Why Not Leave Well Enough Alone?

Every once in a while someone asks me how I got interested in this fierce quest for Growth and Healing. Why not leave well enough alone? What is all this talk of following your Destiny? Isn’t it hard enough just to keep our head above the water? Why not be grateful for being able to keep a roof over one’s head and hold a job? Why the fervor?

Well I can assure you it is certainly not for religious reasons. I have cycled through many religious institutions and wound up exiting out the back door. That in itself is a book waiting to be written, for separate reasons. My first encounter with self-development was at age twelve. I am not sure how, but I came across a book on choices and happiness, something pretty general. It came as a desperate attempt to make sense of my life when the main community, namely the church at the time, failed to provide solutions. I grew up with a parent who suffered severe mental illness and generated chaos all around. As a result, by the age of 12 I felt impatient with the grown-up world and I did not want to wait it out.

The extreme social isolation and stigma of living with this factor became more tha
I was willing to take passively. It was hard enough being extremely introverted and shy to begin with. But it is almost as if a part of me knew I had to carve a path out. Severe alcoholism only compounded an already pronounced condition and proper treatment was refused or only temporarily accepted which made growing up in this house kind of like coming home from school to a house of mirrors every single day of my growing years.

It took some time for me to realize that even after understanding the WHYs, this was not enough to offer HEALING. It was only the beginning of the journey. It took a tremendous amount of time just to sort through the perspectives and sets of entangled feelings. Like many who have grown up this way, at the beginning of the journey one cannot easily tell the difference between the feelings of our OWN and those of OTHERS in the first tribe.

Taking ownership in this regard took almost 20 years, and even then it was not pretty to see what feelings I was faced with. I even spiraled to lower points once alone as a young adult, and went through a period of withdrawal finding it almost impossible to function away from the first tribe and being part of other groups, despite the woundedness at home.

But eventually I did see I was safe and could form deep bonds. I set out to disprove my past. Not from shame, but I wanted to set a new precedent. I created a new little tribe of my own and became the mom of two in an orderly, presentable suburban neighborhood. I found I was a natural at bringing out the best in people and create kinship. I gave myself wholly to the service of others and learning the routines of tending to a family, complete with an elderly parent and two kids in tow.

I did not notice that anything was wrong, until after my second child was in her toddler years when I found I could not read! I mean, I would look at a printed page and my mind could not absorb or follow a complete sentence. I had been an English major. I held a job where I read at the computer all day, but I came home and could not pick up any material and read a full page!

To cope with this problem I began to devour every audio version of books of any topic that interested me. Just because my mind was stressed did not mea
I was prepared to leave it malnourished. All my down-time was used in some way listening and eventually reading again. I knew I had re-worked this problem when I found myself toddler in the wagon, waiting in the long check-out line at the grocery store, content to finish reading one more paragraph.

What this allowed me to do was to begin asking BIG questions about my life. One morning, as I sat up in bed about to leap into the day, I heard my Inner Voice say, “You know, you can’t keep going like this. The Core of who you are inside is not the person your family or friends know. If you keep ignoring this connection, it will eventually go away!” And I knew I had to make bigger change to accommodate that Inner Core.

But doing this meant wandering off into uncharted territory. I began questioning EVERYTHING. Marriage: why do we do it THIS way? Parenting: why do we do it THAT way? How did we come to accept that we need a trim front lawn? Why am I surrounded by PhD holders for staff at the bookstore? Why do we treat one another like children in the workplace? Why are my female co-workers not getting to use their marvelous range of talents in the positions they hold? Why are so many of them ill? Why am I constantly running from pillar to post never feeling like I can do one of my roles really well? Why is it such backbreaking work to eke out something I can barely call a living wage?

I asked those around only to find these were not good questions to ask at work. So I began blogging. I was doing a little experiment of my own, while most other women besides Ariana Huffington were blogging about cocktail recipes, fashion or diapering. I began asking the BIG questions, one by one. And before I knew it, more and more women (and men) began coming out of the woodwork. Eventually the blog became into a book and the book became a publishing company, and more authors came.

Though for me the restless quest to answer the BIG questions about meaning, well-being and growth began in a very chaotic home life, this is not to say it has to be this way for everyone. And just to be clear, I never did find the definition for “normal” family in suburbia. Where I thought I had arrived, I found I only JUST BEGAN.

I continue to navigate unfamiliar territory, though my Inner Voice has plotted and charted so much emotional terrain that by now I have a coaching practice of my own. In my first tribe we never fully re-defined family though we did cope with much of the old wounding. We have wonderful one-on-one connections, but it still feels odd when we are all together. But there is time for this.

I know now that we are on the brink as a culture to redefine so many of our roles. Yet if we have the tools to just CHART the emotional terrain of our lives, we can figure the rest out and create new meaning no matter where we find ourselves in life.

The winds of change can come and sweep through but Meaning, Purpose and Worth are things no one can give us. Contrary to how the prior generations have defined themselves, we have the opportunity to pioneer outward. And every once in a while, give one another the added support if we need it, it is part of the human journey into the Core Intention of our lives. Enjoy the journey.

Much Love,
A