I’ve spent about 29 years of my 32-year life focusing on my ability to produce work. As a child, my greatest addiction was academic success. Gold star stickers, extra credit, and straight A’s were my life’s blood. And, I was obnoxiously good at getting these things. Really good. Because all of these markers were so highly valued in my affluent, suburban hometown, I internalized external achievement as a way to receive love. I wanted praise and attention and this was a surefire way to feel visible and important. Love became conditional. My mind fixated on the notion that love was achieved through struggle, perseverance, and the word I hate most now as an educator, “grit.” The veil of privilege shielded me from the internalized systems of oppression at play that became my identity. I was the “hard worker”, the “achiever,” and the consummate “doer.” If there was a problem or obstacle in front of me, I was trained to fight tooth and nail to ‘fix” what needed to be ‘fixed’. I was the group leader of all group projects while fighting back tears to complete these assignments by myself in my living room at 3 am. I did this all while fully embracing the white supremacist myth of meritocracy.
As an avid rule-follower, I knew that if I just worked harder, slept less, and accommodated horrible bosses/ teachers more, I could do what others wanted me to do. I could put my own comfort and desires aside for the greater good; other people’s expectations. Now, what the end goal of all this was exactly- I couldn’t tell you in a concise way. It was a blurry finish line of financial success, country clubs, and ivy league diplomas. I felt that I had to have these bragging rights to be a part of something; to feel worthy. I needed to be impressive by the standards of others- a cocktail conversation piece my mother could share with her friends and their high-earning banker children. Since I turned my back on pursuing economics or law, I had to somehow maintain my status of achievement. So, I worked really hard, non-stop, and thought that at least my mother could report this back to her friends.
The pushing, the striving, and persistent pursuit of whatever was next caught up with me at 28, where I found myself deeply miserable, exhausted, overweight, and working hundreds of hours a week for a job that was out of alignment with my value system. Cue the slow unraveling of a woman lost. Obsessed with doing, I forgot who I was. I forgot to just be.
I like to think of my unraveling as visually as possible; a red woolen thread, fringing at the edges, on the verge of snapping at any moment, but sturdy enough to be painstakingly unwound from the spool. Not knowing quite what to do and frustrated that the path was no longer prescribed to me, I did something uncharacteristic; I began to explore my options.
I started with movement. Years prior to my breakdown, I actually got my yoga teacher training certificate in a flurry of post-collegiate anxiety. I was an obsessive hot yogi for a few years afterward when I discovered that my body needed to look a certain way to be socially acceptable. This whole thing, of course, was short-lived. However, this time around, I knew I didn’t want to be obsessed. I needed to explore movement without being consumed by it. I didn't need to win any awards, complete any training, or be the best at it. My years of brainwashing and perfectionism had no place here. I just wanted to move my body in order to move my mind. So, I took dance classes. Zumba, hip-hop, lyrical. This started to feed my soul. But, it wasn’t quite enough. I yearned for something else.
I liked the idea of meditation, so I sought out wellness centers. Through this search, I discovered Reiki, Akashic records, energy work, salt rooms, and kundalini. I found a therapist who was also an energy practitioner and a true magician. She filled me with light and ignited my desire to learn more about myself beyond what I had been telling myself for so long. With all of these discoveries, I slowly started to develop my own personalized spiritual practice; drawing and combining processes and tools from my learning. An internal shift began as I uncovered ways of connecting to myself that did not have to do with other people. It was like peeling back the calloused layers of defense I had created for so many years. I was no longer unraveling, but consciously undoing. Consciously peeling. This new age “woo-woo” stuff that clicked with me started to become more readily available, more visible to the layman. Not only was I seeking this knowledge, but others were as well. Accessibility is always helpful when one begins their healing journey and I know now how divinely timed this all was. I sought out teachers and learned old ways to apply to my new life. Practices such as journaling, card pulling, breathwork, and meditating all felt incredibly aligned. I embraced living by the moon and honoring her in all of her phases; specifically garnering rituals around the new and full moons. It was in ritual and research that I began to feel revitalized. That I began to feel love within, stronger and more potent than seeking love from the outside.
It was in the slow and steady embrace of practices that felt familiar that I realized I am my own being. I am not other people’s expectations or ideas of me. Looking back on my life now, I realized that I gave my power away by putting my worth in the hands of others. Everything I did was to impress other people. I equated impressing them with being visible and loved by them. I desperately wanted to be loved. I think at the end of the day, that is what most people want, although we express this differently. Reframing what love looks and feels like has profoundly shifted my life.
It is through the cultivation of these practices that I have started waking up to myself. Not to the person I thought I needed to be, but the person that I am, that I always have been, outside of what I can provide to others. Since entering the world of spirituality, I’ve learned to question what I knew to be true about life. What if love didn’t have to be earned? What if it could just exist? What if we have already had it all along? This is where I am now; focusing on being. Focusing on what it means to be me at this moment as a part of this world. Of course, I still slip into the habit of doing; I am human and flawed and that is okay. I still have to pay bills and I haven’t quite figured out how to have a work-life balance. However, I have a better support system now. I have the reminder of my breath, the awareness of the moon, and the ability to gather those near and dear to me to mark each change of each season. I am more conscious of who I am when I am in the “doing” part of my life, and I am working, every day, on allowing myself to simply be.
コメント