Tag: wisdom
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An Unexpected Place to Find Kindness: What Made Me Feel Like I Belong
“Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.” ~Mother Teresa
Routines are important to me. I rely on certain things to bring me back home to myself; to feel clear and open in my mind, body, and heart.
One of the activities that bring steadiness to my life is swimming. It’s one of my greatest pleasures. There is something magical to me about the feeling of water on my skin, the repetition of the arm strokes that calm my mind, the sound of my breath that relaxes my body, and the rays of sunlight that reflect off the water.
I rely on swimming three mornings a week. I like to say it gets me back in my lane or it keeps me out of the others’ lanes.
I showed up to my local pool several weeks ago—pool closed due to mechanical issues.
It was just supposed to be for a few days. I told myself that it was a gift to give my body a rest from swimming. Over the next few days, I told myself that this time allowed me to help a loved one who needed extra care. But as more time passed, I couldn’t find a reason to find peace without swimming. I missed it.
I found another pool a bit farther away from my home. Though I felt irritated that I had to go to another pool and create a new routine, I chose my love for swimming over any of the inconveniences.
After my first swim, an employee ran over to me and said, “I’d like to introduce myself and welcome you to our pool. It’s wonderful to have more lap swimmers here.” We connected over our love for swimming.
I left feeling a little more cheerful than I usually do after a swim, and I am already pretty cheerful after swimming.
I came back the following week, and after finishing my swim was greeted by the water aerobics women. As I got out of the pool, they chatted with me about swimming and how they want to learn to do laps.
Over the next few weeks, I began to notice that every time I left swimming, I was a bit more cheerful.
One morning, as the aerobics women came into the pool, I noticed that they greeted each other with hugs and kisses (yes, in the pool at 9:00 a.m.). I asked the lifeguard, “Does this always happen?”
He replied, “Sure does.”
In the locker room women hum songs, tell me to have a blessed day, and chat with me about all sorts of things as I shower. I don’t know anyone personally, and yet they are undeniably kind and warm to me.
Just this past week a woman belted out in the locker room I AM BEAUTIFUL. I couldn’t help but feel completely overjoyed at this women’s confidence and radiance.
I have been noticing how I’ve been feeling after swimming, and I have become curious about what’s contributed to the fact I haven’t checked if my pool has reopened.
It’s the women. It’s the kindness. It’s the singing. It’s the joyful greetings. It’s the curiosity.
While I only know two women by name, they know even less about me and how the things they have been doing for many years have been bringing an extra dose of cheer into my life.
It has not been easy for me living in a neighborhood that is known for intergenerational legacies of families living here. I didn’t come from this neighborhood. Even though I have been here for eighteen years, feeling like I fit in has been a private struggle that I don’t often share with others.
In this pool, a short drive from my home, in another neighborhood, I have found a place that I need more of in my life.
We all want to find our people; we all want to belong.
Sometimes we don’t actually know how much pain we hold until we are blessed with the one thing that has been missing—kindness.
And with that kindness, the protection starts to soften and the hurts come to the surface. We realize that’s just what our heart was holding all of these years.
In my mind, I’ve known the story of the past eighteen years of living in a place I don’t really feel like I fit.
I’ve worked with the beliefs. I’ve taken responsibility for what is mine to learn, heal, and grow from. I’ve also come to accept that this was what life gave me and that even in not feeling like I belong, there have been tremendous gifts and blessings these past years.
But it is also true that we need to give words to our truth. I want to belong. It is a human birthright to belong. We are designed to belong to groups of human beings.
We see people through our own lens and make up stories about them that aren’t necessarily true. I am grateful that these women at the pool didn’t make up a story about me and instead treated me with kindness.
They could have easily made up a story about me. They are black, and I am white. They know I am not from their neighborhood, but instead, they saw past what I looked like and opened their hearts to me. They sang to me in the shower, blessed my day with prayers, and wished me well for the rest of my day.
None of us know the story of someone’s insides. None of us know how simple acts of kindness and inclusion can make someone feel like they belong.
Sometimes the people that we least expect to make a difference in our lives do. We are all capable of this.
We all live with a protected heart in some ways; none of us are free from hurts. If I hadn’t sat with the pain of not belonging and feeling disappointed in past relationships, my heart may have been impenetrable. I had to learn to be there for myself with kindness before I could allow others to be there for me. I think this is true for all of us.
Sometimes the simple gesture of placing your hand on your heart and saying to yourself, “I am here for you” is a great act of kindness and allows the unexpected joys of life to be felt when you least expect them.
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How I’m Accepting the Uncertain Future (with Less Worry and More Joy)
“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” ~Ferris Bueller
For as long as I can remember, my life has consisted of change.
I grew up moving around the world. I went from Canada to Pakistan, Egypt to Jamaica, Ghana to Ukraine, and then finally China to Australia.
Moving to new countries and adapting to new cultures is like a cold plunge to your entire system and way of being. I felt I had no choice but to fit in as quickly as possible.
By the age of six or seven years old, I pre-empted every move by being constantly prepared. I thought about every possible scenario and planned in detail how I would survive. This technique served me well as I bounced around the world, saying goodbye to my best friends and immersing myself in a whole new culture, time and time again.
However, when I became an adult and had control over my life, I no longer needed to plan and prepare for my next move. I could live where I wanted. I could stay where I wanted. Yet my overthinking and planning continued.
Even if I had no intention of moving to another country, my body prepared me for it anyway. It served me up a million scenarios; it prepared me for the heartbreaking goodbyes and the awkward hellos.
I became addicted to thinking, and not the kind of thinking that earns you academic achievements. It was the kind of thinking that was built by years of worry. But the thing about worry is that it feels like productivity when in reality it’s a depleting sense of anxiety.
It feels like I’m doing the right thing by planning ahead, and for many years I felt like this was a very good, honest way to spend my time. It seemed very normal to plan every little part of my life in infinite detail and would-be scenarios. I mean, doesn’t everyone do that?
Apparently not. Apparently, some people deal with every situation as it comes. They don’t spend any time preemptively worrying about things before they happen or imagining all the possible scenarios that could unfold.
Instead, these particular people go about their daily life, and once they encounter a challenge, they deal with it in the moment. They just handle the situation and then move on. I can’t even imagine how calm and pleasant it must feel to have a mind like that.
Right now, we are in the middle of a crossroads, yet again. We are expats living in a country far away from any family and raising our young daughter on our own.
We’re debating whether to move closer to my husband’s family or closer to mine. We’re trying to figure out what jobs we could get and how much they could pay and if we need to go back to school. We want to do what’s best for our daughter, but also for us. We want to stick to our values, but we know we can’t have it all. We’re aware we need to compromise and sacrifice something.
My old self is rearing to plan, prepare, and organize my potential new life. It’s constantly on overdrive waiting to pounce and dive down a rabbit hole of overthinking. It hates living in uncertainty. But with this many potential scenarios, my head will explode if I sit down and think about every single one of them. Not to mention the life I will miss out on now by thinking about the life that awaits me.
Right now, it’s summer in Australia. The days are long and warm and humid, just the way I like it. As much as I feel like I need to spend every single waking moment planning and worrying, I also want to enjoy my life now.
The other day I went to the beach with my husband and one-year-old daughter. It was a sunny, hot day, and as we were getting ready to go, I began worrying if we’d ever find parking. “It’s okay. If there’s no parking, then we’ll just go home,” I told myself reassuringly.
We drove to the beach, and miraculously we found parking extremely close to the water. I found a little, tiny spot under a rock with shade to ensure no one would get burned. My husband took my daughter, and off they went in the water.
I stood back under the shade with my long-sleeved shirt and responsible hat, taking photos of them as I always do. A cheerful voice inside of me said, “Go swimming. Let’s enjoy the sun!” For the first time in a long time, I decided to go into the water.
The water was a bit cold; I prefer when it’s very warm, but I paddled around anyway. I disregarded any fear of sharks, any fears of getting burned, and just enjoyed the water.
My husband wanted to do a few laps, so I took my daughter and sat on the shore with her. Gentle waves crashed at our feet, and she looked up at me and smiled.
I grabbed a fistful of wet sand, and my daughter stared in amazement as it formed into intricate blobs on my bare legs. I normally hate the feeling of sand on my body, but in that moment I didn’t even notice. She squealed in delight as I started to build little sandcastles on her legs.
I remembered that I hadn’t put sunscreen on my back, and I’m very pedantic about sunscreen. I wondered if we should move to the little shady spot I found up on dry sand. But we were having so much fun there I didn’t want to leave. I could tell my daughter didn’t either. So we stayed.
The waves came again and again, washing away the sandcastles we built. My husband came out of the water and joined us. I felt so much love and happiness in that moment. I wanted to run to my purse and get a photo of how happy we were. But instead, I sat there continuing to build sandcastles.
When we finally got home, my back was burnt. Normally this would really concern me. I have known people who have died of skin cancer, and I do everything I possibly can to avoid a burn. But on this very day, I let myself be sunburnt. I let it be okay.
I had so much fun at the beach that reflecting on it left me with tears in my eyes. I cannot remember the last time I was so fully present, alive, and engaged.
So often the voice of anxiety is pulling me away from my life and trying to protect me by forcing me to think about all the things that could go wrong and how best to avoid them. For once, I didn’t let that voice win, and it wasn’t a battle. It was a natural feeling of allowing another voice, the one of calm, to take center stage.
I know I can’t plan for everything. But I’m trying to take confident strides in the direction of what feels right, moment by moment. Believing that whatever comes, I can handle it. Life happens fast, and I don’t want to miss these many special moments building castles in the sand with my little family.
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How I Changed My Perspective When I Was Too Angry to Be Grateful
This is not your usual piece about gratitude.
I am sure you’re familiar with all the benefits of having a regular gratitude practice.
Chances are you, as a reader of this blog, have a gratitude routine of yours. I was one of you. I have been regularly gratitude journaling for over a year now. I have experienced all the promised benefits of it myself.
Gratitude journaling has helped me reduce my stress, get better sleep, and feel more energized. It improved my mental well-being so much that I even started a social media page to encourage others to practice gratitude.
However, one day, things changed. Expressing appreciation for what I had started making me feel bad, selfish, and guilty.
What happened? On the sixth of February, my home country was hit by two immense earthquakes. A region where millions reside was completely destroyed. Thousands of buildings collapsed. Hundreds of thousands of people were trapped under the remains. Cities were wiped out. In the entire country, life just stopped.
Shortly after, my social media feeds were flooded with despair. People who could not get in touch with their families… People who tweeted their locations under the remains of their collapsed houses, begging for rescue… People who lost their homes, families, and friends.
I was heartbroken. I felt helpless and useless in the face of this tragedy.
A few days later, like any other day, I sat down to write in my gratitude journal. I couldn’t do it. You would think that after seeing all the unfortunate people who lost everything they had, I would have had even more to be thankful for. After all, I was so lucky just to be alive. But no, I couldn’t do it. Instead, I got stuck with guilt.
Today I feel grateful guilty for being in my safe home.
Today I feel grateful guilty for having a warm meal.
Today I feel grateful guilty for hugging my loved ones.It has been almost two months since the earthquake. I couldn’t get myself back into gratitude journaling. Then it hit me. Underneath my grief, there was another emotion: anger.
Because you know what? This disaster wasn’t just a completely unexpected incident. The scientists had been warning the authorities about this earthquake for years. The geologist said it was inevitable. The civil engineers said the strength of the buildings was too low. The city planners said the right infrastructures in case of such a disaster were not in place.
Over so many years, we all heard them repeatedly warning the authorities, but nothing was fixed. I was very angry with the broken system that did not care.
I couldn’t let go of my guilt because I was afraid that if I did, I would let go of my anger with it. I don’t want to let go of my anger. I want to hold onto it so that I keep fighting for a change, a better system that cares about its people.
I know it’s not just me or this one earthquake disaster. Many people all around the world suffer from the actions of governments. People who live under war, oppressive regimes, or corrupt states would very well understand the anger I feel.
Rage toward an authority, a government, or a broken system is not the same as being angry with another individual. The rage gets bigger in scale to the number of lives affected. And maybe the worst part is that this type of rage is harder to let go of because history shows that such rage fuels the actions for change in broken systems.
So I wonder: Is it possible to transform the rage that is harming me inside into something else without losing the desire to fight for change?
And again, I find my answer in the path I know the best—gratitude. But this time, instead of being thankful for the things I have, I’m thankful for the things I can provide.
Today, I am grateful for having a safe home because I can accommodate someone who lost theirs.
Today, I am grateful for having a job because I can afford to donate meals to people in need.
Today, I am grateful for having my arms because I can hug someone who lost their loved ones.
Today, I am grateful for accepting all my feelings and having the wisdom to transform them. -
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.
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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.
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Growing Old Gratefully: How to See Each Year as a Gift
Growing old gratefully. Yes, you read that right. Gratefully. Why on earth would I be grateful for getting older, less youthful, and more wrinkly with every passing year?? I hear you cry. Let me tell you why I’m trying hard to do just that.
One bright Saturday afternoon some years back, while chatting with my uncle, he reminded me that my fortieth birthday was fast approaching. I rolled my eyes and said, “Yes, Uncle, thanks for the reminder.”
He looked at me for a minute and then said, “You know, you should be grateful for every year of life you get. Some people don’t get to see their fortieth birthday.” That remark was quite sobering, and I felt humbled.
That conversation made me think. Why do we have such a fear about getting older? Why the almost shameful stigma attached to it?
Apart from the obvious slowing down, loss of vitality, and general “nearer to deathness,” I realized that much of our fear of aging is set in vanity. We equate youth with beauty, desirability, and happiness. We attach the opposite traits to old age; in fact, we fear that as we get older, we become almost obsolete.
In a society that worships beauty and vitality, it’s little wonder that we are all panic-buying anti-aging serums, trying anti-aging diets, following anti-aging fitness regimes, and generally trying our utmost to stave off any sign that we are getting older.
The problem with all of this is, well, we age. It’s a fact of life and it will happen whether you fight it or just allow it. This leads me to wonder… what if I just stop fighting and fearing the inevitable?
Does that mean I will retire myself to Dr. Scholl’s sandals and elasticated waists? Never!! But what if I just accepted, embraced, or even, dare I say it, was grateful to still be here, enjoying life on our beautiful planet? I mean, really, who—apart from greedy, capitalist, big business—benefits from our aging phobia anyway?
It’s funny that we use the word anti-aging too. We use that word for things that are considered unacceptable in society like anti-bullying or anti-social, as if we had any control over getting older. Using that small, four-lettered word subtly feeds us the message that aging is not only unwanted, it’s down right unacceptable. How ridiculous!!
I propose that we change our own narrative. That we embrace aging as a privilege not granted to everyone. To see it as a gift.
In Japanese culture, the mindset is quite different. Japanese conceptions of aging are rooted in Buddhist, Confucian, and Taoist philosophical traditions that characterize aging as maturity. Old age is thus understood as a socially valuable part of life, even a time of “spring” or “rebirth” after a busy period of working and raising children” (Karasawa et al., 2011).
That really appeals to me. See each year as it is—a celebration that we are still here, still enjoying life, still with our loved ones, still with a future, in another phase of our beautiful existence with new and exciting opportunities still ahead.
I believe that grateful and positive aging is all about the mindset, which is true of so many things that affect our attitudes.
If we cultivate a mindset where we grow older with a grateful heart, living each day to its fullest in our natural bodies and our natural skin, happy that we still get to watch the sunset and feel the warm embrace of those we love and are still a living breathing part of our wonderful universe; then I believe we stand a chance of drowning out the negative messages put out into society that getting older is something to be ashamed of. That we should go and find a rock to crawl under until we die unless we can claw back some semblance of youth, or at least die trying.
I propose that with a healthy mindset towards growing older, we give ourselves the right to grow old gratefully.
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We Are Both Darkness and Light: How to Reconcile Them and Grow
“We have to bear our own toxicity. Only by facing our own shadows can we eventually become more light. Yes, you are kind. But you’re also cruel. You are thoughtful. But you’re also selfish. You are both light and shadow. I want authenticity. I want real. I claim both my light and my shadow.” ~Kerry Mangis
Many of us can recall the painful moments that have shaped us. As we grow older, we become intimately aware of all the ways we were hurt, wronged, or betrayed. I think it’s a natural impulse, to number these moments and process them in order to heal.
I reflected on this when on my way to the California River Delta—a peaceful marsh-land setting located between the Bay Area and Sacramento that I often sought refuge in.
The night before I’d watched an episode of Thirteen Reasons Why that had dealt with the theme of the contradictory elements that live inside each of us. How difficult it is to arrive at a clean summary of good or bad once you’re made privy to all a person has been through, every feeling they’ve experienced or thought that’s run through their mind.
My own list of hurts floats in and out of my mind, activating more on some days than on others. When I’m doing well emotionally, it largely fades to the background. When stress is higher and sleep has failed to restore me, it’s likelier to make an appearance.
Here’s a little glimpse into how it reads:
It started for you at the age of five, when you learned that the girl you’d considered your best friend wasn’t as attached to you as you were to her.
In sixth grade your core group told you, seemingly out of the blue one day, that you could no longer sit with them. You didn’t know why. You only knew that for whatever reason, people you’d trusted didn’t want you around anymore. Traits and mannerisms you hadn’t previously questioned were suddenly suspect now, and subject to intense self-scrutiny.
The way you talked. Your interests. The sound of your voice. You just didn’t know. It could have been any of these. Or maybe all of them.
Regardless of what that thing was, the message that resonated loudest of all was “Not good enough. Not worth keeping around.”
A year later, self-esteem beaten down, you forged a friendship with a girl who showered you with positive attention one day and shoved you so hard you’d bleed (“jokingly” though) the next. This girl told you that you were selfish in order to get you to pay for things and comply to her wants.
She rolled her eyes and called you “Dr. Phil” when you told her this hurt your feelings. Whenever you spoke up for yourself, it would lead to a fight. You’d sense this was toxic, years before learning what that word even means, but you’d also blame yourself, thinking maybe this was just what you deserved, or was the best you could do. Especially when there was no one else to turn to.
Years later, dating hurt your heart too many times to count. You let down your guard and began to trust, only to realize you made a choice that wasn’t smart. Rinse and repeat.
Your feelings were dismissed more times than you can count—sometimes because you were too afraid to be upfront about them; other times, even when you were. You felt like the carpet had been pulled out from under you, over and over and over again like a sinister movie on repeat.
**
I realized that day, as I drove to the California River Delta, that this narrative I’d carried for years wasn’t altogether wrong. Acknowledging those moments is an act of self-compassion. Once we validate what we went through, we can then begin to heal it.
It was just that this narrative was incomplete. What I had yet to incorporate into my story was the harm that I too had left in my wake—and the way both of these, input and output, fed each other in a repeating cycle.
And so, as I looked out at the blue-grey water after parking my car, my brain began expanding its narrative.
You carried those childhood scars with you. They slept, only to activate. When they did, you saw from your vantage point and yours only, blinded to others’.
You said hurtful things when at your breaking point, lashing out at friends and the people you dated. Consumed by your own issues, you sometimes failed to fully be there or show up for others in their time of need.
You attached yourself to people and relationships, putting unconscious pressure and expectations onto them without their consent.
You stayed with women you claimed had let you down, hoping they’d change, or trying to change them. You refused to accept the present moment on its own terms, instead insisting on seeing it for how you wanted it to be.
Small acts of inconsideration built over the years, even when you weren’t blatantly mistreating someone or behaving in an overtly harmful way.
My mind had briefly ventured to these uncomfortable places before—but that day, with only itself and the bucolic scenery to contend with, it stayed there for longer than its customary five or ten minutes.
As I looked out at the water, I considered what attitudes, beliefs, and cognitive-road blocks often stop us from going here.
How might we learn to move through (rather than away from) thoughts or memories of our mistakes when they surface? I wondered. Because taking accountability benefits not just the harmed person, but our own souls too.
**
I was able to see that shame is a big contributor. Brené Brown has said that when held back by this all-encompassing emotion, we cease to grow. So long as we remain stuck in its slog, we’re ironically more likely to repeat the very mistakes that pulled us down there to begin with.
The character Bojack Horseman (from the Netflix show)—who hurts his friends, strings a good woman along, and even commits sexual assault—is one example of a person (er, horse) undoubtedly stuck in this cycle. He doesn’t see how his own conception of himself as irrevocably damaged largely contributes to the continuation of his harmful behaviors. If you’re just bad and there’s nothing you can do about it, then harming others is inevitable—so why even try to change?
And so Bojack keeps drinking. He keeps hurting people. He keeps making the same mistakes. He himself continues to suffer. By shrouding himself in the shame robe, he self-protects—both from the hard work of change and from the extreme discomfort of examining the insecurities that underly his destructive actions.
Those with trauma in our pasts developed coping mechanisms in response to what happened to us, often many years before fully understanding and contextualizing our pain. These defenses resulted in some level of collateral damage on the people around us.
Some of us thought there was just something wrong with us. Or that these behaviors stemmed from character flaws we’d have to learn how to hide. We didn’t recognize them as signs pointing us toward what needed to be healed.
Nor did we understand that rather than stay stuck in guilt and shame, we could allow it to guide us. That, when a fork in the road presented itself, we could let the sting of remembering direct us onto the kinder path.
Black-and-white thinking also keeps us away from full acknowledgement of the past. We may think that if we’ve done bad things, it must mean we’re bad people. But it’s entirely within our control to learn from our past actions and become better every day.
It took some wonderful people years of fumbling missteps to arrive at who they are today. If we were all judged solely by the single worst thing we’d done, many of us would be on our own right now.
Sometimes we don’t acknowledge the past because it doesn’t line up with our image of ourselves as good people. Even though merely envisioning oneself as a loyal person or good friend doesn’t guarantee we’ll never act in ways that are hurtful.
**
Owning up to our role in past events doesn’t mean we’re forgoing self-compassion. I’ve found I can hold myself accountable and learn healthier replacements for destructive defenses while also maintaining compassion for what my younger self went through, and the struggles she didn’t yet understand.
I wasn’t taught emotional regulation back when I was in school. Nor how to process my experiences. It’s hard to practice what you haven’t been taught. I remind myself, though, that I now have the tools to teach myself. That I can be that person to heal the hurting younger self who still lives somewhere inside me.
Rather than allow the shame swamp of my past to ensnare me, I can seek to understand the unmet needs and unprocessed pain that prompted my negative behavior.
We can extract the debris that led to insensitive actions until eventually we come upon that better and kinder self. The one who exists inside all of us.
In my own journey, confronting regret hasn’t come without pain—but it has motivated change. Reminders compel me to be better now, to the people in my life currently. They also compel me to be a much better friend to myself.
I’ve realized that acknowledging what was done to me is just one side of the coin when it comes to full healing and self-actualization. The other side is self-awareness and honesty. Looking not just at what’s most convenient, but also at our impact on others.
That day on the dock, I gathered a few stones—each representing a person I’d harmed in some way. I held each one in my hands. I wished each person well and imagined filling them with a protective circle of love.
And then I sent each stone on its way. Watched it fly through the air and land in the water with a small and almost imperceptible splash.
Each of us is capable of so much better than the worst thing we’ve ever done. Yet much of how we strip those mistakes of their long-lasting power is by owning up to them—while at the same time, forgiving ourselves.
-
Workaholics: Why Staying Busy Feels Safe and How It Takes a Toll
“The ego desperately wants safety. The soul wants to live. The truth is, we cannot lead a real life without risk. We do not develop depth without pain.” ~Carol S. Pearson
Workaholism is the body’s wisdom in action, literally.
Some people develop workaholic tendencies because they crave to be seen as the best through their accomplishments.
But I’m not here to talk about people who’re obsessed over their image.
The particular strain of “workaholism” that isn’t talked about enough is a perfectionist’s addiction to productivity.
It has little to do with being recognized for your brilliance or achievements in the outer world, and much more to do with your own unattainably high standards for yourself and others.
It’s not about winning a shiny trophy at the end of the day so everyone will know you’re the real deal, but knowing that you’ve improved yourself, others, or the environment around you–even if it’s just neurotically reorganizing your closet.
It’s knowing that you made the world a better place and that you didn’t cut any corners to get there.
Whether it’s your career, community projects, or personal to-do lists that consume your everyday life, your addiction to activity is problematic for many reasons. Once you get a dose of completing a job, an impulsive urge to drown yourself in more activity immediately creeps in. Without it, you experience a profound sense of worthlessness.
You struggle with accepting your work as it is, and your inner critic never settles for okay enough.
This kind of “improvement” workaholism is about self-worth and a felt sense of safety. Because idleness feels unsafe in the body of a workaholic, non-activity is misconstrued as uselessness, which feels like a gaping hole in your beingness. The wisdom of a workaholic’s body knows that not creating, producing, or improving oneself or the environment is on par with being an unlovable sack of garbage.
So your body keeps you busy.
Addiction to activity shows up in myriad ways. Doing your coworker’s job for them because they’re not meeting your standards. Working long hours to perfect a project that you logically know doesn’t need to be perfect. Cleaning the house when it’s not dirty. Pouring more energy than is necessary into helping your kids with their homework. An inability to rest, relax, or experience pleasure unless it’s “earned”–and even then, it’s a fleeting and rare occurrence.
When the Body Goes to War
My workaholic perfectionism took a toll on my body starting in my mid-twenties. It’s common for people fixated on perfectionism and activity to chronically hold tension in their bodies. I was so armored in my muscles that I injured my neck from stiffness, leading to some of the worst pain I’ve ever had.
I was living in rural Japan at the time. Desperate for help, I drove forty-five minutes through snowy conditions down a country road to see specialists who spoke no English, and to this day I have no idea what their area of specialty is called–I’ve never seen it anywhere else. But they treated me in their home on a regular basis to bring me the relief I needed to keep my sanity.
And that was just the beginning.
From that point onward, I continued to injure my neck several times a year. After returning to the U.S., I saw chiropractors, physical therapists, and massage therapists on a recurring basis. They certainly treated my symptoms, but I didn’t understand why I was so chronically rigid and injury-prone.
And then came the injury that changed the course of my life.
In my early thirties, I developed tendonitis and a repetitive motion injury in my right arm from using the computer in my office job. I worked hard, perfecting every task, email, and spreadsheet that came across my desk. I continued to hold tension in my body, and I rarely took breaks. Desperate to keep working despite the pain in my right arm, I compensated with my left arm and injured it too.
Different parts of my body were at war with each other–one part guilting me to stay in the hustle cycle, another part sending smoke signals to get me to slow down and rest.
I ended up on disability for eight months.
I struggled to take care of myself. Bathing, cooking, cleaning, and doing laundry were no longer feasible. I could not hold open a book to read. It took months to be able to return to normal activities. For someone who’s historically been addicted to staying busy, it was a nightmare to not be able to work per doctor’s orders.
Two years later, my doctors agreed that I have a permanent partial disability. I am no longer able to work in any eight-hour desk job. A throbbing hand reminds me when it’s time to rest, and now I know to listen.
Sprinkled through my late twenties and early thirties I also experienced episodes of suicidal ideation and general depressive states. I felt profoundly worthless even though I had my dream job in a beautiful coastal town of California.
My monkey mind was full of chatter. I fixated on how to feel better, but I was just clinging to the same old habits of endless mental and physical activity.
Through that difficult passage of time, I believe my psyche was taking me down the dark path of individuation, the transformative process of integrating one’s unconscious and conscious mind-body.
It’s everyone’s birthright to return to wholeness—a magical reunion of parts that were separated and abandoned in the process of childhood. I discovered that I had banished lazy self-indulgence deep into my shadow.
Jungian depth psychology and pole dancing opened me up. I healed through embodied sensual movement, accessing my creative inner guidance, making time for spontaneous play with no agenda, and finding peace in my deep stillness.
Today I move with ease in my body. I find pleasure in places where I could not before. I know how to be in my deep stillness, and I have what feels like true, sustainable joy.
It doesn’t mean I never slip into old habits. In fact, I still find new iterations of old patterns as I move through life, but I know how to work through them. It’s become my superpower.
The Unconscious Driver in Your Mind and Body
Often, we glorify hard work, refusing to admit the destruction it does to our minds and body when it’s become a habit.
Many workaholics see their patterns as justified, always armed with a list of reasons why they must deliver the much-needed improvement or task despite the obvious sacrifices being made. They do not respond well to being told that they need to slow down or prioritize their well-being.
Best case scenario, they agree that they work too hard but don’t know how to be any other way.
If this resonates, maybe you beat yourself up for not being more present with yourself or your loved ones. And maybe you have a tendency to be your own worst critic due to your sky-high internal standards, so you’re particularly sensitive to critical feedback from others.
The good news is that there’s nothing “wrong” with you. You’re not a bad person because you’re too busy to show up for others. You’re not a self-sabotaging idiot because you worked so hard that you injured yourself. You’re not broken because you can’t sit still.
Just like any other addiction, workaholism is a coping strategy.
Workaholism is a learned behavior that serves to protect you from feeling the pain and discomfort of being completely tuned in to your deep stillness without the activity. A work-oriented perfectionist unconsciously harbors a belief that they’re unworthy unless they’re busy fixing themselves or the world.
Your workaholic tendencies have an incredible intelligence. Your body is brilliant, much more than your conscious mind and ego-persona, which think they know better. But they’re vastly mistaken.
Five percent of your cognitive activity is conscious and the other 95% is unconscious.
The 95% largely drives your actions, non-actions, urges, and beliefs. Your endless activity isn’t coming from your conscious thinking mind. You might be convinced that your sheer willpower and self-discipline are the reasons you’re so productive. But that’s simply not the case. You’re the result of unconscious conditioned patterns that influence your behavior in the world.
If that isn’t humbling, then I don’t know what is.
The urge to work longer and harder than is good for you is a felt sense in your body. Your impulses—if you pay really close attention—are a reaction to not wanting to feel a certain way. Ultimately, it’s to avoid the discomfort of being fully present to your perceived worthlessness in the midst of being idle, non-productive, and undisciplined.
It’s so sneaky that you often never feel the first dose of discomfort because your body is so well programmed to keep you busy that it knows exactly how to keep you from feeling like a useless waste of space.
Your body in its wholeness is so much smarter than your tiny fraction of conscious thoughts.
It’s not your fault that you’ve never learned how to be any other way. It’s not your fault that most therapists, mentors, educators, and caregivers have no clue how to actually help you change your patterns.
The great news is that you can change. Your mind-body is not permanently wired this way.
Science and many different proven techniques tell us how we can change ourselves in ways that seem unimaginable. Unfortunately, these methods lag behind in formal education and the knowledge base of many healers. But, there are many entry points to working with your mind and body to transform how you show up.
Mind-Body Practice
While it’s not your fault that you’ve been conditioned to stay perpetually busy, it is your responsibility to do the inner work if you want to enjoy life as your best self who doesn’t need to work to feel worthy.
If you have a conditioned tendency to avoid stillness because your body misconstrues it as dangerous, then you have to prove to yourself that endless activity is not the way to live fully in your pleasure, presence, and peace.
Partner with your body and get lovingly curious about yourself.
The precise activity that you avoid most, idleness, is one way to get acquainted with your inherent, non-negotiable worthiness. This will inevitably dredge up anxiety, depression, and other uncomfortable feelings.
Learn to be in touch with what you’re feeling in your body, known as interoception. This alone is a practice that will pay you back tenfold in overall well-being, decision-making, and trusting your inner guidance.
Observe where you’re holding any physical tension. Pay attention to places where discomfort begins to stir and notice what your first impulse is. Often, the urges that arise have a positive intention of squashing the discomfort. For someone with workaholism, that urge is productive activity.
The body is excellent at reacting at warp speed to these signs of discomfort. Notice where the unease is showing up in your body and develop a practice of sitting with it–another practice that’s worth learning if you want to take the risk of being a human in a world of uncertainties. The treasures of life are found in the unknown.
Over time, you will learn when your activity is exiting the healthy, productive realm and entering the unhealthy, self-sacrificing realm–so you can intervene.
You’re incredibly capable of healing and changing your life. You’re not broken, no matter what your struggles are. Trust me, every practice I preach is one that I’ve used to transform my own life.
Remember that you’re a beautiful creature who’s learning to exist exactly as you are—magnificent, perfect, and worthy.
-
Two Things Not to Do After a Traumatic Event (Lessons from Being Robbed)
“True emotional healing happens by feeling. The only way out is through.” ~Jessica Moore
Have you ever loved someone so much that you could no longer see who they really were? Or have you ever been young and naive to the danger that surrounds you?
I’m the first to raise my hand and say I did that! I’m a person who trusts people until they give me a reason not to.
Trust
Trust can be broken in so many ways by those you least expect it from; those you love and thought loved you. In some cases, it may not be that they don’t love you, but just that they have had a temporary moment of madness that has hindered their ability to think clearly—who knows?
But whatever the reason for their betrayal, it can cause so much pain that you feel it in every part of your body. You know the kind of pain I’m talking about, which is so intense that it feels like you’re being pricked with needles. It’s not a nice place to be.
Story Time
For me, that moment came on a quiet night in June 2009, which was the calm before the storm that shook my young life. The month before, I had just turned twenty and was looking forward to the summer holidays after finishing my first year at university.
At the time, I was with someone, and we had been together for just over a year. I had told him about certain areas of my life that I didn’t like to talk about because I didn’t think anyone would be able to understand or relate to them.
That’s how much I trusted this person, so when he asked me for my house key, I agreed, although I was hesitant to give it initially. I thought we were cool. I know, before you look at me askance, I was young and stupid. I had been living on my own for about a year and ten months at that point, after moving out of foster care.
On that horrible day, I remember my friend coming to see me during the day and leaving in the early evening. I then remember that shortly after she left, the guy I was with came into the house and stared at me for quite a while. I asked him why he was staring at me like that. He said it was nothing, I just looked different. I said yes, my hair was straight (I usually wore my hair with a natural afro).
But I could tell something was wrong, so I asked him if he was okay. He said yes and walked out. I thought it would be like any other night and just lazed around the flat.
Around 10 p.m. I was lying on my sofa playing my favorite game on the Nintendo DS (Ace Attorney) with my legs up and no trousers on. I heard the key unlock my door, but thinking it was my boyfriend, I didn’t flinch… until the door to my living room opened and I saw a boy with a bandana on his face.
I jumped up quickly to cover myself, and while one of the boys held me at knifepoint, I watched as several other boys with hoods and covered faces took my things. The last thing they took was my wallet, but one of the boys had to ask me where it was.
Due to the shock of what was happening, my brain couldn’t think, so I answered with “I don’t know,” which of course the boys didn’t like at all, as you can imagine. I ended up getting smacked in the face to jog my memory.
It Was Not Over
When they were gone, I quickly got up and ran to the door to put the chain on so they wouldn’t come back in. Lo and behold, one of them came back to get the remote control for the TV. To his surprise, of course, he couldn’t get in, and that made him angry. So he ordered me through the crack to get him the remote and threatened that he’d break down the door and kill me if I didn’t.
Can you imagine being killed over a remote control?
I got the remote and pushed it through the crack. Then he asked me for the password to my laptop, and I didn’t hesitate to tell him. Then he said, “If it’s wrong, I’ll come back.”
During this exchange, I had the police on the phone in the bathroom. When the boys had left, I checked and found that they had taken my house phone, but I still had a spare phone in the cupboard, which I used to call 999.
Just a few minutes after I finished talking to the suspect, the police knocked on my door. He had been arrested not far from my door and the police were able to recover some of my belongings (which were now evidence), including my front door key. The other boys managed to escape, but the arrested boy was later charged and convicted.
That was a tough night for me, but the toughest pill I had to swallow was the realization that those boys wouldn’t have gotten my key without my ex-boyfriend’s consent.
It seemed too premeditated because only he knew how much some of the stolen things cost.
It was the biggest betrayal I’d ever experienced. I thought hearts could only be ripped out in vampire shows until it happened to me in real life that night (at least that’s how it felt).
After the incident, I stayed with friends for the summer, which helped me cope better with the aftermath because I was out of the area for a while. But I also think it took me longer to heal because I was in denial for the first few months.
I couldn’t fully process what had happened. I was finding it hard to get my head around it, and I didn’t talk about it because I couldn’t formulate the right words to express how I felt. I also felt embarrassed that it was partly my own fault for giving him my key.
After the summer I moved to another area in time for my second year of university, and I never saw or spoke to my ex again.
A Little Encouragement
I’d like to say to all those who experience betrayal or survive traumatic crimes that the memory may never completely go away, but the healing will come with time and effort.
This means feeling, processing, and accepting your emotions, reflecting on the situation and thinking about lessons learned, and forgiving and letting go so you can continue living.
The two things I’d advise you not to do:
1. Don’t suffer in silence.
2. Don’t suppress your feelings and pretend nothing has happened.
I did both for many years. It was only when I started talking about what had happened and allowed myself to feel all the different emotions that came with it that my healing journey really began.
My emotions ranged from confusion, disgust, fear, shame, anger, and rage to sadness. They would be up and down on any given day. Sometimes it could be because something had triggered me, and other times just because I was thinking about what happened.
Sometimes the event replays in your mind repeatedly like a broken record. Let it, because you’ll eventually come to a place of acceptance and slowly begin to let go of the pain.
I also found it very hard to trust people after that, especially men. But I realized that the more pain I clung to, the more it prevented me from moving forward.
Not trusting meant I would keep people at arm’s length. I wouldn’t allow them to get too close to me. I appeared cold and detached and thus had very few friends and no romantic relationship for over five years. So I started to forgive.
I learned that forgiveness was more for me than for the other person, so I forgave myself first for not listening to my intuition when I was resistant to give him my key in the first place.
Forgiving my ex without ever getting an explanation or apology wasn’t easy, but it allowed me to trust again. I chose to forgive him firstly for my own inner peace and secondly because I refused to believe that he was that coldhearted; instead, I reasoned that something must have happened to trigger the incident.
Whatever you’re going through, it’ll get better, I promise. Hang in there and remember that this is just part of your story, not your whole story. If you do the work to heal and allow yourself to grow through the experience, it can only serve to make you better, not bitter.
