This month The IS Collection is coming clean with Soapbox Therapy! Check it out...

A funny thing happens to your authentic inner amazing fabulous self and your hopes and dreams and goals and talents and creativity, when they don’t get expressed to the world. When you keep them inside, afraid and unsure of your interest in letting them be seen and heard and witnessed and challenged. They get stuck, weigh you down, and, drum roll please…make you depressed. Yes, really.

Not the I-just-lost-someone-or-something kind of depression. Not the transition and change and new chapter of life kind of depression. Not the post or pre or during or after that new thing started or that old thing ended kind of depression. This is the I-have-no-idea-why-I-feel-so-down-and-dark-and-heavy-and-I’ve- talked-and-analyzed-and-told-my-story-from-childhood-to-now-and-haven’t-yet-found-a-clue--kind of depression.

This is the kind of depression that grows from light…inner light. We all have it, this bright inner light that’s made up of all of our fabulous parts that we know on some level are there, even if we wouldn’t be caught dead admitting them for fear we may sound... confident. All of our gifts and beautiful potential and everything in-between finds itself in that inner light. As it turns out, though, light isn’t so pretty when kept to ourselves.

When you hold back your inner light from the very world it was made to shine in, things go dark.

It goes like this: When who you really are and what you really want are suffocating inside of you, when too much light attempts to compact itself into a tight container with no room to breathe or express or be honest or come clean…it’s blinding and weighing and darkening. Simple as that. Dramatic? Maybe. True? Absolutely.

Try it. Really (not really). Put a million beautiful things into a teeny tiny container, close it off, and swallow it. Not so beautiful anymore, huh? Those beautiful things, inner diamonds if you will, can’t be seen, they can’t be appreciated, and they’re not doing healthy things to your body being kept inside, that’s for sure. Keeping our amazing inner gifts and selves from the world is darkening and deadening and dirtying…and depressing. So, come clean. Simple? For some. Worth it? In every way.

The thing about coming clean with your light, and dislodging it from inside of yourself to share it with the world is that it’s scary and beautiful and necessary…and cleansing. What is it that you’re holding back? What’s inside of you? What are you hiding or shoving or pushing deep down in an attempt to keep it from the world? And most importantly, why?

What are you doing with all that extra creativity and beauty? Who are you saving your intelligence and curiosity and talent for? While your real self hides under your skin, who is it that you’re bringing to the world each day as a false representative of the real you?

Come clean. Come clean with who you are, with what you want. Tell one person, tell your journal, tell yourself. Announce your goals and hopes and everything in-between. Represent yourself with truth, with grace, with pride. See what happens. Let your light seep out slowly, or open the gates and let it flow. Cry and laugh and be relieved and open. Because a funny thing happens to light when you give it permission to be seen…it shines.

And that’s the thing about coming clean.