08 MIN READ · VOL. 01 · ISSUE 07
Before you dive into this issue, I want you to know that I share some sensitive topics, including brief descriptions of first-hand childhood abuse. I’ll always give you a warning so you can decide if you want to continue. Please, do what’s best for your wellbeing.🖤
If I reduce my current life crisis down to the brass tacks, it’s really nothing more than a cliché: I’m yet another mid-30s woman who was laid off from her six-figure career and is on an adventure to find herself through some creative means.
But as I’m lying awake at night wondering how I’m going to support myself, whether I’ve made the wrong decisions, how I’m supposed to show up in this world, and why I’m still awake at 2 a.m.… nothing feels cliché. It feels like I’ve lost something that gave me meaning. And it hurts. And, without that meaning, what am I left with? Who am I left with?
Well, I’m left with me. And I don’t really know what that means anymore. I imagined myself to be one of those accomplished women who’d risen above their circumstances and had nowhere to go but up. Yet, when I’m in bed trying to calm my racing thoughts by patting myself on the back and using breathing techniques I learned in group therapy, I don’t feel all that accomplished. I feel like I’m on the edge of what was and what’s coming, with absolutely no clue if I’m going up or down. I had a map of my value and place in the world, and it turns out I’d hitched it pretty tightly to a job. So, when I lost my job, I lost a piece of myself.
This was after I’d recovered (or so I thought) from yet another cliché: I’m also a divorced woman who married a man she loved dearly, but who ultimately wanted different things.
We built an incredible life together. Over 9 years, we pulled ourselves out from renting rooms in a shady apartment on the edge of the city to owning a townhouse, which we had renovated while we worked remotely from Mexico! We were living our dreams. Until we realized we had different dreams.
That was the first time I saw the gap between who I thought I was and who I actually was. I thought I was a Mrs. with a plan, and a man, and a level of security I’d never known before. But when my marriage fell apart, I realized just how painful it was for me to be on my own. So, I rushed to some very maladapted coping mechanisms that I hadn’t used in a long time. 9 years to be exact.
Was it predictable? Sure, I guess? In the grand scheme of things, our lives are filled with predictable patterns. But to say that our lives are ultimately just a consequence of our patterns of behavior diminishes the experience of what it means to be human. It’s true, but it’s not the entire truth. What lies beneath our patterns, where they come from, and what we do with them, is ultimately what shapes our lives. And before we redesign what our lives look like, we need to recognize what’s actually happening.
And guess where those maladapted patterns I resorted to came from? Hint: It’s the same place as absolutely every other person on the planet.
My childhood.
Full disclosure, this paragraph is why I added the warning at the top of the essay, and I’m going to gloss over it faster than I did the layoff and marriage. For now at least. Let’s just say that abuse, lack of basic care, poverty, and a deep and aching loneliness were nothing outside the norm, and frankly not things I even knew were abnormal until I was an adult. Because that’s the thing about growing up in those types of environments, you don’t know any better. What do you mean it’s not normal to force a panicked and screaming child to calm down by smothering them? It always worked with me! Huh… you buried your animals in the back yard when they passed away? Interesting. Mine usually went in the freezer.
I learned to cope with the life I had by developing strategies that I truly believe kept me alive. I didn’t realize the weight of that until one of my therapists helped me articulate why it was so hard for me to confront those strategies. They weren’t just about coping. They were about survival. And they didn’t suddenly disappear when I grew up.
One of my golden techniques was detachment. I could leave what was happening around me and take refuge in my imagination. Part of that detachment turned into my uncanny ability to witness, analyze, and explain what happened to me intellectually, without ever having to experience what it felt like. I used to be able to recite things that would make your stomach turn without batting an eye. But recently, that’s started to change.
Life loves to serve us package deals. So, as an added bonus to my divorce and layoff, my childhood coping techniques came rushing back to save the day. It’s not that I meant to cling to them. I know they’re unhealthy. But there’s an enormous gap between being aware of my internal blueprints and completely reinventing my entire approach to self-talk, emotional regulation, stress management… all the things! And, that gap is what brought me here.
Knowing there’s a possibility to do things differently and becoming a fundamentally different person can be decades apart.
And I refuse to spend the rest of my life reliving my trauma responses.
I am not rejecting who I was or what I needed to do to survive. I am not blaming myself for how I learned to cope. But I need a change.
And the biggest transformation I’ve seen, at least so far, is when I started expanding my awareness beyond a purely intellectual understanding. I had to start working through how I felt about things, and what I could do about them, rather than just stopping at an explanation.
Enter: examined living. Socrates’ famous quote, “The unexamined life is not worth living,” basically asserts that a life without careful examination of our own thoughts and actions through reflection, active inquiry, and action that aligns with our values, isn’t really a life worth living. Now, I’m not a philosophical scholar. I took one class (which I aced, mind you) before I dropped out of college in my mid-20s. But the idea that I could change the trajectory of my life just by paying closer attention to what was happening inside me, which I was already a pro at, felt like a get-out-of-jail-free card. The only difference, which turned out to be a big difference, was that I couldn’t just process things through a theoretical lens. I had to learn how to integrate them into my new “let’s feel everything” journey. And, although I’m being cheeky, I do think this is the journey of my lifetime.
So, when I get a rush of what I’m convinced is a chemical dump of pure adrenaline when I make a mistake, or when I start to catastrophize about how my friendship is going to end in ruins because I don’t agree with them, I can turn toward questions like: What do I believe is happening? Why do I believe that? What do I feel like I need to do? Where is that feeling coming from? When have I felt like this before?
If that sounds like a lot of work, it’s because it is. At first. But fuck, it’s fascinating. And, it makes a difference. Rather than wading in the old patterns (panic, implode, cancel all my plans, fall into despair that I’ve let my friends down), I’m learning to talk myself into some new ones (examine, soothe, connect with others, take action). And it’s not endless analysis, because that would keep me trapped in the same mind that I’ve spent so much time in.
It’s examination with a bias towards intentional action, not reaction.
At this point it’s become a way I look at the world, and the entire reason I’m here. Because I want to share it with you.
This isn’t going to be an abstract examination of philosophical wisdom in modern-day life.
Although I would love that, my superpower is my ability to pull things out of abstraction and recognize how they play into everyday life. Each issue we’ll talk about an experience I’ve lived through (am living through) and the root questions and observations beneath it. Together, we’ll examine things like: identity, behavior, values, relationships, loss, change, and what our actions reveal about us.
Starting with Issue 08, you can expect a weekly essay paired with reflective prompts to examine the core questions and concepts and see how they might apply to your life. I’ll share what I’ve noticed, and you can decide what fits, what’s missing, and whether something deserves more consideration.
That’s what this is, really. It’s looking at the lives we’ve built and deciding what fits, what’s missing, and what we’re going to do about it. I can’t promise this is going to end with me reaching my final form and sharing an essay titled “10 steps to how I completely changed my life in my 30s and now I’m done, goodbye!” In fact, I can promise it won’t.
Examined living is a continued practice. As our lives change, as we change, things that once seemed real and necessary may all of a sudden turn to dust.
Life can change in an instant, but we don’t. At least not entirely. And that’s where the practice lives.
So, if this sounds like your kind of trip, please subscribe. I can’t wait to see where we end up.
Curious about what to expect and what’s coming next? Check out my About page for more details.
Let’s overthink this together:
Do you sometimes feel like you’re stuck in a loop that you haven’t quite figured out yet?