Tiny Buddha

Tag: grief

  • How I Cherished Every Beautiful Moment of My Daughter’s Short Life

    How I Cherished Every Beautiful Moment of My Daughter’s Short Life

    In the spring of 2012, I heard this word, “rest.” I realized how horrible I was at it. I wasn’t even sure what it was. Was it extra sleep? Was it not working on Sundays? Shortly after I heard this word, my life began changing. For one reason or another, one by one, the things with which I occupied myself were stripped away until I found myself with nothing left to hold.

    A year later I was in a panic, wondering how we were going to make ends meet. Everything in me said to do what I had always done: get on email, get on the phone, make the next thing happen. Anyone who knew me knew I was someone who could make anything happen. If I didn’t know how, I bought a book and learned. Anything I ever wanted, I found a way to get.

    Then I heard the word again, “rest.”

    “What?! Now? No. My family is depending on me. My reputation is at stake. I don’t have time for rest. I will rest when things are okay.”

    “No. That is not what rest is.”

    Rest is not something you do. Rest is something you put on. It is something you are while you do what you are doing. Rest is a posture.

    I decided to do the exact opposite thing my insides were telling me to do. I went to the backyard, sat on a chair, and watched. I did not know what I was watching for. I listened. I did not know what I was listening for. Every time a thought or an idea came to my head, I wrote it down and then resumed sitting.

    It was horrible, like ignoring an itch for hours. I knew that if it was this hard for me to physically sit still, it was important for me to learn. If my body could not sit still, then how could my mind or my heart? So I decided to discipline myself to sit that way at least one day a week.

    Eventually, I sat this way more often. Meanwhile, my professional life continued to fall apart and the temptation to do something about it grew. I heard so many voices, some from friends and family but most from my own head:

    “You’re lazy.”

    “You’re being irresponsible.”

    “What are you doing??!!”

    “It’s up to you to provide for your family.”

    “Get up and make something happen, now!”

    Simultaneously I heard another voice:

    “Rest.”

    “How long do I wait?”

    “Rest.”

    This was the summer of 2013. A year later, we received the call about our soon-to-be-born baby’s condition. I had thought that the urge to get up and do something was strong before, but now this was on an entirely new level. Again, I heard the voice say, “Rest,” so we didn’t research Trisomy 18. We didn’t look for different doctors who would say something we wanted to hear.

    I continued to sit and stare at the fence, quieting my body, and eventually, at times, quieting my mind and my heart as well. I cannot even describe the amount of fear that was present. But this time it was different. It was as if in the past, fear had walked in the door and I was afraid; now fear stood in the doorway and waited to be invited in.

    More and more, fear gathered at the door, but it did not come in. It only waited. I could see it there. It was terrifying. But I wasn’t able to invite it in. Rest was occupying the space instead.

    Some moments in the hospital on January 7th, 2015 I thought my wife might die. I expected to hold our lifeless baby that morning. I knew I would speak at Olivia’s funeral and not know what to say. It was like a nightmare. But I remember it. I was there. If she would have lived only an hour, I would have been there for that one hour. Because fear was at the door, but rest was inside.

    My posture was rest, quiet, and trust. It was not about making things happen. It was about watching, listening, and being there and nowhere else. I was not going to miss it, as horrible as it could have been.

    During the first few months of Olivia’s life, fear kept congregating at the door. We thought we saw her last breath so many times. We were so sleep-deprived. I passed out one day just walking across the room.

    At this point, I felt pretty incapable of getting up and making something happen. The doctors were clear that there was nothing we could do. Hospice was at our house every few days. I was not tempted to get up and do something about Olivia. Now I was tempted to get up and work. To make sure the bills got paid. To make sure my career did not disappear any more than it already had.

    But underneath was a stronger need: to run, to get the hell out of this situation. Work can be an easy place for a man to avoid the realities of his life. It was pretty obvious, though, that work was not to be my focus—that whatever time we had left with Olivia was to be cherished, every minute of it. Still, I felt the urge to run more than ever.

    “Rest.”

    I continued to hold the posture. To sit. To stare at the fence. To listen quietly. I was not going to miss it.

    I was there the whole time. All fourteen months of her life.

    I lost my posture at times. But I can say that the thirty-year-old Nathan (five years ago) would have occupied himself the entire time, trying to make things happen, running like crazy away from the pain.

    No. I had practiced for this all year. I knew how to allow the itch, the pain, to be there and not to move. I knew how to allow the voices in my head and the voices from others to be there without being influenced by them. I knew how to go deeper within my self, to the place where a still and quiet voice whispered the word “rest” over and over.

    I had practiced the posture; the time had come to use it. I was there the whole time. I did not miss my daughter’s life.

    In March of 2016, when I got the call that Olivia had stopped breathing, I was on a bike ride with our other three kids. Time stopped. Jude asked if Olivia was okay, and I was able to look at him and say, “Yes. Even if she does die, all of us are okay.”

    We rode our bikes so fast. Fear was now filling the doorway and had crowded around the house and the windows and as far as the eye could see. We rode our bikes. I didn’t feel much, but the tears streaming down my face told me, “Today is the day. It is finished.” We kept riding.

    I don’t remember getting off my bike. I’m guessing I had never run so fast. But I will never forget the feeling of walking through the back porch door and seeing Heather and Olivia there. The most sinking and unreal amount of pain I have ever felt mixed with an equal amount of peace, beauty, and a sense of victory.

    After a lot of crying, the only words I could say to Heather were, “We did it.” We won. Olivia won. Heather won. I won. Our family won. Our community won. Yes, Olivia died, but that was never the battle we were fighting. We had chosen to fight fear instead.

    I don’t think I have experienced the remainder of that day, or the next few days, or the funeral or the burial yet. I think I’m still back processing the day Olivia was born. It’s weird. I have never grieved like this before, but I think the body has a way of pacing how much pain it allows in at once.

    I’m realizing now that we will be experiencing the pain and the beauty of Olivia’s life and death for a long time. I don’t know if or when we will ever feel normal or even functional again. But I do remember one thing about the morning after Olivia died, vividly.

    I remember going for a run and the feeling of rest overwhelming me. Not happiness or excitement—I was very sad—but so much rest. And I remember noticing how little fear I sensed, like it was not even at the door anymore. It was as if the battle had ended, and fear had lost and just turned and went home. There was no temptation to run or to make anything happen. Olivia was dead, but I felt an amazing amount of rest. And trust. And quiet. And strength.

    Since that day, fear has returned to my door. I have struggled more than ever to rest. This battle is never-ending. But once you win one battle, every battle after is different. Now you know you can win. You know what it feels like to say, “We did it,” and you know you can do it again.

    I have a feeling the next year is going to be more difficult to rest than the previous two years were. That is a very overwhelming thought. But I have a wife and three living kids and one sleeping daughter who need a husband and a father who knows how to rest.

    That is what I will choose to do.

    Fear at the door, rest inside.

  • How Embracing Grief Can Open Us Up to a Beautiful New Chapter

    How Embracing Grief Can Open Us Up to a Beautiful New Chapter

    “When we are brave enough to tend to our hearts, our messy emotions can teach us how to be free—not free from pain but free from the fear of pain and the barrier it creates to fully living.” ~Kris Carr

    It’s crazy how you go about your life thinking all is okay, and then BOOM, something happens that changes you forever. Grief and loss come and hit you in the face.

    You know… the days that you start as one person and end as someone else.

    But it’s not your first loss or trauma! You had a childhood of pain and suffering, which resurfaces when the latest loss happens.

    The old stories and beliefs you had about being jinxed come back. You think, “Maybe the world, the universe, or God does, in fact, hate me.”

    This has happened to me multiple times, and I thought I was a pro, especially since I help others process trauma in my work.

    The first big time was when I was twenty-six and a policeman called to tell me my dad—who had been an utter nightmare when I was growing up—had taken his life.

    In theory my life got easier without him, but that phone call triggered a lot of pain from enduring his abuse as a kid.

    I didn’t have the tools to deal with this pain, so I numbed my feelings with alcohol, busyness, helping others, and chasing after unavailable men.

    But I couldn’t outrun it anymore when another grief came along: the loss of the dream of a future with a man I loved deeply, who didn’t choose me or love me back.

    That second grief moment seems smaller and was nearly ten years after I lost my dad, but it seemed to affect me more. My way of surviving grief by running from it just wasn’t working anymore.

    The pain got so bad that I didn’t want to live. I felt hopeless and lost. I had to find different tools, as I wanted to move forward with my life. And find love. Running from my emotions was not helping me.

    This launched my path to healing, which started with self-help books, podcasts, and blogs like this one. I wanted to understand why this relationship-that-never-was had pushed me over the edge.

    I remember reading Facing Love Addiction by Pia Melody. It showed me that this pain I was feeling from the lost relationship was actually from my childhood.

    Slowly, I came back to my loss of my dad and the way he treated me when he was alive.

    I found my way to somatic therapy to help my body process what I had been through.

    I found other tools like mindfulness, emotional freedom technique (EFT) tapping, meditation, inner child work, journaling, and self-care practices. Slowly, I began to heal the past version of myself. The one who lost her dad at twenty-six and the child who didn’t get what she needed from him. Then the thirty-five-year-old who was grieving a relationship with a man who didn’t choose her.

    As the clouds parted I saw the light again through my healing. Therapy, the world of self-help, and personal development saved my life.

    I found a beautiful, healthy man to love me, and we got married. All my dreams were coming true. I even left the corporate world to help others, as I was passionate about the modalities that had changed my life.

    I genuinely believed I was fixed!

    Then the third big grief came along. Maybe small for some, but it rocked my world. I miscarried at ten weeks pregnant. A pregnancy that came so easily at forty was gone like a dream.

    I did the same thing I’d done when I lost my dad: I numbed myself. Mainly with my work and clients. Running a business keeps you busy and is a great escape from yourself. Soon, my friend wine was back to help too. I found all kinds of ways to escape the pain.

    But I couldn’t run from this grief for as long as I ran from my past griefs, as my biological clock was ticking loudly. It was time to try again for a baby, but I just couldn’t do it.

    I was frozen in fear.

    Numb from the loss.

    Not feeling good enough again.

    The darkness was back, and I was lost in it! Thoughts of giving up were back too.

    I thought I was healed! And helping others with their traumas. How could I be struggling with my own?

    Fortunately, I knew to use the same toolkit I had used the last time, but my nervous system was frozen in time.

    So I took baby steps to get help. It started like before, with books and podcasts. Like I was dipping my toe back in.

    I read a book specific to miscarriage loss, The Worst Girl Gang Ever by Bex Gunn and Laura Buckingham and, more recently, Kris Carr’s I am Not a Mourning Person.

    I started to invest in a space where I could process grief. This time, I chose to work with a somatic therapist who could help me release the trauma of this loss from my body through nervous system repair and also does integrated family systems (IFS) parts work. This helped me understand the parts of myself that do not want me to proceed with my dream of being a mum.

    Parts of our minds are trying to protect us and keep us safe. We shame and hate them for limiting us. But when we get to know them, we understand why they are holding us back. It’s such a beautiful way to get to know our inner selves.

    I also began to work with a coach who specializes in baby loss. I found resources and people that were specific to the pain I had experienced. Just how I did with my dad and the relationship loss previously.

    I did get pulled into my shadow behaviors like drinking wine, overworking, and eating sugar, as these had helped me in times of grief before. But they were just a plaster over my sadness and wouldn’t help me move forward to become a mother.

    I have uncovered that this loss is about my relationship with my body and the trauma that has been stored in it. And I have gone back to the childhood wounds around my body, related to my father constantly telling me I was fat, and how I have treated it.

    I have given myself space. To actually grieve. To cry. To be angry. To release.

    I am an EFT practitioner, so I use an EFT tapping technique to process any emotion right when I’m feeling it. In that moment.

    I don’t run from it. I sit with it. I allow myself to feel the discomfort of my emotions. The first time I did this, it brought back the loss I felt for my dad. My childhood. And every other relationship I lost along the way.

    No matter where you are on your journey of life, grief is something we all have in common. None of us escape it.

    We are guaranteed to experience it multiple times in our lives. We can numb and avoid it. We can run from it and let it sabotage our present. Or we can choose to meet it and love ourselves through it.

    After I lost my dad, running from my grief sabotaged my dreams of finding love with a healthy man. Facing it meant I was able to break that pattern. That is what allowing space for grief does.

    Years later, a miscarriage could have stopped me on my dream to have a family of my own. Because I didn’t want to face what this miscarriage brought up within me. The pain of the relationship with my body. How I spoke to it and treated it and what others had said to shame it.

    It is natural to want to avoid the pain. To run. But then you have to look at what the grief is holding you back from. A healthier, happier you. Your bigger dream and vision for your life.

    I had to change my calendar to literally create space for grief. To remove the busyness. To allow my nervous system to feel safe enough to process the grief.

    I decided to only spend time with people who could support me in it and socialize less so I could take really good care of myself. I canceled plans and just nourished myself all weekend with self-care.

    I am not going to pretend grief is not grim. You are allowed to be angry. Sad. All of the things. Don’t ignore your own emotions or try to ‘fix’ them. They don’t need to be fixed. They just need to be felt.

    Be a kind friend to yourself. Listen and allow yourself to cry. Slowly, the light starts to come in and you find your way out.

    It is such a brave thing to meet your grief.

    And just like I had to shed a mountain of grief before meeting my husband in order to start a new beautiful chapter, I know another one is on the other side of this miscarriage.

    Though I am still writing this chapter of my story, it has already taught me so much about coming home to my body. Allowing it to heal from all the traumas and repairing my nervous system after decades of dysregulation. Allowing myself and my body to feel safe enough to feel. After years of dissociation and pain, this chapter has brought a deeper healing.

    Wherever you are in your grief journey, take it slowly, one baby step at a time. Remember to be kind to yourself along the way. You can turn this grief, loss, and trauma into a new beginning.

    This moment too shall pass. Like the others before it and the ones that will come after it.

    We can’t control when these dark times come, but we can be brave enough to move through them by giving ourselves love and getting the right help for ourselves and our needs.

    Be with it and it will pass much more quickly than it would otherwise and cause less damage to your beautiful life.

    Healing has many seasons, and grief is like the winter, but spring soon comes with the buds of your new chapter.

  • The Relationship You Always Wanted

    The Relationship You Always Wanted

  • Grief Comes in Waves

    Grief Comes in Waves

  • Grief Is Very Sneaky

    Grief Is Very Sneaky

  • You Are Part of Me

    You Are Part of Me

  • On the Days When You Miss Someone the Most

    On the Days When You Miss Someone the Most

  • How I’ve Been Shaking Out My Pain Since Losing My Daughter

    How I’ve Been Shaking Out My Pain Since Losing My Daughter

    “Movement has incredible healing power.” ~Alexandra Heather Foss

    My ten-year-old daughter, who had been ill for all her life, was dying. She was hooked up to tubes and monitors, and they were always going off. Her numbers were off the charts, and the doctors kept saying, “Your daughter’s numbers aren’t normal, and we would normally have a team coming in here to check on her breathing and to rouse her.”

    After the last operation, one doctor said she was surprised that she was still alive when she came into work. We all were. She kept fighting. She would just be sleeping heavily, deeply, and then would wake with a massive smile on her face and a giggle, as if it to say, “Ha! I fooled you again.” She kept fooling us… until she didn’t anymore.

    My husband and I made the decision to turn those monitors off because they were not helping her or us, as the constant beeping with no action was just stressing us all out. It was a massive decision. The doctors had done everything they could, and there was no miracle cure.

    During this time, we were having daily conversations with the doctors about what her body would look like and feel like when she was going to die, what we could expect. We had to make decisions that no parent would want to make—about where we wanted her to die: home, hospice, or hospital.

    We talked about all the different scenarios. They were trying to prepare us for the worst. Her little body was failing her. She had a rare genetic issue, and the future was bleak because she wasn’t well or strong enough for any other operations.

    She couldn’t walk or talk; she couldn’t hold herself up; she had scoliosis, brain damage, and hip dislocation, as well as a horrible condition called dystonia. She had lived her life with a smile on her face but was in the most unimaginable pain daily.

    Doctors were telling us that they had reached the end of the road, and that either we could stay in the hospital or choose to go home with an even stronger set of medications than we had arrived with.

    Around this time, I found myself jumping around and shaking my arms and legs.

    Doctors, nurses, and my husband would look at me, and I would say I needed to get it out. It was the stress. It helped calm my nervous system; it helped calm me even though my whole body was in a state of mass fear and my whole world was crashing around me.

    We had nearly a whole extra year—we tried so much—and then on that last day I went into her room at home and she looked awful. I knew it was the end.

    I rang the ambulance, and they came and asked us what we wanted to do. Then they confirmed our worst fears.

    We had an end-of-life plan in place; again, something that no parent ever should have to write. We loved her so much.

    I held her, I cuddled her, and I loved her. I love her still so much.

    Since she has died, I have felt empty, but I am trying my best to forge a way forward.

    I had a terrible childhood, one of fear and abandonment. It led me down a path of being needy, constantly needing reassurance. I haven’t loved myself at all. Whenever people broke up with me, it reignited those feelings of fear, that I wasn’t enough.

    When I was under ten my mother broke my arm, tried to drown me, scared me, and decided with my father to leave me on the side of the road when I was naughty. The house was full of arguing, my mother narcissistic and unwilling to take any responsibility for any of her failings. We, the people around her, had to adapt ourselves to her and her mood.

    I then went to school and was bullied. My sense of self-worth was shot. Where was I safe?!

    I met my husband and we are happy, and I thought my life was complete when we had our beautiful daughter.

    I was scared she wouldn’t love me, that she would love my husband more. She seemed to know what I needed. She would have mummy days and daddy days, or both of us days. I didn’t mind sharing her love. The mummy days were hard work (as they entailed being with her 24/7) but, oh my, the look of love on her face. When I looked at her, I felt so loved and I loved her.

    Since she died, I have been doing things to heal myself that I never would have tried before. Ecstatic dance—two hours where I keep my eyes closed and dance but, actually, I find myself shaking the whole time, like I did in hospital, and crying, letting it all out. Shaking my arms and kicking my legs out over and over again.

    I have seen a healer and had a dynamic breathing session, where I howled like a wounded animal for everything that I have been through and what I have lost—my childhood and now my child.

    Since being home, I have been having hypnotherapy and more dynamic breathing sessions, as well as EMDR therapy. All with the view of healing myself, trying to love myself. My body has hurt more than I realized is possible. While dynamic breathing, the pain I felt in my stomach before I breathed it out was immense. Physical pain from mental pain.

    I feel like my daughter gave me love, and I am honoring her by making sure that this next part of my life is going to be healthy. I am going to hug myself, breathe deeply, and try to calm the nervous people-pleaser inside of me. It’s going to be hard, but by now, at fifty, I feel I am ready to do the work.

    Wish me luck!

    Rest in peace my Taylor Swift-loving Ella Bella. She was eleven when she died.

    We will dance for you when we see Taylor next year.

    And for anyone out there who’s dealing with unbearable pain of their own, I can’t promise you the pain will ever fully go away. But maybe, like me, you’ll find a little relief in moving your body to get some of it out.

  • How Trauma Affects the Brain and How I’m Healing from PTSD

    How Trauma Affects the Brain and How I’m Healing from PTSD

    “Owning our story and loving ourselves through that process is the bravest thing that we’ll ever do.” ~Brené Brown 

    Several months ago, I was stoked about writing a piece on the living legacy of trauma, sharing how much we think we know about these so-called injuries of the mind, body, and spirit when, in reality, we know diddly squat.

    I thought that a piece on this topic would inform and help folks like me. I’d suffered long and hard from PTSD, triggered initially by the sudden death of my brother and, simultaneously, the unfortunate finding of an email that confirmed that my husband of twenty-five years was having an affair with a girl half his age who lived in Germany.

    Little did I know that after broaching this idea in an article that explored how trauma manifests itself in intense physical, perceptual, and emotional reactions to everyday things, I would experience the absolute worst trauma imaginable since that fateful day when my world turned into a nightmare that didn’t end when I woke up.

    You see, after three years of working virtually with a therapist who specialized in drug and alcohol addiction and trauma—a woman with a gentle English accent and passion for all four-legged creatures (her “family” consisted of a husband, cat, horse, and donkey)—I got a text that rocked my world like a magnitude 10 earthquake. An energy force that, to me, far surpassed what 32 Hiroshima atomic bombs would feel like.

    In tiny bold font, I was informed on a Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. that my beloved therapist, Vanessa, had died peacefully at home, surrounded by those who loved her dearly.

    Although I should’ve found some sort of comfort in hearing that, I curled up in a fetal position on my deck, letting the warm summer breeze wash over my badly shaking body.

    I grabbed the folds in my oversized Life Is Good T-shirt, using them to wipe away tears that didn’t stop. Not even when I realized that my two Chihuahua rescues were whimpering next to me, confused as to why the sad, high-pitched noises coming out of me sounded a lot like theirs when I left the house.

    And although it shouldn’t have come as such a huge surprise after she went into remission after her first bout of ovarian cancer several months ago, Vanessa’s death came fast and furious within a span of just two weeks of her terminal diagnosis.

    Without the ability to correspond with her in the days leading up to her death (due to her illness becoming so severe it rendered her 99% incapacitated), I literally stopped, dropped, and rolled on the floor upon receiving this news. I felt as if I was lit on fire, with the pain from this communication leaving me excruciatingly traumatized and broken.

    Not knowing what was happening during these many weeks of radio silence, I was texting her number over and over and over again, not realizing that all of this communication was being read by her husband. He was caring for her in their Vermont farmhouse, assisted by family who flew in from England a few weeks prior to spend whatever little time they had with this very special and beloved daughter, sister-in-law, and cousin.

    There are no road maps to trauma. No GPS or Waze apps can get us from point A to B. What I did discover during my three-plus years of work with my incredibly wise, informed, compassionate, insightful, and funny therapist in the trauma work we did each week was that there are alarms in our bodies that go off, signaling that we have to find a safe place to get out of danger, away from the darkness lurking within.

    Using a workbook that was beyond helpful, Transforming the Living Legacy of Trauma: A Workbook for Survivors and Therapists, by Janina Fisher, PhD (2021), a huge epiphany for me was connecting the dots of trauma.

    I learned that “the living legacy of trauma manifests itself in intense physical, perceptual, and emotional reactions to everyday things—rarely recognizable as past experience. These emotional and physical responses, called ‘implicit memories,’ keep bringing the trauma alive in our bodies and emotions again and again, often many times a day” (Fisher, 13).

    Doing weekly homework was an integral part of my journey to wellness, although, as anyone knows, you don’t ever really rid yourself of a lifetime of events, symptoms, and difficulties common to individuals who are traumatized.

    Worksheets were incredibly helpful in guiding my work with Vanessa, holding me accountable to “naming” the symptoms and difficulties I recognized in myself. Those include a feeling of emotional overwhelm, loss of interest in most things, numbing, decreased concentration, irritability, depression, few or no memories, shame and worthlessness, nightmares and flashbacks, anxiety and panic attacks, chronic pain and headaches, substance abuse and eating disorders, feeling unreal or out of body, and a loss of sense of “who I am.”

    I had to examine how these symptoms helped me to survive. For example, if I suffered from depression, how did that help me get through my PTSD? How did losing interest in things help me? How did not sleeping help? How did using alcohol help me survive? (I unfortunately combined prescription meds with alcohol, putting my life in jeopardy for years).

    One of the most important pieces of my trauma work was recognizing just how integral understanding the brain was in experiencing trauma. Certain areas of the brain are specialized in helping us survive danger (van der Kolk, 2014).

    “A set of related structures in the limbic system hold our capacity for emotional, sensory, and relational experience, as well as the nonverbal memories connected to traumatic events. The limbic system includes the thalamus (a relay station for sensory information), the hippocampus (an area specialized to process memory), and the amygdala (the brain’s fire alarm and smoke detector). When our senses pick up the signs of imminent danger, that information is automatically transmitted to the thalamus, where, in a matter of nanoseconds, it is evaluated by threat receptors in the amygdala and in the prefrontal cortex to determine if it is a true or false alarm.” (Fisher, 15)

    One of the most interesting parts of studying the relational pieces of trauma with the brain is that the prefrontal cortex is designed to hold the “veto power” (Fisher, 15). Depending on how a stimulus is recognized, such as being benign or threatening, I discovered that when I construed a stimulus as threatening (which I did many, many times), my adrenaline stress response prepared my body to fight or flee.

    Adrenaline causes our heart rate and respiration to increase, turning off non-essential systems, including the prefrontal cortex, putting us in survival mode. Pausing to think might put me in danger, simultaneously losing the ability for conscious decision-making, acting, and reacting by crying for help and “bear witness to the entirety of the experience” (Fisher, 16). I often found myself freezing in fear, fleeing, fighting, or giving in when there was no way out.

    My understanding of triggers and triggering was instrumental to my understanding of my post-traumatic stress, which forced me to look at the behaviors of our forebears—cavemen and cave women. They lived in a very dangerous world, where they were vulnerable to diseases, harsh climates, the challenges of providing food for their tribe, and potential attacks by animal and human predators.

    Folks back then had to strike preemptively, something that their environment helped with (using stones, tree branches, etc. as weapons to fight off enemies or craft bows and arrows). Their survival was enhanced by this ability to sense danger and to keep on going, no matter how they felt or what was in their way. They innately had the ability to sense danger before the fact rather than analyze the level of threat once it was in front of them.

    Centuries later, human beings still have heightened stress and survival responses. The brain and body have become “biased to cues” indicating potential threat. Cues connected even indirectly to specific traumatic events are called “triggers.”

    These triggers have caused me to shake in my boots (or Converse sneakers) simply by smelling certain smells or experiencing certain weather conditions. These strong physical and emotional responses are known as triggering, and I struggled with this for many years before I was lucky enough to find a therapist who really “got it.”

    I can literally hear my ex cursing and screaming if I am in somebody’s basement because that is where our fights often took place in our family home years and years ago.

    I can start shaking when I drive through my old neighborhood in upstate New York because I start to “see” all of the evidence I found in our family home that confirmed my ex was having an extramarital affair.

    Just driving down a street a few miles from our family home, I can reactivate the sensors in the limbic system and amygdala and see a flashing “danger” sign. I then feel that lightning bolt of obsessive anger that I felt when I found pictures, letters, and other paraphernalia confirming that I was “dumb and clueless” when my ex made up stories about where he had been or where he was going.

    Vanessa would be extremely upset with me if she were here, knowing that I’m “time traveling” with the writing of this piece and shaming myself in the process by calling myself names.

    Her points are valid, and because of the incredible growth and insight I gained through my work with her, I own both of those things and know that time traveling is incredibly triggering for me, causing me to stir up very upsetting and traumatizing feelings.

    As for the self-shaming I have gotten to be very good at, I can recognize (now) that it is extremely counterintuitive to call myself names or demean myself. All it does is give life to the negative, punitive, cruel, abhorrent words that my ex articulated to make me feel as if “I” was the crazy one in the relationship and that “I” deserved to suffer from his extramarital affair because I was a crazy, terrible wife.

    To all of that I say, bah, humbug, knowing that I have worked way too hard to travel down that dark and dank road of the past, growing by leaps and bounds through weeks of tears, laughter, more tears, and hard-earned self-actualization and growth from sessions with an amazingly good clinician.

    I know that Vanessa always gave me the credit for getting where I am today. I always argued that I never would have arrived at this destination without her patience, expertise, and extraordinary empathy, which I never experienced with the twenty other therapists I had over the years. I tell those closest to me that Vanessa saved my life, and I don’t say that lightly.

    What folks who don’t have PTSD need to understand is that it is virtually impossible for anyone who has experienced severe trauma to truly believe that they “deserve” the good and positive things that come from the extremely hard work they put in.

    They’re convinced that they are not deserving of those good and positive things and that being “messed up” will be a lifelong, integral part of them. As such, positive things are for other folks, and change for the good is something that might be attainable but rarely is, due to the falls and flaws that define the lives of those with trauma.

    Healing and forgiveness begin to happen the moment we accept and forgive ourselves—the moment we see that small child who we once were through the eyes of the compassionate adult we have become.

    For me, I was convinced that the little girl of yesteryear would never be anything but wounded and broken, despite the pep talks and logical arguments presented by very intelligent, intuitive clinicians. But that was then and this is now.

    And if Vanessa is looking down at me (and I’m pretty sure she is), she would imitate Mary Poppins and say, “Pish, posh” with a smile on her face and remind me every time I achieved a new level of insight, understanding, and self-care with a “well done,” putting her right thumb up as an exclamation mark.

    Well done, indeed.

  • 5 Things to Remember When Heartbreak Feels Too Heavy to Bear

    5 Things to Remember When Heartbreak Feels Too Heavy to Bear

    “If you feel like you’re losing everything, remember that trees lose their leaves every year and they still stand tall and wait for better days to come.” ~Unknown

    For a big lover like me, heartbreak has always gotten the best of me. I have felt heavy pain from the ending of a relationship, the ghosting of a situationship, and the loss of what could have been with someone I never dated. And I’ve experienced the sting of friendships leaving my life.

    It’s all heartbreaking.

    It starts with a crippling, piercing full-body agony. And eventually it grows into a dull ache and lethargy toward anything.

    That’s because heartbreak can throw you into a type of withdrawal. And it’s hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

    When I was going through my last breakup, I felt like I lost a piece of myself. I felt like this person had taken my heart and ripped it apart. I was in a confused state, wanting them badly back in my life and yet wanting nothing to do with them ever again. I had to teach myself how to process my day without communicating with my ex.

    As it turns out, this is all a very normal part of going through heartbreak.

    Breakups, whether romantic or platonic, are like a death. In fact, we process the stages of grief during a breakup similarly to losing someone who dies. And sometimes it feels even more cutting, because we know that person is still living and existing. Just without us.

    While it’s important to feel all the feelings that come with heartbreak, it’s equally crucial to plant seeds of hope, as there is something better waiting for you on the other side.

    Going through a breakup is a transformative experience of shedding old layers and welcoming new ones. You are growing and learning from these emotions.

    While I was going through this particular breakup, I developed deeper emotional resilience and empowerment. The weight on my heart gradually lifted as I alchemized the lessons and self-reflection to remind myself of the following things.

    1. You are not alone.

    When you’re in the heat of heartbreak, it can feel as though everyone else around you is doing just fine and you’re the only one who is suffering. And the sudden absence of someone you cared about heightens the loneliness.

    But I know without a doubt that you are not alone. Everyone has dealt with what you’re going through right now (just take me as an example!). And there are likely people in your networks who are currently going through it. Take some time to reach out to people you trust or seek out events that will help foster connection. It’s okay to ask for help.

    2. You broke up for a good reason.  

    When my heart was aching for my ex and any sign of him coming back, I had to remind myself that we broke up for a good reason.

    He wasn’t prioritizing or respecting me consistently. I had to stop romanticizing the moments of brief happiness and look at the longer-term picture. We were fundamentally incompatible and not bringing out the best in each other. If we continued to try to make it work, it would feel as if we were dragging our feet in the mud.

    All relationships will bring up their own unique challenges, but I want to be with someone who I can feel safe to tackle them with.

    If you feel the urge to get back together or if they are trying to get back into your life right away, write down the positive reasons for this breakup to give you a healthy perspective.

    3. They never completed you. You are whole and complete as you are.

    Even if you don’t feel okay right now, you are still whole and complete. The people that come into our lives, whether as friends or romantic partners, complement us. But they never complete us.

    Thinking that we need someone to complete us or be our better half is a fairy tale misconception. And it convinces us that we’re not enough, especially if someone leaves us behind.

    But the fact is, you are enough. You might want a romantic relationship, and that’s natural because we all need connection to thrive. But you can live a full, satisfying life even if you’re single right now.

    While deep love can be experienced between you and other people, the deepest love will first come from you. Take the driver’s seat of your life and steer it. Anyone else that comes along is joining the road trip.

    4. This relationship was not a waste of time.

    When we’ve invested a lot of time, energy, and resources into relationships, it makes the breakups that much more painful. You might think that you’re back at square one, but it’s the opposite.

    And often this investment makes us stay longer than we should.

    There’s a term in psychology called “sunk-cost fallacy,” which perfectly describes this phenomenon. It’s when you are reluctant to walk away from a course of action after heavily investing in it, so you continue to invest even though there’s a more desirable option.

    Ultimately, the most desirable option in my situation was to walk away so I could stop trying to prove my worth to someone who didn’t see it.

    I could have looked at my relationship as a waste of time, but instead I saw it as an important example of what I didn’t want in my next relationship. I’m now grateful toward my ex for the growth and experiences gained, even though the relationship ended.

    It also helped me look at my relationship with myself so that I can show up for my life with more self-esteem and confidence. And I believe that has gotten me further ahead rather than behind.

    5. You will feel your sparkle again.

    Happiness doesn’t start and end with your past relationship. You can feel happiness after them. As you heal and focus on new things that excite you, your life will become more vibrant and abundant. And I promise, you will feel like yourself again.

    Give it some time and pour back into yourself. Invest in new skills or hobbies, spend time with your community, and reconnect to your future goals.

    Breakups are often a portal for our next highest chapter. Walk through this door believing the best is yet to come—because if you believe amazing possibilities are ahead of you, you’ll do your part to help create them.

    —

    Feeling heavy emotions after a heartbreak is a part of the healing process. And it will ebb and flow. Even though healing isn’t linear, it’s always happening.

    Get curious and show yourself more love and reverence. You owe it to yourself to heal from this. Because there’s something more painful than a broken heart. And it’s a closed heart. I would rather continue to love big and get hurt at times than not love at all.

  • Accepting Fear and Sadness as Normal Parts of a Good Life

    Accepting Fear and Sadness as Normal Parts of a Good Life

    “Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.” ~Naomi Shihab Nye

    I knew it was around that time. When I opened my eyes, it was pitch black outside and I couldn’t yet hear the chickens in the distance waking up. It was 4 a.m. again.

    In the past few days, I have loved this gift of jet lag; transitioning to a thirteen-hour time change has afforded me this dark, mysterious quiet that has woken up inside of me the place from which I write—a place that spontaneously arises when the conditions are such that something flows through me.

    However, next to me in my bed, my daughter slept soundly. I lay there, paying attention to and feeling my body breathe, sensations arising and falling, and thinking about life—the past, present, and future.

    As I lay there, I noticed the sweet ebb and flow of my breath and the glorious feel of the air from the fan washing over my warm and rested body.

    Yet on this particular morning, I noticed my belly rumbling and my heart tensing. I placed my hands on my body and noticed.

    Nothing in that moment could provoke anything but peace, calm, and gratitude, and yet, wherever you go, there you are. Regardless of how far I am from my physical home, I know that what lives inside of me, travels with me.

    I asked these sensations in my body, what do you want me to know? Without hesitation I heard a voice, I am scared.

    There was nothing to be scared about in the moment. I was completely safe in every possible way other than being away from home. I didn’t feel any imminent threat or danger to provoke fear.

    I stayed curious and started seeing images of my father.

    Earlier in the day while on a boat with my teenage daughter, a memory washed over me with an image of him. He loved taking us places and giving us opportunities to explore life. As a teenager, I often and unfortunately remember rolling my eyes at him.

    When I was in the seventh grade, he took me and my brother rafting in the Grand Canyon. To get to our raft boats we took a helicopter into the canyon. That summer there had been massive rains, and the water was brown from the mud. This made the canyon waters muddy, which meant that my hair for five days was basically a brown ratted nest. I complained throughout the exquisite adventure that my hair was a mess.

    But what I thought about today in that moment on the boat was that he had gifted me curiosity, a little adventure, and a love of life in the moment. I felt a wash of gratitude and appreciation for him. The moment passed.

    I continued to lie in bed and stayed present to the sensations in my body. Memories and feelings started coming of when things started changing.

    I remember noticing there wasn’t as much food in the pantry, he began sleeping on the couch, he had more doctor’s appointments, and bill collectors started calling. And there were more fights between my parents and between us. Things slowly began to fall apart.

    The money from my college savings was gone. My wish for where I wanted to go to school wasn’t possible. And it wasn’t just me that was feeling all of this. It was all seven of his children.

    In the course of ten years, my father’s business had crumbled. My dad was an amazing people person and a fantastic salesman, but he wasn’t the best at administrative things. When the economy suffered a setback and changes in his industry began happening, he didn’t have the wherewithal to get support and ask for help.

    So we watched the unraveling of his business and felt the impact with no exact words to describe what was happening. Nobody talked about it. We just felt it.

    That stirring in my belly was familiar. That ache in my heart was also familiar.

    It was a mixture of fear and sadness.

    We are told to think positively and everything will work out. Everything will be okay. It sounds good to have that beacon of light as hope. But that wasn’t my experience. He never recovered financially; his health deteriorated over the years and life was exceptionally difficult for him and for his family; his body suffered terribly until he passed away at sixty-five years old.

    We don’t often talk about the fact that life sometimes doesn’t work out: people get sick and die early, businesses fail, marriages end, children get sick, and people change. We say that there are lessons in those failures; we will learn and something positive will come of it.

    Yes, there is truth in all of that. I live in the life lessons, see the positive in hardships, and trust that blessings are also a part of life, but we don’t also hold that life can be hard and that leaves an imprint inside of us.

    On this particular morning, as I lay in bed, I was reminded again of something important. The experience of watching my father lose his business and his health deteriorate over twenty years was scary. He told me in our last conversation before the fall that led to his death that he had entered into a dark hole many years prior.

    It was terrifying. It was also sad.

    What I continue to learn is that fear and sadness are not independent of each other but are related; it’s not just that I was scared, but I was also sad.

    Everything can be lost.

    We often want to heal what hurts and feels uncomfortable so that it will go away. Or we pretend that it doesn’t impact the way we live, see the world, are in relationship with others, or even raise our children. But the truth is that hurts like that, experiences like that, alter us. They change the trajectory of our life.

    I continue to learn to hold with love and understanding that fear and sadness are sacred parts of me. They ebb and flow. They are welcome to have a home inside of me. I am not flawed or any less human because I carry them with me; in fact, they probably influence my curiosity and my awe for our capacity as humans to heal, grow, and make peace and live with pain in our heart.

    Fear still comes. Sadness still comes.

    I get scared sometimes when I let uncertainty of the future get the best of me. I can worry too much about what’s to come. Fear that I, too, can lose everything.

    I feel my heart ache at what could have been. The grief of all that was lost.

    Life can be scary, and life can be sad. It can also be beautiful.

    Despite all my father went through, he always looked at the positive. He never complained even when he could barely walk, when he couldn’t take care of his body or afford basic things. He thought that it could always be worse and harder than his situation. 

    I think that it was a gift for him, that he could see the positive, because it helped him live with the pain and losses in a dignified way.

    The last phone call that I had with my dad, not knowing just a week later he would fall and lose consciousness, I told him, “I am so sorry that life was hard for you.”

    He replied, “I lived a good life, Carly.”

  • 4 Types of Regret and How to Leverage Them for a More Fulfilling Life

    4 Types of Regret and How to Leverage Them for a More Fulfilling Life

    “Regret is not dangerous or abnormal, a deviation from the steady path to happiness. It is healthy and universal, an integral part of being human. Regret is also valuable. It clarifies. It instructs. Done right, it needn’t drag us down; it can lift us up.” ~Daniel H. Pink

    It happened when I reached midlife.

    I’d experienced regret before, but this was different.

    In my forties, I struggled with several deep-seated regrets all at the same time.

    And I didn’t handle it well.

    If only I hadn’t chosen to fall into unhealthy habits that were hard to break, like smoking cigarettes and drinking too much alcohol.

    If only I’d worked to understand myself and develop my identity earlier in life.

    If only I’d gone after that degree in psychology I’d really wanted.

    If only I’d taken charge of my own financial wellness rather than abdicating it to my husband.

    Because I didn’t know better, I wallowed in these regrets, revisiting past mistakes and ramping up my self-criticism.

    So many might-have-beens and what-ifs.

    Heartbreak and grief ensued.

    It’s safe to say I was well and truly stuck there for a while.

    Thankfully, working with a therapist helped me safely face my feelings and reframe my regret as an opportunity for growth rather than a threat.

    Over time, I learned to practice self-compassion and what my therapist called Neutralize the Negative – Promote the Positive.

    I learned I could extract lessons from regret, use them to keep growing into the best version of myself, and create a more fulfilling life.

    I learned that regret could be a positive force for good.

    As the poet and wise woman Maya Angelou used to say, “Do the best you can until you know better. Then, when you know better, do better.”

    Fast forward to 2022, when one of my favorite authors, Daniel H. Pink, published his remarkable book The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward.

    Pink’s research, poignant stories, and practical takeaways had me thinking, “This is a guide for living better. I wish I’d understood all this back then.”

    Understanding Regret

    Unlike sadness or disappointment, regret is a unique emotion because it stems from our agency. It’s not something imposed upon us; rather, it arises from choices we made or opportunities we missed.

    Intrigued by this powerful emotion, Pink embarked on a qualitative research journey, inviting people from all walks of life to share their regrets.

    The response was overwhelming, with tens of thousands of stories pouring in. Through this process, Pink compiled, classified, and analyzed the regrets, unearthing valuable insights that can help us navigate life’s complexities.

    One of the key findings was that regrets of inaction outnumber regrets of action by a ratio of two to on, and this tendency increases as people grow older.

    Action regrets, such as marrying the wrong person, can often be tempered by finding solace in other aspects of life. For example, someone who feels they married the wrong person might say, “At least I have these wonderful kids.” However, regrets of inaction lack this silver lining.

    Pink identified four main types of regrets that tend to cluster together. He calls them deep structure regrets. They all reveal a human need and yield a lesson.

    Foundation Regrets

    Foundation regrets emerge from neglecting to lay the groundwork for a stable and fulfilling life, like failing to save money for retirement or neglecting one’s physical well-being.

    I now understand that most of my regrets, including those I shared above, fall under this category. Foundation regrets sound like this: If only I’d done the work.

    The Human Need: Stability—a basic infrastructure of educational, financial, and physical well-being.

    The Lesson: Think ahead. Do the work. Start now. Build your skills and connections.

    Boldness Regrets 

    As we grow older, the regrets that haunt us revolve around the missed opportunities we let slip away rather than the risks we took. The chances we didn’t seize, whether starting our own business, pursuing a genuine love, or exploring the world, weigh heavily on our hearts.

    Boldness regrets sound like this: If only I’d taken that risk.

    The Human Need: To grow as a person.

    The Lesson: Start that business. Ask him out. Take that trip.

    Moral Regrets

    Moral regrets arise from actions that go against our sense of kindness and decency, such as bullying, infidelity, or disloyalty. They sound like this: If only I’d done the right thing.

    The Human Need: To be good.

    The Lesson: When in doubt, do the right thing.

    Connection Regrets

    Connection regrets center around missed opportunities to maintain relationships, often due to the fear of awkwardness. They sound like this: If only I’d reached out.

    The Human Need: Love and meaningful connections.

    The Lesson: If a relationship you care about has come undone, push past the awkwardness, and reach out.

    Doing Regret Right

    So how do we approach regret in a way that enhances our lives? How do we do it right? Pink suggests a three-part strategy: looking inward, looking outward, and moving forward.

    Looking inward involves reframing how we think about our regrets and practicing self-compassion. We often judge ourselves harshly, but treating ourselves with kindness and understanding can lead to healing and growth.

    Looking outward means sharing our regrets with others. We unburden ourselves and gain perspective by opening up and expressing our emotions. Talking or writing about our regrets can help us make sense of them.

    Moving forward requires extracting lessons from our regrets. It’s essential to create distance and gain perspective. Pink offers practical exercises like speaking to ourselves in the third person, imagining conversations with our future selves, or considering what advice we would give our best friend in a similar situation.

    In addition, Pink encourages us to “optimize” regret rather than trying to minimize it. He suggests creating a “failure résumé” to reflect on and learn from past missteps.

    He also recommends combining our New Year’s resolutions with our regrets from the previous year, turning regret into a catalyst for self-improvement.

    —

    In a culture that promotes relentless positivity and a “no regrets” philosophy, I’ve learned that negative emotions have their place in a fulfilling life. I know better now, and I couldn’t agree more with Dan: “If we know what we truly regret, we know what we truly value. Regret—that maddening, perplexing, and undeniably real emotion—points the way to a life well lived.”

  • Why I Don’t Regret That I Didn’t Walk Away from My Relationship Sooner

    Why I Don’t Regret That I Didn’t Walk Away from My Relationship Sooner

    “The butterfly does not look back at the caterpillar in shame, just as you should not look back at your past in shame. Your past was part of your own transformation.” ~Anthony Gucciardi 

    Before I finally grew the courage to walk away from my boyfriend, I contemplated walking away many times.

    There was the time that he had ghosted me for a week without communicating that he needed space. Then after promising me a timeline for telling his mom about me and our relationship, when the time came to do it, he made up another excuse. And there were many moments when he canceled our plans at the last minute.

    Every time I felt disappointed or disrespected, I would feel my body start to tremble from the inside and I felt my sense of self start to break away as I tried all of the things I thought would repair the relationship. I tried to be patient and understanding, and I communicated my needs while trying to see where he was coming from. But nothing changed.

    Sometimes I would feel a glimmer of hope as my partner took accountability and would try to be better. I gave him multiple chances to make things right, and yet he still went back to old patterns. I wasn’t expecting an overnight change, but I wanted more investment. Deep down, he just wasn’t on the same page.

    So why couldn’t I walk away from this person who was no longer treating me the way I deserved to be treated? Why did I still keep putting up with less and accepting the bare minimum?

    I didn’t know how to let go of someone I loved. I was scared of letting go of what I saw as the potential of this person and the relationship. And I was scared of letting myself down. 

    Relationships are complex, and people on the outside looking in make it seem easy for you to just leave at the first sign of turmoil or dissatisfaction. It’s normal to feel uncomfortable and unhappy in a relationship, yet still struggle to walk away.

    The truth is, I needed to go through these experiences to finally see that this relationship was no longer serving my highest good. And that’s not to say that I deserved any of it. But it would not have been as easy to walk away with the clarity, certainty, and purpose that I had at the moment that I had it.

    When the pain of staying was greater than the fear of leaving, I knew it was the right time to walk away. 

    If I had walked away sooner, I might have held onto hope of getting back together, fearing that I didn’t do enough or give it enough of a chance. I would likely be floundering with my internal need for closure, rather than knowing I received all the closure I needed by the time I walked away.

    Even though there were many times that my soul knew deep down that I would eventually have to walk away, my heart wasn’t there yet. And when it finally was, the courage grew inside of me like an ocean wave coming closer to shore.

    If you’re struggling to walk away from a person or feeling regret about not walking away sooner, here’s what helped me on my journey of making peace with it:

    1. Honor your lessons.

    Love is not enough. This was one of the hardest pills to swallow, but it was necessary.

    A couple days before we broke up, my ex and I had another hard conversation about our relationship. And at some point, I remember saying, “But we love each other,” attempting a plea to hold us together through some challenges.

    Healthy relationships require more than just the feeling of love. There needs to be commitment, action, integrity, communication, and trust. Feeling love for another person is nice, but you can feel love for a person and not be in a relationship with them. A relationship requires much more.

    At first, I felt sad and defeated when I reflected and realized that these values were not in alignment in our relationship. But now I honor this lesson and know that it will serve me well in my next relationship. I won’t waver on the importance of being aligned on values more than just a feeling of love.

    When you have core takeaways from a relationship that didn’t work out, it helps to create a deeper meaning from it. And it helps you focus your energy on yourself, rather than your ex-partner.

    2. Give yourself grace.

    We can be so hard on ourselves. And the times that you need grace the most are often when you’re least likely to give grace to yourself.

    In my relationship with my ex, I was quicker to give him grace than myself.

    After I walked away, this hit me like a truck. That’s when I started to give myself the grace and love that I pushed down in favor of trying to hold the relationship together. Did I do everything right? No, but that’s the point of grace.

    I poured so much love back into me and my life after the breakup. I gave myself grace to recognize that this relationship was not the right fit, and that it took me some time to really see that. Grace allowed me to forgive both myself and my ex, because it always creates a ripple effect.

    3. Letting go is a process, not a destination.

    Even though I walked away with clarity and purpose, I didn’t feel an immediate sense of relief right after we broke up. I knew it was the right decision, but my body went into a grieving process.

    When someone passes away, we go through stages of grief. The same thing happens after a breakup.

    As I wavered back and forth between anger and acceptance, it helped when I returned back to the core reasoning behind why I walked away when I did, and why that was necessary for my happiness and well-being. Each deliberate choice to return back to my core knowing, while giving myself grace, was a part of the process of letting go and healing my heart.

    Making peace with this relationship and breakup meant treating my healing as a process and not a final destination. I had to acknowledge every step along the way to rebuild and come back from it stronger than before.

    —-

    We don’t always make the best choices for our highest selves in every moment, but this is an impossible expectation. We are all human beings trying our best to learn from experiences and grow. And I don’t believe there should be any regret in that.

  • How I Forgave Myself for Cheating and Hurting Someone I Once Loved

    How I Forgave Myself for Cheating and Hurting Someone I Once Loved

    “The best apology is simply admitting your mistake. The worst apology is dressing up your mistake with rationalizations to make it look like you were not really wrong, but just misunderstood.” ~Dodinsky

    It was January 2016 and Baltimore was in the midst of a blizzard. Outside, the city was covered in a three-foot blanket of snow. Inside, we were having a blizzard party. My boyfriend, five friends, and me.

    We’d been coloring, listening to music, dancing, and playing games. Already, I knew it was one of the most cozy and fun nights of my life. Everyone was happy. The energy was easy and joyful.

    As the night went on, my boyfriend turned on his light display in the basement. It was a combination of LED lights and infinity mirrors that he built with our friend E. They both controlled the light show and music from an app on their phones.

    With the exception of one friend who went to bed early, we were all in the basement listening to music, dancing and enjoying the lights.

    Eventually, the basement group started to disperse. I went upstairs, and so did our friend E. A few people were in the kitchen. Someone stepped outside to smoke a cigarette. I noticed my boyfriend was the only one still down in the basement, then heard him coming up the stairs.

    As he entered the doorway, I noticed he was eerily calm, but I also sensed a rage bubbling beneath the surface. He approached our friend E, poked him in the chest, and said, “How long has this been going on?”

    I instantly knew what “this” was. So did E. But everyone else was clueless.

    My boyfriend told everyone to get out of the house (in the middle of the blizzard). Everyone except me, E, and another friend who he asked to stay as a neutral party. Someone woke up my friend who was sleeping upstairs. Everyone left and trudged home in three feet of snow. (Luckily, we were all neighbors, so they didn’t have to journey far).

    I have no idea what they were thinking, but I imagine everyone was confused and concerned.

    My boyfriend began to interrogate E and me because he’d read a message between us on E’s phone.

    It was a message from me that read: “I can’t wait to kiss you again.”

    Oof. I wish I could say I dreaded this moment. But I did not, because I honestly did not think this moment would happen.

    I didn’t think it would happen because earlier that day I had vowed not to mess around with E anymore. I had figured out that I was no longer in love with my boyfriend, and I was going to wait until he was finished with his dissertation in a few months to break up with him. In the meantime, I would not pursue anything that I felt with E.

    I thought I could simply tell my boyfriend that I had fallen out of love with him and was leaving. It was a good plan.

    I was guilty for having made out with E, and for the feelings I had for him, but we had not had sex, or even come close. Plus, I knew that my being unfaithful was a symptom of the fact that I needed to get out of this relationship. I had crossed a line, but I knew why, and I was going to stay on the right side of the line until I talked to my boyfriend.

    It was a good plan. Except for the fact that my boyfriend suspected something was going on. (Of course he did. People know. People always know.)

    So there we were: midnight in the middle of a blizzard in an intense interrogation. Time was moving slowly. It was all very surreal and nightmare-ish.

    The interrogation went something like: When? Where? How often? Why? To our other friend: Did you know? (He had no clue).

    The questioning went on and on until eventually, my boyfriend told E and our friend to leave. Then it was just the two of us.

    The thing I remember most about the rest of that night is lying together on the couch, crying. I was crying because I had hurt this person who, at one time, I loved deeply. He was crying because he was hurt by the one person he thought would never, could never, do such a thing.

    What I remember most about the next week, before I moved out, is lying in bed with him, watching Rick and Morty, and having the most open, raw conversations we’d had in years.

    I remember how sad I felt.

    I also remember how relieved I felt.

    I didn’t have the language for it at the time, but the relief was from the death that was occurring, and the re-birth that was to come.

    I can’t say I regret the outcome because, in truth, I am now happy. And from what I know, my ex is happy too. And this happiness would not have existed for either of us if I had stayed in that relationship. In the words of Liz Gilbert, via Glennon Doyle: “there is no such thing as one-way liberation.”

    But I do regret how it happened. I wish I had been mature, wise, and strong enough to recognize that I no longer wanted this relationship, before it got to the point of cheating.

    I wish I had known myself better.

    I wish I had known that I could have just left without doing this horrible thing and causing so much pain.

    I regret how I made my ex feel.

    I regret how I let down my friends who thought I was someone who would never do something like that.

    I regret how I strung E along for so long and toyed with his emotions, sometimes knowingly, sometimes not.

    I regret how little worth I had in myself, which led me to stay in this relationship far past its expiration date.

    I am still healing from this experience, and I cannot blame anyone for my pain, except myself. It’s a really weird thing to be healing from the pain you caused yourself.

    It’s also weird to be healing while living a happy, nourishing dream life, which is exactly what I am doing.

    The night of that blizzard a death occurred. A death of a version of myself that I did not like. A version of me who did not speak her mind, who was in the background, who did not like having sex, who was too scared to imagine a more expansive, beautiful life.

    This death opened the portal for me to return to myself, which is the journey I have been on for the last seven years. And it’s a beautiful one.

    If you’ve been hurt by someone who was unfaithful, I am sorry. I feel for you. You did not deserve it. Allow yourself to feel what you feel. Learn from it. Forgive the other person, for the sake of your inner peace.

    If you’ve hurt someone by being unfaithful, I am sorry too. I feel for you too. Allow yourself to feel what you feel. Learn from it. Forgive yourself.

    I’ve learned to forgive myself by:

    1. Acknowledging the pain I caused and apologizing for it.

    2. Communing with my inner child to learn about her unmet needs (the need to speak up, to be heard and seen, to stop people-pleasing).

    3. Remembering that I am imperfect and that making mistakes is part of the human experience.

    4. Asking myself what I learned during this experience (for one thing, not to stay in a relationship when my instincts tell me it’s over), and then applying that learning moving forward.

    And know this: if you are in a relationship in which you are unhappy, you do have the strength to get out of it, without hurting the other person through infidelity. (Please know that I am not talking about abusive relationships here; that was not my experience and is not something I am suited to give any kind of advice on.)

    Also know that you do not have to stick in a relationship just because your lives are intertwined and it’s hard to imagine the logistics (moving out, dividing finances, breaking a lease, etc.) of breaking up. If you’re most worried about these logistics, then it’s time to go. You will figure it out. And you both will be better off for it.

    The last thing I’ll leave you with are these words that my friend-turned-mentor shared with me: People do shitty things, but it does not necessarily mean they are shitty people. Let’s have grace with ourselves and each other. Let’s love even when (especially when) it seems another is not worthy of our love. Let’s have compassion for the lonely child that exists inside most of us.

  • How I’ve Navigated My Grief and Guilt Since Losing My Narcissistic Father

    How I’ve Navigated My Grief and Guilt Since Losing My Narcissistic Father

    “One of the greatest awakenings comes when you realize that not everybody changes.  Some people never change.  And that’s their journey.  It’s not yours to try and fix it for them.” ~Unknown

    In 2021 my father died. Cancer of… so many things.

    Most of the events during that time are a blur, but the emotions that came with them are vivid and unrelenting.

    I was the first in my family to find out.

    My mother and sister had gone on an off-grid week-long getaway up the West Coast of South Africa, where there’s nothing but sand, shore, and shrubs.

    I was living in China (where I continue to live today), and we were under Covid lockdown.

    He called me on WhatsApp (which was rare) from the Middle East, where he lived with his new wife. Asian and half his age.

    The cliche of the aging white man in a full-blown-late-midlife crisis. Gaudy bling and all.

    He looked gaunt and ashen-faced. That’s what people look like when they’re delivering bad news. He dropped the bomb.

    “I have cancer.”

    What I am about to admit haunts me to this day: I cared about him in the way one human cares for the well-being of any other human. But at the time, I never cared at the level that a son should care for a father. I had built a fortress around myself that protected me from him over the years.

    He’d never really been a parent to me. He wasn’t estranged physically, but emotionally, he’d never been there.

    He was emotionally absent. He always had been.

    I was the weird gay kid with piercings, tattoos, and performance art pieces.

    He was a military man. The rugby-watching, beer-drinking, logically minded man’s man.

    We were polar opposites—opposite sides of completely different currencies.

    I sat with the bomb that had just been delivered so hastily into my arms and ears. Information that I didn’t know what to do with. It felt empty. I didn’t know how to feel or how to respond. 

    Six years earlier, in 2015, I had flown back to South Africa to sit with my mother on her sofa for two weeks while she grappled with the complexity of the emotions of being recently divorced after forty-something years of marriage.

    My mother and I always had been close. She had spent her life dedicated to a narcissistic man who had cheated on her more than once, who was absent a lot of the time during our childhood because of his job in the Navy, and from whom she had shielded my sister and me.

    He had hurt her again. And I hated him for it.

    She had been devoted to him. Committed to their marriage. Gave him the freedom to work abroad while she kept the home fires burning. She’d faithfully maintained those home fires for over a decade already. She had planned their whole future together since she was sixteen years old and pregnant with my sister, who’s five years old than me.

    And this is how he repaid her.

    He’d taken it all away from her and left her alone in the house they’d built together before I was born.  Haunted by the shadows of future plans abandoned in the corners.

    She descended into a spiral of anxiety and depression, resulting in two weeks of inpatient care at a recovery clinic with a dual diagnosis of depression and addiction (alcoholism) that wasn’t entirely her fault.

    He caused that.

    I remember lying in bed when I was about six or seven years old; I was meant to be asleep, the room in deep blue darkness. Hearing my father in the living room say, “That boy has the brains of a gnat.”

    I assume I hadn’t grasped some primary math homework or forgotten to tidy something away. Things that I was prone to. Things that annoyed him to the point of frustrated outbursts and anger.

    “Ssh! He can hear you,” my mother replied. I still hear the remorseful tone of her voice.

    He was logical and mechanical. I am not.

    I don’t remember my crime that day, but I still suffer the penalty of negative self-talk, a lack of confidence, and a fear of being considered “less than” by others.

    It’s one of my earliest memories.

    And there, in 2021, I sat with the news of his diagnosis. I didn’t know what to feel.

    Guilty for not having the emotional response I knew I was meant to be having?

    Shouldn’t I be crying? Shouldn’t I be distraught?

    How do other people react to this kind of news?

    I’ve always been a highly sensitive person. It’s my superpower. The power of extreme empathy. But there I sat, empty.

    I felt trapped.

    I was in China in 2021, and we were under Covid lockdown. There were zero flights.

    I was emotionally and physically trapped.

    Gradually, more feelings started surfacing.

    At first, I felt compassion for a fellow human facing something utterly devastating.

    Then I started to feel fear for my mom, who had held onto the idea that maybe, one day, they’d get back together.

    I was terrified about how she would take this news when she returned from her holiday.

    Within a few weeks, a “family” Facebook group was set up—cousins, uncles, people I’d never met before, myself, my sister, and my mother.

    And the “other woman” and her kids from previous relationships, none of whom we’d ever met.

    Phrases like “no matter how far apart we are, family always sticks together” were pinging in the group chat.

    I didn’t know how to absorb those sentiments.

    Family always sticks together? Didn’t you tear our family apart? Where were you when I was lying in a hospital bed in 2011 with a massive abdominal tumor?  Family always sticks together? What a convenient idea in your hour of need.  

    More guilt. How could I be so jaded?

    A month later, in January 2021, he passed away.

    It happened so quickly, and for that, I am grateful. No human should ever suffer if there is no hope of survival.

    That’s when the floodgates of emotions opened.

    I cried for weeks.

    I cried for the misery and suffering he caused my family, my mother’s despair, and my sister’s loss. I shed tears for my grandfather, who had lost two of his three sons and wife. I wept for my uncle, who had lost another brother.

    I cried for the future my mom had planned but would never have.

    And I cried for the father I never had and the hope of a relationship that would never be.

    I sobbed from the guilt of not crying for him.

    Then I got angry. Really, really angry.

    I got angry with him for never being the father I needed. I got mad for the hurt he caused my mom. I blamed him for never accepting me for me. I was angry with him because I was the child, and he was the adult.

    Being accepted by him was never my responsibility.

    In the weeks and months that followed, the wounds got deeper. My mother’s drinking got worse, to the point of (a very emotional and ugly) intervention.

    We found out that my father had left his military pension (to the tune of millions) to his new, younger wife of less than a year and her four children from different men. 

    While I want to take the moral high ground and tell you it’s not about the money—it’s solely about the final message of not caring for his biological children in life or death—I’d be lying.

    My sister and I have been struggling financially for years, and that extra monthly money would’ve offered us peace of mind, good medical insurance, or just a sense that he did care about our well-being after all.

    But there’s no use ruminating on it.

    Accept the things you cannot change.

    It’s been two years since he passed away.

    I’ve bounced between grief, anger, and acceptance, like that little white ball rocketing chaotically around a pinball machine, piercing my emotions with soul-blinding lights and sound.

    The word “dad” never meant anything to me. To me, it was a verb, not a noun. It never translated into the tangible world.

    My mother once said, “Now I know you were a child who needed more hugs.”

    She hugged me often.

    But I also needed his hugs.

    I’ve found a way to accept that he would never have been the father I needed. I will never have a relationship with my father. Even if he were still alive, he would never have been capable of loving us the way we needed him to.

    You cannot give what you don’t have.

    He was a narcissist. Confirmed by a therapist in the weeks and months after their sudden divorce.

    He was never going to change. He didn’t know how to.

    Using NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) techniques, I’ve been able to reframe the childhood memories I have about my father.

    That fateful night all those years ago, lying in bed, hearing those words that have undermined my confidence and self-worth for thirty-four years: “That boy has the brains of a gnat.”

    Through visualization and mental imagery, I’ve found a pathway to healing.

    Through NLP, I became the observer in the room of that memory. I could give that little boy lying in bed, his head under the sheets, the comfort, protection, and acceptance he needed.

    I wrapped golden wings around that little boy and protected him.

    I became my own guardian angel.

    During the same session, my NLP coach gently encouraged me to look into the living room where my father sat that night.

    What I saw in my mind’s eye took my breath away.

    I saw a broken and withered man. His legs were drawn up close to his chest. I saw the pain inside him. I saw a man who didn’t know how to love or be loved.

    I saw a man who was scared, confused, and deprived.

    In that moment of being the observer, the guardian angel in the next room, a brilliant light forcefully rushed from me and coiled around him. A luminous cord of golden energy.

    I don’t know if the surge of energy wrapped around him was to heal or restrain him. Frankly, it doesn’t matter. It was pure love, compassion, and light. And it was coming from me: I was my own Guardian Angel.

    At that moment, all the past yearning for his love, acceptance, and approval dissipated. I didn’t need it from him; I needed to give it to him—filled with empathy and compassion. I needed to release him from the anger, hurt, and pain he had caused.

    I needed to do it for myself, but I also needed to do it for him.

    I’ve accepted him for who he was.

    It took a lot of journaling, visualization, mindfulness and meditation, listening to Buddhist teachings (Thich Nhat Hanh in particular), and sitting with the emotions.

    It took the desire to heal myself and him—to be happy and whole again.

    He was painfully human. But aren’t we all?

    He was a narcissist. He drank too much, cheated on his wife, never took the time to have any meaningful connection with his kids, and loved Sudoku.

    He caused my mother pain that still haunts her to this day.

    She still dreams about him.

    I like to think that if he had one more chance to reach out from The Great Beyond, he might say something along the lines of what Teresa Shanti once said:

    “To my children,  I’m sorry for the unhealed parts of me that in turn hurt you.  It was never my lack of love for you.  Only a lack of love for myself.”

    He was a deeply flawed man—but he was my father.

  • One Missing Ingredient in My Recovery and Why I Relapsed

    One Missing Ingredient in My Recovery and Why I Relapsed

    “The Phoenix must burn to emerge.” ~Janet Fitch

    Many people were shocked when I relapsed after twenty-three years of recovery. After all, I was the model of doing it right. I did everything I was told: went to treatment, followed instructions, prayed for help, and completed the assignments.

    After returning home from treatment, I joined a recovery program and went to therapy. Once again, I followed all the suggestions, which worked when it came to staying sober. I had no desire to drink or do drugs—well, at least for a long while.

    When I went to treatment, I was an emotional wreck. I would have done anything to get rid of the pain. But substances only intensified the pain and prevented healing.

    The worse I felt, the more I needed to medicate those emotions, but it was only causing the ache in my heart to be prolonged, driving me to suicidal thoughts. The moment I stopped using substances, the pain immediately subsided. I’d gone from struggling to get out of bed to engaging in my life fully.

    But going to treatment was only the tip of the iceberg. There was something much deeper underneath my addiction that I wrongly thought a relationship could fix. There was an underlying malaise and sense of shame I couldn’t identify. I knew something was wrong, so I kept searching for answers but couldn’t find the magic formula.

    Without the solution, relapse was inevitable.

    Most recovery programs address a single addiction, but I had many. After two years of sobriety, I stopped smoking but then started compulsive exercising. I didn’t eat right, spent too much, was codependent with needy people, and went from one addictive relationship to the next, never healthy enough to attract someone who could problem solve with me.

    I didn’t realize I was still substituting addictions for love.

    I wanted to make up for my troubled childhood, and I thought getting married and having kids would fix the problem, but after several attempts, it only made me feel more inadequate. Worse, I was a therapist and felt like a hypocrite. It wasn’t like I didn’t work at getting better; self-help was like a part-time job

    I spent decades in different kinds of therapy, not only as a patient but expanding my education in other modalities. I attended dozens of workshops and seminars doing inner-child work. I fully immersed myself in over twenty years of therapy, including psychoanalysis. My toolbox was overflowing, but I still felt disconnected for some reason.

    I didn’t realize those tools weren’t teaching me how to love myself.

    My journey took me on a lifelong spiritual quest. I found a higher power in recovery. I attended various churches and did some mission work in Haiti. I went to Brazil to be healed by John of God (later convicted of multiple cases of sexual abuse), on to a spiritual quest in Peru, on a visit to the Holy Land in Israel, and to Fiji to find my destiny but still felt something was missing.

    I read every spirituality book I could get my hands on and studied A Course in Miracles, but I was still disconnected from myself and others.

    Discouraged, I began to drift further away from all sources of help. I resigned myself to being an unhealed healer.

    I didn’t realize that all the therapy and spirituality were simply another form of addiction for me.

    Relapse began when I got breast cancer and was prescribed opiates after surgery. I got a taste of that forgotten high and made sure I took all the pills, whether I needed them or not. I also forgot how mood-altering substances affected my judgment.

    Instead of facing my fears about being ill and moving forward with my life, I reconciled with my ex-husband. I had little to no regard for how this affected my children. Like a piece of dust suctioned into a vacuum, despite feeling uncomfortable, I allowed my thoughts to suck me back into unhealthy choices—all the while in therapy.

    The next seven years were dark. Another divorce was followed by my former husband’s death, though I was grateful to bring him to our home and care for him until he passed. Then, a fire turned our newly renovated home into a mass of black and burnt-out walls, forcing another relocation for myself and youngest. Soon after, one of my businesses suffered severe damage from another fire resulting in six months of work and restoration.

    Three devastating hurricanes over two years damaged our home and business. One caused the foyer ceiling to cave in, another landed a large tree on our roof, and the third made our yard look like it had been run through a giant blender. One of my businesses was twice flooded and everything had to be thrown away.

    Soon after, our home was ransacked and burglarized. The stress of managing repairs, insurance claims, child-rearing, and working full-time felt like I was repeatedly set on fire and drowned.

    I kept trying to get better but felt emotionally shredded from the struggle. Desperate for support, poor decisions kept me in a whirlwind of insanity—more bad relationships. I was tired of trying, sick of hurting, and anger brewed within me.

    I stopped therapy, recovery meetings, and my spiritual quest, and decided to throw it all away. I went on a rebellious rampage. I’d been married at age sixteen and had a child, and now I was entirely alone. I decided to return to my pre-recovery lifestyle and live it up.

    Looking back, I lived a dual life of selfishness and a thirty-year career of helping others. I was self-will run riot but couldn’t see myself. I’d lived a life of making things happen and simultaneously wondered why my higher power didn’t deliver everything I wanted.

    Spirituality is a tricky thing. It’s so easy to think that God or some higher power is in control, but I believe, with free will, it’s a collaborative effort. Do the footwork and wait… if only I’d waited; impatience was my Achilles heel.

    My party life added a new heap of problems: disappointed children, bad judgment, and wrecked relationships. It didn’t take long to wind up in the same place that took me to treatment twenty-three years earlier, an emotional bottom. But this time, I was ready for the miracle of change.

    I finally found the missing ingredient to a happy life.

    The night was pitch black as I drove around emotionally deranged from grief and substances. After a near accident, I pulled into a parking lot and sobbed uncontrollably. I railed, “Whatever you are out there, why did you abandon me? Why haven’t you helped me? Why don’t you love me?”

    Immediately, a thought shot through my brain like an arrow through a cloud. “It’s not me that doesn’t love you. You don’t love yourself.” And for the first time in my life, I realized two things: I didn’t love myself and didn’t know what loving myself even meant.

    How would I learn to love myself? It never occurred to me that I didn’t. But now, I was armed with the missing ingredient to my happiness, and I intended to figure it out.

    Psychoanalysts are taught the importance of an infant’s basic needs for nurturing and bonding, but I’d never applied any of those concepts to myself. There were some missing parts in my childhood, so I had to learn how to provide for my physical, emotional, and spiritual needs,  as well as get proper nutrition, rest, and activity, in addition to responsibilities, play time, creative and quiet time, gratitude and appreciation, and loss of tolerance for unkind behavior (to and from others), all of which places I started the journey to self-love.

    I let go of what I wanted and focused on doing the next right thing for myself and others. The results were miraculous; peace engulfed me for the first time. By being the love I’d always wanted, I felt loved.

    I was always a doer and thought that spirituality was like getting a degree. Follow the steps, and everything will be okay. Whether or not that’s true, there’s a lot more to staying sober than following a set of directions. It’s important to find a higher power, clean up our act, apologize to those we’ve hurt, and stop using, but that won’t keep us sober if we don’t know how to love ourselves. My higher power became love.

    Correct behavior and self-love are not the same. Loving oneself starts with giving thanks to the sunrise and the sunset, cuddling with your pillow and those you love, acknowledging a universal intelligence and trusting guidance from your conscience, discovering and loving your mission, and nourishing your body, mind, and soul.

    Feed your body with nontoxic food; feed your mind with positive, stimulating information; and feed your soul with nature, good friends, healthy partners, and a higher power (of your own understanding) that inspires and uplifts you.

    If you’ve struggled with staying sober, you probably haven’t learned to love yourself. It’s never too late to start. When I started loving myself like a small child, I lost all substitutes for that godly love, and I finally began to blossom and grow.

    It took decades of failure to discover the missing ingredient to staying sober. I had to learn that love isn’t something I get. Love is an action I give to myself and others.

    Through being the love that I want, I then receive love. There’s a difference between staying sober and recovering. For all like me, who failed to stay sober, learn how to love yourself and then you will recover from the lack of self-love at the root of this tragic disease.

    It’s not enough to just stay sober, and life without happiness makes no sense. You were meant to have a life of love and joy. If you’ve tried everything and something’s still missing, try learning how to love.

  • How I Found Forgiveness and Compassion When I Felt Hurt and Betrayed

    How I Found Forgiveness and Compassion When I Felt Hurt and Betrayed

    “I can bear any pain as long as it has meaning.” ~Haruki Murakami

    I’ve always felt like someone on the outside. Despite having these feelings I’ve been relatively successful at playing the game of life, and have survived through school, university, and the workplace—although, at times, working so hard to ’survive’ has impacted my emotional well-being.

    I have been lucky enough to have healthy and supportive relationships with a few loved ones who have accepted me as I am (quirks and all). To anyone else I’ve come across, I suspect I’ve been perceived as inexplicably normal and inoffensive.

    Like many of us who have suffered with our mental health, I’ve always been curious to learn more about who I am beyond the surface level experiences of life. Spirituality is a big umbrella, and in my quest for truth I explored various modalities. I eventually found a home within a small yoga community.

    I find many of us seekers feel deeply and have a tendency to overcomplicate things that just are. In my mind this style of yoga worked; quite simply, I followed the practices and life felt a little bit easier, I felt more acceptable as I was, and I believe it made me a better human being to people around me.

    The deeper I went into the practice, the more I began to observe its pitfalls. As is common in many spiritual lineages, it’s quite often not the methods and the teachings that are fallible, but how humans interpret and relate to them.

    In my particular lineage, the leader was found to have physically and sexually assaulted students over a period spanning decades. Those who were brave enough to come forward were silenced, and it took many years before the evidence became so undeniable that the community (by and large) finally acknowledged the truth.

    The revelation and realization that the leader was fallible caused significant pain to many during this time, and is sadly an experience not unique in spiritual sanghas.

    At this time some conversations were had regarding the student-teacher dynamic, and the propensity for abuse in our lineage, but no cohesive and collective safeguards were established or defined. Small fringe communities developed during this time in an apparent greater commitment to change; however, it was by no means the status quo.

    The leader, at this point, had left his body, and it appeared as if many felt it was this man alone who was the problem, and therefore the problem was no more.

    I loved the practice, and I felt my knowledge of the history of the lineage equipped me with an awareness of the propensity for harmful power dynamics to occur. I was fortunate in the early years of my journey to have teachers whose only objective appeared to be to support students by sharing what they knew.

    For the first time ever, I didn’t feel like I was an outsider—I felt acceptable as I was. Sadly, however, due to a teacher relocating, I joined a new community with a new teacher, and this is where my story of pain begins.

    My new teacher must have been suffering. The specifics around my experience are not relevant for this article, but I understand now I was bullied, belittled, and manipulated. Maybe it was a misunderstanding? Maybe I asked too many questions? Maybe I was too direct? Maybe I wasn’t obsequious enough? I went over and over in my head to try to understand, why me?

    I still loved the practice and wanted to be welcomed like everyone else. Throughout my experience I remained respectful to the teacher, but it was a confusing time. Eventually, I can only assume, the teacher got bored with playing with me and played her final card, banning and ostracizing me from the group. I was also labelled to the community as abusive and an aggressor.

    And, oh boy, did that bring up a cycle of emotions. Written down on paper like this they are just words, but I can promise you they felt intense and consuming and relentless. I felt…

    -Humiliation: I have been misrepresented. I can’t show my face ever again. People don’t believe me that I did nothing wrong.
    -Shame: Why am I the person who has been ostracized? There really must be something really wrong with me.
    -Rage: How dare someone cause me this much hurt? How dare they claim to be a spiritual leader?
    -Resentment: No one else in the community has stood up for me; none of them can be good people to let this happen.
    -Grief: I have lost a practice I really loved. My heart is broken.
    -Depression: My path gave me purpose, now what?

    Subsequently, my life unraveled, and I can honestly say the period following was the darkest of my life. Family, friends, and my therapist allowed me space to explore and accept my pain.

    We all experience the world through our own lens, and I appreciate I may have personal defects that clouded my experience of the situation. However, I do see now that I was wronged. No teacher will perfectly match my personal disposition, and that’s okay. However, they should offer a safe and inclusive space for spiritual discovery. I wasn’t given that, and that wasn’t good enough. 

    So many times, well-being supporters would tell me, “You need to move on, forgive, forget, find another yoga space.” I understood but I didn’t know how to go about that.

    At the time, a good friend was going through recovery from alcoholism and working the twelve steps. She told me that she was praying every day for people who had harmed her.

    “How can you do that?” I remember asking her. “I couldn’t wish well for those who have harmed me.” My friend told me that, to begin with, she didn’t believe what she was saying, but that over time she began to feel compassion and forgiveness toward those people.

    So that’s what I did. I made a commitment to myself to start practicing daily forgiveness meditations.

    To begin with, I worked on forgiving the teacher. I learned more about this teacher’s past and learned about a significant life event that I believe may have caused great pain. We all have shadow sides, and I spent time reflecting on the occasions where I may have hurt people to project my own suffering. With time, I was able to see and accept that her actions towards me came from a place of hurt.

    I also spent time reflecting on the positive things the teacher gave me. I acknowledged how she’d held virtual space for our community through covid lockdowns, which undoubtedly helped many of us during those isolating times. I appreciated how she had introduced me to several authors whose words I continue to find great richness in, and whose books I have since recommended to others. The teacher also helped me to advance my physical asana practice, through encouraging me to find possibility in movement which felt impossible.

    It didn’t happen overnight, but I was gradually able to find space in my heart for compassion toward this teacher. However, I wasn’t fully healed.

    I began to understand that there lay deeper hurt and anger directed at other community members, some of whom were aware of this abuse and either denied it or chose to do nothing, believing it had nothing to do with them.

    It was through those interactions that I began to understand the pain of victim denial and gaslighting. I felt angered by the lack of collective action by the community to hold harmful teachers accountable, and to enforce better safeguards to ensure greater student safety. I knew there were others who, like me, had been hurt, and that broke my heart.

    So that’s what my current practice is focused on—healing and forgiving institutional betrayal.

    I am lucky to have joined a new community that feels much kinder. It has taken time, but I am now able to separate my feelings toward yoga from the hurt I felt from individuals in the yoga community.

    I recognize now that many of those who silenced me when I tried to speak up about my teacher were just ignorant; they weren’t cruel. There is still pain, but with time I can see how this experience is a gift; it has taught me how to find forgiveness and reminded me of the importance of compassion toward all beings.

  • Finding Home After Divorce: What Brought Me Peace and Healing

    Finding Home After Divorce: What Brought Me Peace and Healing

    “We need to learn how to navigate our minds, both the good and the bad, the light and the dark, so that ultimately, we can create acceptance and open our arms and come home to ourselves.” ~Candy Leigh

    Divorce is so common that my son, at a young age, asked if my husband and I could divorce so he could have “a mom’s and dad’s house too!” And my daughter agreed because then “we could get double presents on holidays!” Given my experience as a child with divorced parents, I assured them, “Guys, divorce is not really that much fun.”

    The truth is there is nothing romantic about divorce for the parents or the children. When a family breaks up it becomes de-stabilizing for everyone. Suddenly, how things were disappears and everything feels tilted. Like being on one of those “tilt-a-whirl” amusement park rides where you just want it to right itself so you can feel better.

    Home doesn’t feel like home anymore in the way one knew it. A mother’s kitchen may have no child at Christmas. A parent’s bedroom looks different with someone missing.

    I remember before my parents divorced, I noticed a sign. Their bed was actually two twin beds pushed together. But in the year before the divorce the beds were separated. Soon, my dad wasn’t around on Sunday mornings to make me bagel and bacon sandwiches, and our house echoed emptiness.

    One’s home is grounding and so important to their inner stability. Divorce is like an earthquake leaving emotional rubble in the living room that a family must heal and recover from.

    My “earthquake” happened when I was fifteen years old. There had been tremors before. My parents sometimes liked each other. But when they didn’t, there was a lot of shrieking in the kitchen and even worse, cold silences where they would walk by one another as if each one didn’t exist—a scary distance that gave me a stomachache.

    My worst fear was that they’d divorce, but I decided if that happened, I could always just kill myself.

    Thankfully, my plan never came to pass. But on that autumn day, after a tearful conversation on our beige sofa when my parents used the terrifying “D” word,  I decided that I would never cry about it again and tell no one. Instead, I got on my bike and pedaled away my pain, my voice lost in spokes of sorrow. I didn’t eat enough for years hoping that swallowing less would lessen the pain.

    The literature points out that living in a home with high conflict is more detrimental than divorce for all parties involved, so no matter how painful it is, separation is often the next right and healthy step.

    Recent findings indicate that better adjustment after divorce correlates with less conflict before and after between the parents. So it’s the detrimental effects of conflict rather than the divorce itself that is an important mediating factor to consider.

    Yet “nice” divorces without conflict and with excellent communication are rare. Most couples will divorce how they were married and bring the dysfunctional communication and marital issues into the divorce process. After deciding to divorce, things may become more stressful for families. But if the marriage doesn’t feel salvageable, separation provides hope for something healthier and happier that staying in an unhappy relationship may not provide.

    Quickly, my father met someone new. And suddenly, I was meeting a lady in a big house that was neat, orderly, and had three teenagers. I was scared they wouldn’t like me. But they were nice to the curly-haired young girl who visited every other weekend.

    My stepmother taught me to make a pie crust being careful the dough was as “soft as a baby’s bottom.” She bought me my first prom dress and called my father “dear,” and no one yelled. She never became my mother, but over the years, I had the security of two women who took care of me. And when she died on a cold Christmas morning thirty years later, I had finally learned to weep.

    There is a strange sense of togetherness in divorce even if a family doesn’t realize it at the time. Parents grieve, don’t feel good enough, and often have guilt because of the children. Children grieve and can have guilt about not being good enough to hold parents together. No one is alone in the sorrow, and that mutual understanding can reduce a family’s disconnection and isolation.

    The importance of home and family is never shattered; it is how to rebuild and find a sense of belonging in the new arrangement that is left standing. Often, that includes new partners, stepbrothers and sisters, or a smaller family of a single parent and child.

    The uncertainty of the future with new family constellations is challenging. Yet tomorrow’s uncertainty is an issue that parents, children, and all of us grapple with throughout life. But with time we adjust, build new homes, and find safety and a sense of security once again.

    The emotional toll on children often includes increased sadness, anger, and depression, as well as increased physical symptoms and academic challenges. But just being aware of these reactions and comforting, normalizing, and giving voice to a child’s experience can be healing.

    We have to encourage everyone not to divorce from their emotions. My parents, at the time of the divorce, thought it would be a good idea for me to see a therapist. He was an old man sitting behind a big desk who asked me a lot of questions that I didn’t want to answer. I think I sat through the whole session but was very clear I’d never go there again!

    It was only with leaving my family for college that I could get help on my own terms. My hunger for my true feelings had finally become more important than remaining hungry for food, which was how I had coped for years.

    I walked into my therapist’s office, and she smiled and said, “Take a seat.” I finally had found true nurturance in a safe space where I could share my anger, sadness, and grief. It was that deep home inside all of us which is the tender place of truth.

    The timeline for healing is different for everyone and every family. But it comes with grieving and an acceptance of the loss—like a death we never forget but learn to live with, and it becomes part of us and our life story.

    Divorce may not be what we planned for, that fairy tale of happily ever after. And we can easily be hard on ourselves or hurt ourselves with destructive behaviors instead of facing our pain. But learning how to grieve, care for, and love ourselves through the difficult times brings a sense of peace and healing to the home inside. And that home isn’t defined by a mom’s or a dad’s house.

  • How I Found Hope in my Father’s Terminal Cancer

    How I Found Hope in my Father’s Terminal Cancer

    “Without realizing it, the individual composes his life according to the laws of beauty, even in times of greatest distress.” ~Milan Kundera

    When my father received a terminal cancer diagnosis, I went through a wave of different emotions. Fear, anger, sadness. It opened a completely new dictionary that I had not had access to before. A realm of experiences, thoughts, and emotions that lie at the very bedrock of human life was suddenly revealed to me.

    After the initial horror and dread at hearing the news had subsided, I was surprised to find a new sense of meaning and connection in the world around me.

    In part, dealing with this news has been profoundly lonely. But the truth is, cancer is a human experience, and it’s been overwhelming and humbling to walk into a reality shared by so many people across the world.

    I was immediately confronted with how much I had avoided other people’s experiences because cancer frightened me.

    Our minds are fickle when confronted with terminal illness. It can be difficult to untangle the horror and pain we associate with cancer from someone’s very rich and dignified life despite it. 

    We see cancer as a deviation from what human life is supposed to offer. A part of this can be found in the values we hold in our culture and our idealization of productivity as proof of our worthiness, with pleasure as the ultimate symbol of success. In this fast-paced, luxury-crazed world, there’s no room for hurt, pain, and mortality.

    On a personal level, I understand that it can be difficult to avoid thinking of cancer as an evil intruder that steals away the ones we love, that disrupts any chance at a good life with its debilitating symptoms and treatments. Cancer is a frightening reminder of limitations and loss.

    I was greatly affected by my expectations of cancer, in that when I found out about my father’s terminal diagnosis, I instantly began grieving a person who was still very much alive. As if life with cancer wasn’t really a life at all.

    After all, terminal means there is no cure. It means that if left untreated, it kills you. It also means that treatment won’t keep you alive forever. You will die of it, unless you die of something else in the meantime, which is likely, considering the risk of infection and complication associated with the aggressive treatment and a deteriorating immune system. It’s a death sentence.

    My first reaction to the news was that my parents had to make the most of the time they had left together. They have always been ardent travelers, and as far back as I can remember, talked excitedly about the trips they were going to take when they were older.

    I instinctively felt existential dread on their behalf and encouraged them to take out their bucket list and start packing their suitcases, to start traveling while they still had the chance.

    Now I see how misplaced my reaction was. To my parents, the whole appeal of traveling vanished when it was motivated by the ticking clock of imminent death. In telling them to go travel, all they heard was “you’re going to die, and you haven’t gotten to the end of your bucket list!”

    It turns out, life is so much more than the collection of ideas we have about what we’re going to do and where we’re going to go. Life is not about getting through a list. Sometimes only the gravest of situations can show us what is sacred in our lives. 

    By living through a pandemic and then receiving a cancer diagnosis, my father’s life came to a bit of a standstill. But despite my original anxiety on his behalf, it wasn’t really the sad ordeal I thought it would be.

    On the contrary. My father woke up from a life of constant traveling and planning for the future, only to find that he loves the life he is already living in the present moment.

    The abundance of life is not out there on a beach in Spain, it’s in the first home he ever owned, next to the forest he loves, where on a wind-still day you can hear the ocean; it’s drinking coffee in the garden with his wife, and reading books in the company of a devoted, purring cat; it’s using the fine china for breakfast and playing board games on rainy evenings.

    I’m sure that my father has moments of fear about his disease and about death, but for the most part, he’s just dealing with the existential and human need of wanting to be treated with dignity, of being more than a disease he happens to have, being more than a symbol of a death that comes to us all eventually anyway.

    Cancer brings with it a whole new world of thoughts and feelings; a lot of it is heavy, a lot of it is fear and pain, but there is also dignity, humility, connection, love, and acceptance. It demands new ideas about life and death, about people, about where we come from and who we are. 

    I cannot imagine anything more human and more dignified than that.

    As I led with, I have gone through a wave of emotions since I found out that one of my favorite people in the world has terminal cancer. It has in no way been easy, but life doesn’t always have to be easy to be good. I have journeyed somewhere deep and unfamiliar and found something there that I never expected to find—hope.

    Hope doesn’t always mean the promise of a better future or of finding a cure to our physical and psychological ailments. Hope is knowing that we are flawed, that we suffer, that we are finite. It dictates that every moment is sacred, and every life has dignity.

    Before we die, we live. The cause of our deaths will be any number of things. Cancer could be one of the reasons we die. We might have cancer and die of something else. That’s not what defines us. And we must make sure not to define each other by it either.

    When someone looks at you and utters the word “terminal,” you might be surprised to find hope. Hope, it turns out, wears many hats. Personally, I found it in the insurmountable evidence of human dignity.

  • Why Someone Has Been Grieving for So Long

    Why Someone Has Been Grieving for So Long