Be careful what you wish for...
I think I’m really starting to “get” what it means to individuate, to “divest oneself of false wrappings” (Jung), to use Motherhood as a way to “face and find myself” (Marchiano), to tap into and enjoy what it really means to be human and to participate in the current human story arc. (Campbell) I recognize this is a bold claim; not very humble, is it? But, it is quite extraordinary–and for me, it’s rather zen. I guess here’s the humble part: I’m not special. I’m just human. We’re a pretty incredible species; nature has endowed us with mind-blowing capacity. And I’m pretty sure, you’re human too.
To truly illustrate how profoundly different things are now for me (and could be for you,) there are still details to be shared about what things looked like before.
I left my career as a classroom teacher in 2014. Early that spring, I was complaining to my mom during a phone call about the drama (some teachers experienced it as trauma) at the school where I worked. My mom is not one to give unsolicited advice, but she asked me a pivotal question that day, “What do teachers do when they want to leave the classroom and do something different?” I didn’t know the answer, but the seed was planted. I tend to be very forward-oriented, and once I allow in the possibility of leaving a painful situation, there’s usually no stopping me. (It might be a complex, and it can have mixed results, but I’m grateful for this quality about me.)
The first thing I did was to Google the question my mom asked me. The search didn’t turn up much that interested me except the suggestion of becoming a professional life or executive coach. This actually seemed a perfect fit albeit incredibly intimidating knowing that I’d have to figure out how to be self-employed. I applied for and invested in an online certification program and made the decision to not renew my teaching contract that spring. I can’t express the giddiness I floated through the last few months of that school year with. I think my colleagues had a hard time understanding my choice to leave a secure position with the state (however intolerable) for the great unknown, especially since my husband had recently been laid off and our only income was a small stipend he was getting while he retrained for a different field. As I’ve mentioned before, when it comes to the risk spectrum, I hang out on the tolerant side. I think my very mobile childhood equipped me with high adaptability and a “we’ll figure it out” attitude.
In my excitement and ignorance, I went big out the gate. I flung myself into the networking world of business owners and entrepreneurs and spent several breathless months promoting the retreat I decided would be the perfect way to launch a new coaching business. I booked a gorgeous venue in a nearby mountain resort town with all the confidence in the world. I was on a freedom high and driven by an engine of creativity that would sometimes keep me awake at night, demanding attention. I designed workshops during the wee morning hours and discovered that masterminds were much like the PLCs (professional learning communities) I ran at the school, and decided this would be my schtick. I designed a retreat structure that would bring other women entrepreneurs together in what I called “experiential networking.” They offered workshops to each other alongside mine at the retreat, and the immersive experience was a hit.
It really was beautiful and initially heady! I got fabulous feedback and filled my first mastermind group. There were people in the scene now who knew who I was and before I knew it, I’d created a community of women entrepreneurs supporting each other through the somewhat surprising slog of self-employment. But the retreat had cost me financially. The more time I spent networking, the more I discovered how naïve I was about this world I’d entered. I learned about the less fun parts of being self-employed. Business plan? Ugh, boring. I also looked around and realized I was a small fish in a big pond and there were powerhouse women in my town that had been at this much longer with huge followings. I suddenly felt really insignificant and out of my depth, and was left wondering who would want to work with me when these savvy business women were my competition?
I did do a second and more successful retreat the following year that ended up making a little money, but these were huge, all-encompassing endeavors that took months of focused effort to put together and promote. The financial payoff didn’t justify the hundreds of hours of intense input. The reality of what it would take to make my business financially viable started to feal really heavy. Fear crept in, and I was making poor decisions rooted in that fear.
I remember desperately wishing I had a guide, and I kept sinking money into training and programs that I hoped would give me a template. I joined someone else’s mastermind group. This was spring of 2017, and 2016 had seen some really damaging decisions. I’d already tied myself to that business mentor that I mention in this article. Grind was the main message. But somehow, I found myself grinding for someone else’s dream because mine had drowned in my self-doubt. At the same time, it seemed my philosophical foundations were being shaken. I recognized this destabilization from my early adulthood–that sense of loss that accompanied the dawning realization that the world was not what I thought and I was rather maladjusted to aspects of the culture I once aligned with.
And the grind was all-consuming. My family was running on auto-pilot. I wasn’t completely absent, and I made efforts to connect with my children, but mostly I was caught up managing the cognitive dissonance I was experiencing. I was exhausted, and while my husband’s new career was going pretty well at this point, I was deluded about my own. Rather than acknowledging that what I was doing wasn’t working, I projected that disappointment onto him (this might have had something to do with the shame I felt around the business debt I’d wracked up that I couldn’t bring myself to tell him about,) blaming him (and maybe unconsciously, my kids) for anchoring me to a life I just wanted to escape.
I felt like I was flapping in the wind as Sara would say, rudderless. In that mastermind group, I declared my word for the year as “flow.” I just longed for ease. I felt like I had zero intuition (reflecting I can see that it was always there; I just wouldn’t allow myself to listen to it.) I had no regrets about leaving teaching and had put some energy into continued development of my understanding of why that system wasn’t supportive of human development, let alone mine, but I had long since lost the high of creativity that had bolstered me through my first year of self-employment. I knew very well what I didn’t want, but I couldn’t see a clear path forward. I was desperate and vulnerable, and lacked confidence in my ability to make sound decisions. I am sure I could have been diagnosed with and medicated for anxiety and depression. I would say, I was lost in the dark.
And this is where I was when things with my daughter started to fall apart…
She snapped me out of my delusion. I had to get real about my failing business. And I had to get present to figure out how to handle what was happening in my family. I’ve shared this part of our story many times, but if you’d like more details about this arc, you’ll find them in my “reflections along the way” content in the 2018-2019 section.
That ease that I longed for? It kind of makes me giggle to think about how badly I wanted it, and that all I really needed to do was “change the channel.” I had to let go of fear and learn how to listen. It was there all along. Because it’s in our nature. Our very human nature. Which lives in our bodies.
Having my daughter reject her body is what brought this clarity to me. I’d been health-oriented for decades at this point, but lacked understanding about where wisdom lives. I was often still at war with my body, frustrated with it for not behaving in the ways I thought it should. I’ve also mentioned the other examples I had at the time of people’s bodies failing them, and this is when I truly started to appreciate mine. It began with gratitude.
And slowly, I changed my relationship with my body from trying to master it to accepting and loving it just as it is. From seeing it as separate to my mind and will to understanding that there is no separation. I am my body. I’m still trying to master this mindbender. Our English language doesn’t offer us much in the way of integration when trying to describe this oneness and what it looks like on the daily.
Now when I’m making choices about how to care for myself, they’re not about discipline, but about love and gratitude. How can I take loving care of my body (see? that still implies we’re two things) and also maximize my experiences of pleasure? It’s a balance, but it’s way more fun now. And I don’t think nearly as much about it. Sometimes, when in doubt, I’ll ask myself what would most honor my current needs, and then I listen. Sometimes the path forward is super clear, other times not, but I recognize this as part of the adventure. I flow with it.
Same for my business. Like my kids, no one knows the needs of my business better than I do. So if there are answers, they’re in me—or they’re outside of me, but they come to me when I ask. I know this sounds somewhat magical, and I don’t think it is except in the way that humans are maybe more instinctual than most of us are aware of. My process now is to get clarity around my needs, then ask the question, and see what comes to me. Then test whatever that is. More on this in a minute. Sometimes my ideas don’t pan out. It no longer feels so high stakes, because in the end, it will be what it will be and it’s all learning. Humans are learners. I’ve gotten so good at failing, that it’s just no big thing. There’s always another opportunity to do things better.
I think I’ve become the Queen of Self-compassion; it happened about the time I surrendered to this human experience. A sense of humor about self is also helpful. My son has a quick wit and likes to tease. If I couldn’t laugh at myself, his quips might really damage me. Instead, I see his respect for me increase when I giggle at his jabs. (I do believe some people’s role on the planet is to tease others and toughen them up. I think we were misguided in shutting down teasing as “mean” or even more extreme, labeling it “bullying.” As the range of normal shrinks, the range of behaviors labeled bullying seems to stretch really far. I have lots of thoughts on this topic—for another day maybe, or that other substack.)
You can probably imagine that becoming the Queen of Self-compassion also involved saying good-bye to my perfectionist streak which I now see as a control mechanism that as per usual, was born out of fear. And good riddance! When you hone your internal locus of control, your compass is strong, and what other people think and do has much less impact on your quality of life. You end up living outside the frantic, mainstream current because it’s no longer appealing to get caught up in those meaningless rapids. I find life to be way easier in this parallel, slower moving stream that is directed by my inner guidance system. It takes far less effort since it’s about flowing with what Life throws my way and knowing that I can’t control the future. That it’s okay to just chill and enjoy the mystery of Life.
Part of the chill is this new relationship with my inner wisdom which resides in my body. Instead of frantically searching for answers to my problems on the internet, I usually just ask a clear question. “To whom?” you may be thinking. Well, I used to say I was asking “the Universe”. And maybe that’s what I’m doing, but I’ve started thinking of it more as asking myself. Because that’s where the answer usually comes from. Sometimes it’s through a dream, and sometimes it’s an idea that floods my brain. It’s often several days following the asking of the question, but usually, at least, on the other side of stillness. And it’s not effortful. I think the question plants a seed for my brain to noodle on in the background, then if and when there’s an answer to be delivered, it tends to come to me when I create enough stillness to hear it.
When an idea comes, I test the idea. And sometimes it’s brilliant and sometimes it flops. Even painfully at times. But that’s okay too. Pain’s an indicator that I might want to try something different. Thank goodness that I’m human, and humans are learners, and we learn the most from making mistakes and experiencing the consequences when things don’t go the way we hoped. And since I’ve become the Queen of Self-compassion, these experiences are far less painful than they used to be. In fact, I usually laugh them off after recognizing why something may have gone south.
Essentially, nothing feels all that high stakes to me anymore. It’s all just part of the richness of life, and I’m all in for it now. What a gift this human experience is! I’m so grateful to be here on this magical planet, playing in this human body that brings me so much–richness! Joy, pain, delight, deliciousness, euphoria and sadness, beauty…I think you get the picture.
Are you sensing the ease? The flow that I desperately wished for when I was lost in the dark? I wouldn’t change a minute of it.
The skills I worked so hard to learn during those early years as an entrepreneur came back to me in a way that make so much more sense now. It turns out all that learning was not for nothing. The struggle was necessary and important. Now I have a true purpose and a skillset that really supports a population who needs it–who are craving the same guidance and ease I was so desperate for. I know the pitfalls and the pain and can empathize with a population who resonates with my experience.
I suspect this way is not for everyone. Maybe you believe your purpose is to save your child from a cult. Only you know what is calling you right now. You know yourself best. Oh jeesh. I sound like the people who justify medicalizing children again. I hate when that happens but it also reminds me that they also (have to) think they’re doing the compassionate thing. I’m not into right and wrong, good and evil, my way or the highway, participating in the culture wars.
What I am into is the full, rich human experience I am having. Like, really into it. As someone who has always enjoyed the “rich inner world” of my imagination, it feels so much different, and in my opinion, way better, to be living more in my body and finding flow and ease.
And I delight in the curiosity I have about where human creativity will take us next. I don’t experience much fear any more. I still get some anxiety when I know there may be a large audience listening in on my thoughts, but mostly just because this is all so difficult to communicate and I want to do it justice. But now, even when the words don’t come out just right, I’m quick to forgive myself and let it go. There’s trust that those who are open to receive this invitation will hear it.
I think describing the freedom of this way is the most difficult. It’s hard to explain; it feels almost naughty. One mom used the word: treasonous. But then those difficult feelings pass and what follows is ease and space for something else, something nourishing. And you get to have curiosity about your kid’s journey because it no longer feels like it’s yours to direct. (This is where the trust becomes so important.) Some of the moms I work with are starting to experience this shift, and it’s so incredibly rewarding to witness these transformations. I absolutely love this work, and I wish I could say I’m sorry for your pain, but honestly, if I see your pain as what might inspire you to evolve into a more grounded, purposeful, embodied version of you, then I’d be being disingenuous, wouldn’t I?
I wished for inner wisdom and ease. Had I known the nightmare that lay between me and my wish, I doubt I would have had the courage to make it. I certainly wouldn’t have risked sacrificing my child. Seems Life was determined to show me it was mine all along. I just had to learn to change the channel. And for now at least, my girl is sticking around. She still escalates in her passion to persuade me of solutions to humanity’s problems, and now it transports me back to similar conversations I had ages ago with my late father, and I think, “Oh, I remember being that person.” She’s definitely my girl, and she’s also blossoming into her own person and I’m intrigued by the mystery of her.
Yes, of course, I’m trying to describe this all in a way that might intrigue you (or maybe you know exactly what I’m talking about, and if you do, I’d love to connect!) It’s fun stuff (and certainly challenging at times.) I think it takes new clients aback a bit when I get a little giddy for the adventure that awaits them. If you’re at all curious, I’d encourage you to ask yourself a question like, “might this other way work for me?” See what happens. I think your heart will let you know. If you get a yes, consider joining our community. If you want to wait for the launch of the new platform, here’s the questionnaire where you can weigh in on the features you’d like to see built into it.
Alright you beautiful human. What’s next in your very human adventure?