendering to the deeper process

The true gift of this episode lies in Dr. BethAnn's gentle reminder that transformation necessarily involves discomfort. When we follow a soul calling, we often experience initial certainty that later gives way to doubt and questioning. Yet it's precisely in this grappling that we discover unexpected strengths and access deeper wisdom. 

As she beautifully expresses through her poem "Submergence," we must allow ourselves to unravel before we can "knit ourselves back into new shapes and hue." The invitation is clear: can we trust our internal compass when external validation fails? Can we surrender to the "river beneath the river" and allow our soul's alchemy to unfold at its own perfect pace? Join Dr. BethAnn in this intimate exploration of what it truly means to trust the process of becoming who we're meant to be.

--

Your Heart Magic is a space where heart wisdom, spirituality, and psychology meet. Enjoy episodes centered on mental health, spirituality, personal growth, healing, and well-being. Featured as one of the best Heart Energy and Akashic Records Podcasts in 2024 by PlayerFM and Globally Ranked in the top 5% in Listen Notes.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright is a Licensed Psychologist, Spiritual Educator, and Akashic Records Reader. She is the author of Small Pearls Big Wisdom, the Award-Winning Lamentations of the Sea, its sequels, and several books of poetry. A psychologist with a mystic mind, she weaves perspectives from both worlds to offer holistic wisdom.

FIND DR. BETHANNE ONLINE:

BOOKS- www.bethannekw.com/books

FACEBOOK - www.facebook.com/drbethannekw

INSTAGRAM - www.instagram.com/dr.bethannekw

WEBSITE - www.bethannekw.com

CONTACT FORM - www.bethannekw.com/contact

Intro/Outro Music:

Aloha and welcome to your Heart Magic, an illuminating space where psychology, spirituality and heart wisdom meet. Here's your host, dr Bethann Kapansky-Wright. Author, psychologist and spiritual educator.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright:

Aloha everybody. Welcome to your Heart Magic. This is Dr Bethann Kapansky-Wright, and we have a Talk Storytime episode today where I'm going to be sharing a few passages from one of my books. Transformations of the Sun is the selection I've chosen today and just reflecting in a candid way on some of the writing. When I do Talk Storytime episodes on your Heart Magic, they're never super planned out or scripted. That's part of the fun of them is just reading and sharing what it sparks in me, and I never quite know what's going to come out.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright:

Something that I usually do is group whatever passages around some kind of a theme, and today, everything that I've chosen to share has to do with the theme of personal transformation and trusting the process and those times in life where we are no longer who or where we once were. We're stepping into something new or going through some kind of a change and we don't know what's coming. We don't know what it's going to look like on the other side, and so we're invited to not just think about the words trust the process, but to embody those words and to truly learn what it means to trust our own process of change. I think when we have those moments where we are going through something, it's such an opportunity to see all the ways we try and control or hang on to control or want to know what's going to come next or what it's going to look like. For myself at least, I found that when I am going through anything that feels deeply transformative, it's so psychologically uncomfortable because I'm no longer understanding myself in the way that I once was, or perhaps something has changed in my life and I'm working on letting go of it and I miss that predictability, that certitude that came with whatever it was when it was in one form. And so in that discomfort, I will start to see all the teeny, tiny ways that I might try and bargain with the process and try and figure out what it's going to look like or regain a sense of control. And I always suggest, when we're going through a change process, that it's helpful to have tiny anchors, little measurable things that are actually within our control, like having coffee or tea out of the same mug and having a little to-do list, so that there's a sense of moving the needle forward in our lives and having something that we have a sense of efficacy around. I think it is important to feel like we're hanging on to something that gives us a sense of being able to still have some knowables, but the greater process the river beneath the river truly is one of surrender and letting go and allowing whatever alchemy is happening on a soul level to take place. So the whole book Transformations of the Sun was written when I was going through that time in my life.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright:

I started this book on Kauai, but a lot of the writing from it took place in 2017 to 2018. And it covers this time in my life where I was leaving Alaska, moving to Kauai and really disidentifying is that even a word? Unidentifying Shedding this old identity of who I no longer was, how I'd understood myself in my Alaska life, and coming over here where I now live with this blank slate feeling of who will I be here? Why have I been called here? What does my soul want me to learn? What will I become? I had so many unknowables and I look back now and I think, wow, that was so brave. It's hard to imagine, even though I lived it, going through something like that, but that's okay because it was meant to happen at that time in my life. I am at a different life stage now and so, even though I'm sure there's plenty of change and transformation ahead.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright:

This capture such a unique time in my life that truly felt unrepeatable, and I knew it at the time. I knew it at the time. I knew it. I would sometimes have these moments, especially the first six months on the island, where I would have this like realization and be like Bethann, you're never going to do this again, where you basically start over in this big of a way and follow this dream in your heart, like you're probably never going to do something like this, where you've just left it all behind and started afresh. And so it was this huge change, and I'm grateful that I captured some of it in words. There's so much wisdom, I think, in the voice of those younger years.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright:

So the first passage I want to share is a poem, and it's passage 12 in this book, and it's called In Between. No longer the person I used to be, not quite the one I'm stepping into, I find myself somewhere in between, broken but not irreparably damaged. I slowly unwrap, unlace, unbind. The more I let go, the more I heal, and the more I heal, the more I find myself free to grieve what was lost, what's been found, who I was, who I'll be. The new moon peers out against her own darkness. Dance of shadow, dance of light. I stare at her black and transition like she, then let myself free fall into my own change, unforming, reforming, transforming and then again, until my feet find new ground with new pieces of me.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright:

I wrote this back in March of 2017, approximately. It was right around that time and I was still living in Alaska and we were set to move to the island in about three months, and so everything was starting to come to a head, where the house was getting prepped to go on the market. In April, I was getting ready to wrap up my brick and mortar practice. Over the next few months, I told everybody that we were leaving. We had all this stuff that we were doing behind the scenes, from the great unloading of the house and trying to get rid of so many of our possessions, and have that mental fatigue of figuring out what really needs to come with us. What can we leave behind, what do we do with the stuff left behind, what gets donated, what gets given away, what gets thrown out, and the kinds of things that just make your mind spin, and what I was finding is that, with this big change coming up.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright:

I felt this sense of familiarity with my life in Alaska, but I also had such a hyper-awareness that I just no longer fit where I was at. And it was such a strange feeling, such a strange essence to hold that and I had such a hard time putting it into words with people. I remember somebody saying to me like you're leaving in June, why would you leave in June? These are the best months in Alaska. Why not leave at the end of the summer? Why miss the summer months? Why not have one more summer? And I tried to tell them you don't understand. I have to go. There's nothing here for me now. Yes, I could stick around and enjoy one last summer, but I think it would fall really flat, even with the beauty, because I have to follow this thing in me. My time here is done. And I knew it. I knew it to my bone marrow and I had a very difficult time just telling that to people and to translate it in a way that I felt it was understood and now I would say, well, that's okay. It really wasn't for other people to understand. It was my journey to understand and to go through self-actualization and finding myself in new ways and to claim and own myself and meet unmet parts of me and all the amazing things that happened during those first few years. That was my soul work.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright:

But I think when we're going through change we look for that validation or understanding from somebody else that if they could perhaps mirror back our experience and say I see what you're doing, I get it that somehow that might give us more permission or maybe give us a missing piece somehow to ourselves that helps us feel more fomented in our decision and more confirmation that we're moving in the right direction. And so when we don't necessarily get that and we have to hold our own hand through a change, that is an emotionally harrowing experience. It's really hard and certainly triggers a lot of insecurities. But I also think it's so beautiful because the invitation there is to step into our relationship with our heart magic, our spiritual connection, our soulful voice, truly listening to ourself. And when we have to own our choice because it's not necessarily something that everybody else understands there's a lot of potential power there that helps us know this truly is the right thing for me to do so.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright:

The next passage I want to share is called the Wild Unknown. Also from Transformations of the Sun. It takes courage to allow yourself to be vulnerable and sink into your own space of change, to let the silk cocoon of the unknown wrap around you for as long as you need, until it falls away and you see your path with clarity. Most people fear this space and do what they can to avoid it. They try and hit, rewind, reboot, reset and make things return to the way they used to be. Even the body responds differently in this space, as the nervous system searches for certainty and something to anchor itself to. Anxiety and fear are easy companions to find here.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright:

I think of this space as the wild unknown and liken it to being dropped off in a spiritual wilderness and being forced to find your path. Trusting your soul to help you navigate in the dark, trusting that the right supports will come along at the right time, trusting that you have been called here for a reason and that you will be given invisible guides who help you along the way. Trusting, trusting, trusting. Some days you're in awe of the vast beauty surrounding you. There is so much space for growth and room to stretch out and explore and you start to realize that learning to navigate by starlight is a gift.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright:

Other days, you realize how scary it is to feel so alone in uncharted territory, and you work to calm the mental chatter that tells you to turn back, realizing that there is no going back, there is only moving forward. Most days, though, you aren't quite sure how to feel, caught somewhere between who you once were and who you are becoming, and so you try and let your body and heart feel whatever they need to feel, and reassure yourself that, although the soul process may feel invisible, it is very real and you can trust it. It is your own soul, after all. Remember that you have not been called to the wild unknown in vain, and you have universes within that will help you find your way through. And so you trek across some new terrain, finding new ground and new gifts on the journey you didn't realize existed until you arrived in that space. Trusting, the divinity in your soul knows exactly what it is doing, even if your human mind can't always see the full picture. Trusting your internal compass to lead you where you need to go. Trusting you are never alone, even when it feels like it. Trusting, trusting, trusting.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright:

It's amazing to me how challenging it can be to trust when we are following a calling in our soul, following a voice inside that says you need to go this way. And what often happens is in the moment when we're making a decision, it feels so certain, we can feel it like in our blood that this is the right thing to do. And we have that sense of certainty and sometimes, when that's happening, I think there's almost this energetic amplification going on. We might have some angels or spirit extra close to us, helping our choice really resonate deep within. Sometimes it feels like our higher self descends and merges with us for a moment and says this is the direction we're going now. And so we have this bravery or this courage at times and we point our compass, our needle, in a direction and say I am going this way.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright:

And then what we so often find is that that certitude was a feeling state. It doesn't mean it was false, but a lot of times our courage begins to desert us, or that boldness can desert us, or we think we've made a wrong turn and we start to question, or things are not going the way that we thought they were, and so we think we somehow missed the path. All these different pieces come up and they put doubt in us and we think where was the certainty that I had when I first signed up for this? Because I sure don't feel it now and I'm starting to wonder if I made a mistake and I miss my old me or the old certainty in my life and I can't go back to that. But I really don't know what to do with moving forward and, like I wrote about in that passage, the opportunity to really dig in and trust and to find new skills and to meet a part of ourself that we didn't know existed until we got to a certain point in time and had to be extra clever or resilient or resourceful.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright:

I often think that if somebody said here are the challenges coming your way, that it would be like, no, thank you, I can't do those things. I am so daunted by what lays ahead and we might even try to get a leg up on it and pre-prepare and do all the things we needed to do to face whatever it was that was coming. And from a soul perspective, that's really not how it works Oftentimes. Our soul knows the truth that we'll have exactly what we need in the moment and so we don't have to worry about it until we get there and we can trust that in the moment we will have whatever it is to draw on, to figure it out and to find a new gift or skill or talent or way of being, to find a courage we didn't know we'd had, to find the strength to make it through something. And I think that it is a beautiful path to be in the wild and know in and to unknow ourselves in order to become a fuller, authentic expression.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright:

I also think, as I said earlier, it is deeply psychological and comfortable and the nervous system doesn't like it. How we understood ourselves and what we anchor ourselves into feels really unfamiliar, kind of like if you've ever ridden a bike or gotten used to driving a certain car or maybe wearing a certain pair of shoes to run in or walk in, and all of a sudden you get something different and it doesn't quite fit right and you don't know where everything is. It feels different on you and you feel a little bit gangly or like you can't quite navigate this new vehicle, whatever form that comes in. And of course, over time you learn to have the skills to move just as effectively, if not more so, in the new way of doing things. But when that first initial change hits, it's so hard, and it's something that I think we really struggle with. But part of the human journey and part of what our soul is here is to let ourselves learn to grow and to do new things, and so the soul rejoices in the struggle. Perhaps the human mind doesn't, but the soul knows that from great grappling comes a new way of being, that the tension of going back and forth, of wrestling with something that what comes from that is often a deep wisdom or something that is coming from an extremely authentic place inside of ourselves, because we really had to work to find it, and so I think the soul rejoices in that, and it can be hard for our human mind to grasp.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright:

We have time for one more poem today, and so I'm going to share this before I close. It's called Submergence and it speaks to the themes we've been talking about. What I really like best about this one is the imagery, and I love working with colors in my work. Sometimes I love putting names of colors. Sometimes I'll do crystals, definitely elements of nature. I really love that vivid imagery, and so this one makes fun use of colors to speak to the change process.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright:

Submergence, unravelings happen, so we can knit ourselves back into new shapes and hue Red yarn, yellow yarn, blue yarn, gray yarn. We change tone and mood and skin as we shed the old to embrace the new, shed the old to embrace the new. The soul has a process all its own, the heart, a wisdom only accessed through sense and feel and color. Obsidian lines mix with calcite's light, breakthrough found through allowing ourselves to sink and go under, diving the deep, diving the deep, embracing our mysteries. Submergence becomes our soul blood's necessity. We can't become more if we cling to who we used to be, knitting new seams out of watery dreams, the dark guides towards new truth and clarity, rearranging our colors into the person we are meant to be. Thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today. I will be back next week with a new your Heart Magic. In the meantime, have a wonderful week embracing wherever you're at in life at this time and trusting the process and allowing it to unfold. And, as always, be well, be love, be you and be magic.

Intro/Outro Music:

You've been listening to your Heart Magic with Dr Bethann Kapansky-Wright. Tune in next week for a new episode to support and empower your light.