The 'Self': Welcoming her Back Home

Last week I talked to my therapist about a feeling I’ve been having lately. I’m on the precipice of something. It’s familiar and foreign at the same time. It’s a feeling I have at work and at home. It’s a moment when I feel like I actually know what to do without stressing or struggling, without thinking too hard. 

It’s happened recently at meetings with my staff when I leave the meeting feeling like, “well, that was easy.” And also with my daughter when I find myself in the unusual position of offering her advice that seems to help at just the right time. What I notice is both situations is the very clear absence of drama.

I shared this feeling with my therapist who is a very wise, very old (81) woman and she said, in the sage-like maternal way that I love so much, “Laura, that’s your ‘self’.” She explained that for most people, at some point in their lives, the ‘self’, or what I’ve called ‘essential nature’, leaves and a series of parts take over. These parts might be judgers or worriers or caretakers. The parts can be anything and they are different for all of us. We all take on different parts to get us through our complicated lives.

But at a certain point the ‘self’ feels safe to come back and reorganize. “This,” my therapist told me, “is what is happening for you now.”

When I look up ‘self’ online I get this definition, “a person’s essential being that distinguishes them from others, especially considered as the object of introspection or reflexive action.”

I have believed, even proselytized the belief that when women get to the age of menopause they come back to their essential nature, or true selves. It comes from a combination of hormonal reorganization and lived experience. By age 45 or 50 we have learned and endured a lot, and we are done with the bullshit and the drama that come with managing all of the parts. 

This fed-up-ed-ness enables our true selves to come back, take charge and settle in for the long haul. This is the time when the ‘self’ can push aside the parts that have been holding down the fort and reclaim what is rightfully hers.

When my therapist pointed out the presence of my ‘self’ in our session, it felt like a great affirmation and recognition of this belief I’ve been carrying. I have infinite faith and respect in this woman and she has an additional three decades of wisdom on me. To hear her point this out opened up a new portal of acceptance of this concept for me. 

Since that conversation with my therapist I feel different. I have a knowing now that I can’t un-know. I can’t push the ‘self’ back out. She doesn’t want to go. I am aware of a peace but also an absence. I’m so used to the drama, the confetti of other voices in my head that I feel a sense of aloneness without all those parts shouting their opinions.

I know this is going to be an adjustment — it’s just me now, myself. I can feel the changes on the inside — a new openness inviting possibilities. I worry that I might seek out new drama to fill up this space. I wonder if my ‘self’ is secure enough now to resist this temptation. I hope so. I really hope so. 

The Healer

Today I went to see my acupuncturist. I’ve been seeing him for over a decade. Early on in our relationship I determined that he was a true healer. I don’t exactly understand what he does, but it’s magical.

I’ve referred countless friends, colleagues, and former students to him and everyone agrees. He’s truly magnificent. I call him the healer.

I can go a year or two without seeing the healer and then, when I realize no one else can help me, I go see him. Every time I see him I fall a little bit more in love with how wise and insightful he is. I’m grateful that mostly I am very healthy but a few weeks ago I went for a back injury I sustained carrying heavy bags of soil and removing a tree. 

After the healer did his assessment he informed me that I had somehow twisted my lumbar spine. He gave me a treatment and sent me home with some exercises to do. For a week I practiced the squats, pelvic rolls and hip openers. I felt good. I felt great. 

Then in the middle of the second week I felt the pain creeping back. I scheduled another appointment for today. When I went in, as he always does, the healer asked how I was feeling and if anything in my life had changed. 

“I’m exhausted,” I sighed heavily, “I feel so tired today.” He asked if my diet or my sleep or my exercise patterns had changed. When I replied that nothing had changed, as if inviting me to dig deep for the root of my exhaustion, he sat back quietly and waited. 

“I think it’s emotional,” I said, near tears, “there’s a lot of change — the weather, work, and my daughter is eighteen, and she’s almost gone and that is so much harder than I thought it would be.” 

He nodded with sympathy and invited me onto the table where he had me lie down so he could do further assessment. I closed my eyes, grateful for the time to rest. The healer moved around my body manipulating my hips, lower back, and legs. After about thirty minutes he settled on where the needles would go.

By this time I was half-asleep, grateful for the familiarity of his presence and the utter faith I have in his abilities. I could rest here for as long as it took. It felt good to be in capable hands. I trusted the healer implicitly.

After the healer placed the needles into various spots on my body, he left the room and I drifted off. I fell into a hypnagogic sleep, imagining my hands moving even though I knew they were totally still with needles in my wrists. After some time (I don’t know how much), the healer came back in. He palpated my stomach and my hips and said, “Can you lie her a bit longer? You’re not fully cooked.”

I nodded, happy to stay on that table all afternoon. On this second round of rest I had a memory of the healer in my early days of knowing him. Many years ago, when my daughter was 5 or 6, I had a similar pain in my lower back. During our initial conversation I shared that I was in a mental tug-of-war about moving my daughter to a new school that her teacher recommended. The teacher said this new school would be more academically challenging and better for her.

I was conflicted. I loved her elementary school and I wasn’t sure if moving her was the right decision. That day the healer did a treatment focusing on my gallbladder channel. After the session those many years ago, he explained to me that the gallbladder channel was often associated with decision-making. He said, “it could be that the pain you’re having is related to the decision you’re trying to finalize OR maybe the decision you’re trying to make is contributing to the pain.”

In the end it didn’t matter which was the chicken and which was the egg. Both existed — the pain and my need to make a decision.

This afternoon, after the healer removed the needles from my arms, legs and hips, he said, “Laura, from what I can tell, your back is fine. What I think is going on is that you’re stuck.”

“I am,” I said as I pushed myself up to my elbows to get off the table. As I put my watch on and laced up my boots I shared the memory I’d had of the day he’s worked on my gallbladder channel twelve years ago. He smiled and nodded. “I remember,” he said.

I put on my jacket to go and walked towards the door. As I opened it to leave I said, “Thank you so much.”

“You’re welcome,” he smiled, “You know, I worked on your gallbladder channel today too.” 

Back when I was the mom of a young child struggling with the decision about where to send her to school my struggle manifested itself as pain in my back. This year, as I round the corner of my life into an empty nest, I am again faced with some big life changes and decisions and the pain, again, shows up in my back. 

Bessel Van der Kolk, author of The Body Keeps the Score, writes, “…the two most important phrases in therapy, as in yoga, are “Notice that” and “What happens next?” Once you start approaching your body with curiosity rather than with fear, everything shifts.”

He’s right. It’s funny. I taught yoga for twenty years and I still forget to slow down and notice, to remember that the body and the mind are deeply entangled. My first instinct with pain or discomfort is often to try to assign some action that got me to the pain instead of to explore other areas of my life that might be contributing. 

The body keeps the score — my back told me something wasn’t right. But knowing the score doesn’t explain the game. The game is as big as life — there are rules, players, goals, and thousands of other contributing factors. The healer, in his great wisdom, reminded me (again) to slow down and expand my perspective. 

Every time I see the healer I reconnect with the idea that the messages from my body are sharing a bigger story about my life. Maybe I should try to remember this the next time my back hurts. But if I do that, I won’t need see the magnificent healer. And I don’t want that…..

We Are All Connected

Several years ago I did a year-long energy mentorship with an integrative medicine doctor. To this day, I consider her to be one of my greatest teachers. Over the course of that year (and beyond), my teacher helped me to understand energy, intuition, and the power of the universe.

The first thing I, and the other handful of curious women in my class, needed to understand, is that we are all connected, every tiny molecule in the universe is connected. 

Believing in the oneness of the universe is a huge pill to swallow, a great leap of faith, but my teacher helped me to understand this concept by sharing how it is explained and understood in different traditions. She also broke it down for our class, giving us little exercises to see our own inter-connectedness.

The very first exercise we did was to look in our closets every morning and not think about what we would wear, but simply go for the first thing that we reached for. Then, later in the day we could notice if this made sense — did the weather change and we were grateful to have a sweater instead of a blouse? Did we have an unusually long walk and we were relieved to be wearing comfortable shoes?

One class we went to a nature preserve and walked in solitude until we found a plant that called to us. We were encouraged to spend time with that piece of nature and notice what we could learn from it. I found a tiny weed by a creek and sat with it for thirty minutes noticing every tiny detail of the plant that I would have otherwise passed by.

One year I went to India with my teacher and shared with one of my traveling companions about a lunchtime laughing class that they were offering at the trauma hospital in Seattle. I shared how I hoped to take that class upon my return. Later that afternoon, on the bulletin board of the ashram where we were staying, there was a flyer advertising a laughing class in the town we were in — 8000 miles away and 13.5 hours time difference. We laughed together, wide-eyed, at this unusual and magical connection.

There was a time in Mexico when I knew, on a visceral level, that even though the people transporting us seemed legitimate — they were wearing uniforms and made a “phone call” to our hotel to prove their identity — there was something off. I tried to convince my partner that we were being swindled but her counter arguments were strong and I, prone to anxiety, chalked my sixth sense up to being anxious instead of intuition. In the end, my inexplicable knowing that something was wrong was right. We got taken for a fake ride, losing over $300 in the process.

Over the last several years since that first energy mentorship class, I’ve learned countless ways to listen to my intuition. I believe wholeheartedly that we are all connected. This is my faith, the thing that I can tune into when I struggle to make a decision or choose a reaction in my life. I trust that I am not alone, that there is a greater force helping me.

My family likes to tease me about my belief system. Sometimes I’ll say, “I just know” or “I’ve got a feeling about this” and eyes will roll. But sometimes I’m right. When I sold my business just four months before COVID hit, it had been a long-time coming. I went back and forth on the decision. After almost twenty years it was hard to let it go. But in the end I lowered the price for the right buyer and said goodbye. That was the right decision.

I trust my gut on most things, especially big decisions, because I need the support of the universe. I don’t want to be alone in this world.

My greatest struggle of late has been the slow painful letting go of my eighteen-year-old daughter. In the past I had control over her. She still lives at home. She still checks in about her whereabouts. She’s still my daughter. But I am recognizing each day that the actual “control” I have is slipping away. And it should. My daughter’s job is to graduate into full independence. My job is to let her go.

Sometimes, oftentimes, I panic. I worry about my daughter. Is she safe? How can I protect her when she’s at a party and there’s alcohol, and she drinks, and a football player takes advantage of her? What if someone brings a gun to school? How can I protect her then? I can’t. 

Last night my daughter went out with two friends. I rarely see her these days. She’s out more than she’s in, filling her social coffers with the constant flow of friendship. I went to sleep around 10:00pm and woke around 11:00pm to the sound of her voice. “Mommmmmmmmy,” the voice cried from downstairs. The voice sounded unfamiliar, like a much younger child. 

I woke up and called back to the voice. “Lucia,” I yelled loudly down the stairs. There was no answer and the hall light was still on which meant she wasn’t home yet. “It must have been a dream,” I thought to myself. My heart beat fast as I walked down the stairs towards the basement to see if she was in her room. On the way, I looked out the front window and saw her car. There she was, sitting in the driver’s seat, having just pulled up. She was looking at her phone as she often does when she first parks.

When Lucia walked in I shouted down to her, “the craziest thing just happened….” and I shared how I’d awoken from a dream to her calling me and that she’d pulled up in her car at just that moment. I said, “See, we really are all connected.”

“Mom,” she said, “I’ve been sitting out there for like twenty minutes.” I let it go. I didn’t need to annoy her further. I went back to bed filled with a mixture of relief and gratitude. I closed my eyes and drifted back to sleep. We really are all connected.