I don’t even know where to begin. The task ahead of me feels daunting. I have been asked to write about my journey back to myself over these past 7 years. I am told it will help me with the next phase of my healing journey, and that it also will help others who are now where I was then. To provide an example of how we can make different choices for ourselves, learn to trust and take a chance on ourselves, reconnect to our dreams that we abandoned many years ago, and create the life that we came here to live. One of connection, purpose, joy, community, love, and compassion, among other things, for ourselves and others.
Maybe I will begin with where I was then. I was unhappy. I was “successful” in many outward respects, living the life that other people had laid out for me. Well meaning people, but other people nonetheless. I was stressed. I mostly had work in my life. It’s what I was raised to do – have a career, be independent. I was in a relationship, although the vast majority of my life was spent focused on work and my clients and my bosses and everyone’s needs other than my own. I had no idea what my truth was, much less how to speak it. I only recognized I had needs when they had been violated or steamrolled by colleagues or clients, sometimes family, and I would find myself angry and resentful, but not really having any idea how to change it or how to even really articulate it.
I rarely felt seen. I only felt as good as my last accomplishment or deliverable, but it was never enough. I never felt good enough. I was valued for what I could accomplish. I was valued for how smart I was. How strong of a command I had over the process or the subject matter or the sales pitch I was working on. How well I could deliver what other people wanted by deadlines they set, regardless of how unreasonable those deadlines or expectations were. I was valued for what I could produce. But I was never valued for who I was. No one even knew who that was, least of all me. And as I write this it makes me incredibly sad for that person that I once was.
From a very early age I learned how to be who other people wanted for me to be. I learned how to please and be helpful and meet other people’s expectations. I did well in school, I didn’t cause trouble, I went to college and I earned my MBA by the time I was 22. I went into the corporate world, and I continued to contort myself to meet my bosses’ expectations, no matter how unreasonable they were. And I was rewarded for it. I got promoted. I was given more and more responsibility. And the expectations increased proportionally. I learned a lot, and was able to experience a lot. I got to travel extensively (which sometimes felt like a blessing and sometimes like a curse), and I learned a lot about how businesses run and improve and measure their performance. And for all of that I am incredibly grateful.
But I completely lost myself in the process. Totally and completely.
I had no idea how stressed I was. I had no idea how tightly I was wound or how rigid I had become. I had been doing it for so long I couldn’t discern it as being anything other than normal. Just the way things were. I felt like I didn’t have other options. It would be silly to walk away from the “security” and do something else that was less lucrative.
Plus I had tried before and it didn’t make sense or work. In 2001 I was laid off from a consulting company I worked for. I was devastated. I had worked hard. I had done a great job for my client. I had outperformed 30 of my colleagues on the project I had been working on. And yet I got let go. It was the biggest failure of my life to that point. It felt terrible. All these years later I realize it had nothing to do with me, other than the universe telling me that wasn’t where I was meant to spend more time. Years later when I was able to process that, I was incredibly grateful. But at the time it really sucked!
After leaving that job, I took some time off. I took some art history and drawing classes at a nearby university, which I LOVED, but didn’t know what to do with exactly. Then I went to Charleston and managed an art gallery for a few months. My “dream” or “vision” whenever anyone would ask “What would you do if money weren’t an issue?” was to own my own art gallery. I could picture it in a sea-side town in a bustling little community. So I had thought I was on the right track. It would be a fun thing to try. But I went from making over 6-figures to not being able to support myself completely, working for an artist who wasn’t open to doing anything differently to sell more of her art. So that couldn’t be right. Everything about my upbringing taught me that I needed to be able to be independent, to support myself, to have a career. That I couldn’t depend on others to support me. So back to the corporate world I went to do the “right thing”, make money, “have a career”, and “be productive”. Fast forward another 11 years and 4 companies later, to the point where I was completely burned out. Something had to give. There had to be more to my existence than this!
I had tried for a couple of years to figure out how to stop traveling every week for work, but my company wasn’t set up well for that. They would try to accommodate me for short periods of time, but then it was “time to get back out there” and generate more revenue for the company. Since we rarely sold work in my hometown that meant getting back on the road Mon-Thurs every week.
Then two things happened: (1) a doctor sent me to a medical intuitive because she felt that there must be a “mind-body” connection at play with some health issues I was dealing with, and (2) my dog, whom I loved more than anyone or anything in the world, stopped eating about the time I was staffed on my last project at my former employer with a client in Colorado. The first of these kicked off my intense healing journey, leading me back to myself, and introduced me to energy-work and all things woo-woo, which resonated with me more than anything else in my life I had experienced to that point in time.
And the second helped me reprioritize in an instant the choices I was actively making. Until that time, I had thought “I have to travel. It is my job. I don’t have a choice in the matter”. As soon as Savannah got sick and I knew she was nearing the end of her life, I realized it was an active choice I was making every single Monday morning to get on that plane, and I knew I needed to make a different choice. That she was more important to me than that client in Colorado or the important work I had been doing up to that point.
And that kicked off this fantastic journey that I have been on ever since. The hard things in life can bring the greatest blessings and treasures into our lives. And for that I am immensely grateful!
Now it’s your turn – where in your life have you transitioned from what everyone expected of you to being on your own scary yet exciting uncharted path? Or reconnected to who you really are? Would love to hear from you in the comments below!