I am currently approaching one of those moments in life where there’s the version of you before and the version of you after. I will be speaking at my teacher Perri Chase’s annual event to give an unscripted transmission talk.
I’ve been on the journey to this moment for the past three years and in that time I’ve gone deeper into myself than I ever “thought” was possible.
The version of me that began this journey was layered on top to cover over the deeper tender parts of me. Most of you who know me met me as this version…My people pleaser, my rescuer, who would over give and sacrifice herself for everyone else. My overachieving workaholic, always trying to earn “it”. Completely burnt out, a shell of a human but yes successful in the typical sense.
And there’s a group of you, definitely family, who remember the layered on version that came before that…. the fighter. I spent the first decade and a half of my life being told often that I was bossy, loud and kind of a b****. But she was clear and confident about who she was and what she saw in the world, she just didn’t know how to hold it all and connect. It was hard to be her…the little me….and eventually I layered on the rescuing people pleaser to attempt connection more, but it was in my work on this path the past 3 years that I realized what was under both of those was my internal punisher. It is hard to say but I did not know who I was once I laid down that part of me. Perri guided me when I hit the most painful points on my journey, the ones we would never touch without being in connection and unlike most she had the capacity to meet me there fully. I chose a hard path and she let me know that but with the sight to help me see what was in the shadows not just that they were shadows. And to me that is one of the most loving acts anyone can give another person. So I began my deeper work in practicing putting attention back on myself, loving myself, caring for myself first not last with what was left over. Remembering who I was all along.
I am learning to receive life and find my way back inside of my own heart. Those layers on top were merely attempts to protect me, this work and the practices I have in my life have expanded my capacity to feel and connect from an embodied location where I now have compassion for the fighter, the punisher and the people pleaser along with many other parts of myself. Not as good or bad but just as what is. Being able to see this took advanced levels of practice over time to value all the parts that make me the me of today.
I can understand now why the extremes of the over, giving, rescuing people pleaser, and the inner, punishing fighter were important versions of me to exist. Because my practice has included learning to find the middle way through both of them. To be able to hold the middle most of all when it would be easier to just fall to one extreme side or the other. To balance on that precise, narrow point that can hold the paradox of it all with love and compassion.
The biggest leap of faith this lead me to at the beginning of this year was leaving my career as a PA. I’ve spent most of my life, relying on being the “smart one”, devouring large amounts of knowledge and becoming an expert in the field of psychiatry.
So much of the medicine that I carry in this world has to do with “feeling” and the type of feeling we do in the body. Sensations, emotions not the words and thoughts. I know this is why it was no mistake I ended up in psychiatry. It was the perfect field for me to practice the needed skills and bring me to the point I’m at now. I’ve laid those layers down and I have decided to just be me in this world healing the way I am here to heal myself and others. I know this is what I’m here to do and I am finding a path forward where I am creating the life I always wanted to have including the awe I feel serving others from outside the previous career limitations I was stuck in. Now my days feel so much richer.
The truth is I am and always have been a healer. It has nothing to do with that collection of knowledge or a license or degree. It’s about wisdom, deep knowing and an energy that pours out of me I still can’t even give a name to. I’m not sure what it is but it’s palpable. I feel it in my body, in my bones, in the core of me. I just know there’s something beyond language that brings out the healing of self in others when they spend time with me. That’s the place my attention and energy is focused now for living my life and it fills my heart every day. I am still in the toddler phase of this and a bit awkward as I learn to live from here. It is a practice and one that I am going to continue with likely all of my days….to keep finding my way back into more and more of my own heart.
And now I am at the point where I will share this, give a transmission from this point in the journey and receive what life has for me on the other side of it.
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