“I don’t know who I am. I’ve shaped my life around other people for so long that I’ve lost sight of myself.” I used to hear some version of that sentiment quite regularly, ten years ago when more of my work involved coaching people. It was especially common among women in the 40-60 age range – women who’d spent years raising children, holding a marriage together, and/or building a career.
These people excelled at shape-shifting to meet the needs and expectations of everyone around them – children, partners, parents, employers, employees, community groups, etc. They’d shape-shifted so often that they’d lost track of who they were, what they needed, what gave them pleasure, and what they most wanted out of life. Most of them were at a loss when it came to making decisions that prioritized themselves rather than the people they cared about.
What many of these people were revealing (and what I, too, have struggled with) is that life had taught them to develop an external locus of identity. They’d become accustomed to defining themselves not by what they saw in themselves but by external factors such as other people’s opinions, societal norms, success measurements inherent in their careers, and their capacity to keep other people happy.
When you have an external locus of identity (or at least primarily lean in that direction on a spectrum), you tend to rely heavily on validation from others and on your ability to meet the standards set by your culture/career/family/religion/etc. Without much capacity for internal validation and self-worth, you feel insecure or inadequate when external factors don’t validate you. You crave the approval of others and the accolades that come with success, and you crumble in the face of criticism or failure.
To locate your sense of self primarily outside of yourself is to live a wobbly and destabilized life. It’s like tossing your anchor into another boat instead of sinking it into solid ground. Whenever the wind changes, or the other boat shifts its position, you’re knocked off your feet.
I struggled with this especially when I got divorced. I’d spent so much time looking after other people’s needs that I had no idea what I needed for myself. As I wrote in my book, Where Tenderness Lives: On healing, liberation, and holding space for oneself, it was only after I finally worked up the courage to choose myself and end an unhealthy marriage that I realized just how codependent I’d been in the marriage. I was so entangled in my former husband’s emotional well-being that I felt completely adrift when that was no longer at the centre of my life.
Why do some of us develop an external locus of identity? It starts in childhood, when we have little choice but to look to adults as our models for how to live. Some of us receive an excess of attention and affirmation from the adults in our lives, and we fail to develop the internal skills needed to affirm ourselves, and some of us receive too little attention and affirmation and are left always hungry for it. In school, we start picking up messages that those who get the best grades receive the most praise from adults, those who excel at sports or performance are popular with their peers, and those who behave well in class receive preferential treatment from teachers. We learn to perform for other people’s expectations so that they’ll love us and care for us.
With adulthood should come individuation and the development of our sense of self and capacity for internal validation, but many of us remain stunted in our emotional growth because of trauma, abuse, social conditioning, or other extenuating circumstances. We’re often held back because of the cultural or family systems we’re part of. If you were raised in a high control group or authoritarian household where you were rarely allowed your own choices (and punished if you made the wrong ones), it can be particularly difficult to, as an adult, learn to trust yourself and claim an identity outside of that system.
Even outside of those more extreme environments, many of us weren’t given the tools or modeling to make good choices on our own behalf, or to see ourselves through any other lens than what the system equipped us with. In a patriarchal system, for example, women are taught to sacrifice our own needs in service to others, and so we develop beliefs that we are selfish if we focus too much on ourselves. Men, on the other hand, are taught that to show emotion is to reveal weakness, and so they often fail to develop skills in self-reflection or emotional maturity. In a religious system, for another example, when a person is told to look to God for all direction in their life and they’re led to believe that they are sinful and worthless without God, it can be difficult to develop independent decision-making skills or a sense of self-worth.
At the core of what we all need in life, from our first day on earth to our last, are three things which are both separate and closely intertwined – safety, belonging, and identity. When those needs are not being met and we feel under threat, we tend to sacrifice our identity so that we can better ensure our access to safety and belonging. When a community or family we’re part of fails to validate a particular part of our identity, we learn to mask that part of ourselves so that we won’t be abandoned. People who are queer, neurodivergent, or disabled often become the most proficient at masking in order to fit in. Many of us lose sight of who we are and become like those boats anchored to other boats instead of the firm ground beneath us, largely because we don’t trust people to fully embrace us otherwise. (I teach more about these primary needs and how they shape us in Know Yourself, Free Yourself.)
Sadly, social media has been an exacerbating factor for those who already struggle with an external locus of identity. While those with the most likes, comments, and shares develop the most social capital and clout (and make the most money), the rest of us are tempted to measure our own worth by their standards. These measuring sticks and popularity contests are in front of us every single day and that can mess with even the most grounded among us. In a podcast I listened to recently, researchers talked about how, despite evidence that their platforms are designed in such a way that negatively impacts people’s self-esteem (especially youth), social media companies refuse to change anything. They have learned to monetize our low self-esteem and attachment to other people’s opinions, so why should they do it differently? Those of us already inclined toward an external locus of identity are further destabilized by the algorithms of social media.
Capitalism (often working hand-in-hand with social media) is also an exacerbating factor. Even those most grounded in a solid sense of self sometimes find themselves knocked off centre when they struggle to make a decent living and can’t pay the bills or buy the things that give their families comfort. If you’re not valued in a capitalist system – if what you produce or the ways that you serve the public are not paid well, or if you are unable to contribute to capitalism because of disability, mental health or family demands – it’s hard to keep holding your head up and finding your inherent value apart from that system.
I’ve recognized this in myself recently as I’ve been marketing my new book, Where Tenderness Lives: On healing, liberation, and holding space for oneself. The book is all about learning to love myself and my body; to ground myself in joy and surround myself with tenderness; to detach myself from external expectations, value judgements, and cultural pressures; and to move toward personal and collective liberation. AND… in order to get that book into people’s hands, I have to be out in the public (especially social media) promoting it in what feels so often like a plea of “like me, PLEASE like me… and like my book and buy it and tell people about it and rate it favourably with those five little stars and PLEASE make me worthy of measuring up according to capitalism’s measuring stick!”
It’s a slippery thing, trying to sink our anchors into solid ground – trying to root our identities in a healthy sense of self instead of other people’s opinions or pocketbooks – when so many forces seem to be working against us. And yet… I believe that that is where our liberation lies. We only become free when we unhook our anchors from other people’s boats (and the systems those boats are connected to) and start looking for the solid ground beneath us. (Note: this doesn’t mean we stop being interdependent with other people – just that we don’t attach our value and identity to their opinions, needs, or expectations.)
The unhooking can feel cataclysmic though, so I don’t offer this reflection lightly. As I found when I finally ended my marriage, after five years of considering it, it can take a lot of self-reflection followed by a life-shattering moment (or in the reverse order) for us to wake up and recognize the ways in which we’ve been shaped and lost sight of ourselves. Sometimes it can take years to fully unravel the old programming and to learn to make courageous choices that allow us to chart new paths.
Before I end this, there is one more thing that’s worth mentioning… identity itself is a slippery thing, and that makes this even more tricky. I don’t believe it’s wise to imagine that we might some day know exactly who we are and that whatever conclusion we come to will become our fixed identity for time immemorial. I think we are meant to be evolving humans who keep learning new things about ourselves and keep being open to the surprise of our own unfolding. (I may write about that more in a future post.) And I think we are meant to be shaped by our relationships, even if we shouldn’t anchor our identities in the whims of the people we’re in relationship with. That might offer further clues as to why we’re sometimes tempted to place the locus of our identity outside of ourselves, though – because we become confused by our own evolution, and we do need other people (we are social creatures, after all), and sometimes it feels safer and more comfortable to be defined by a person who sees us from the outside.
While other people’s perceptions of us can be enlightening and can offer us insights beyond what we can see in ourselves (at least when those people have our best interests at heart), ultimately, though, we are best to hold those insights and perceptions with healthy non-attachment so that we don’t slip into the trap of trying to live up to their expectations of us and therefore abandoning ourselves.
In conclusion, I would suggest that while reclaiming our right to define and shape our own identities (rather than allowing them to live outside of us), the goal is not to claim solid, immoveable identities, but to claim the right to each have an evolving identity. Perhaps the goal in life is to simply be pilgrims on life-long quests for what sets us free and brings us joy. I imagine us dancing together down the path, finding discoveries as we go and sharing them with each other in delight (without judging each other or trying to hold anyone back).
I have lots of thoughts about how to untangle oneself from an external locus of identity and how to be such a pilgrim. I have thoughts about finding practices that help keep us grounded, unraveling the messages we’ve received in the past, healing trauma, building secure attachments, and making hard choices. I teach about them in the upcoming course, Know Yourself, Free Yourself (which starts March 5th), and I’ve written about my own pilgrimage in new book, Where Tenderness Lives: On healing, liberation, and holding space for oneself..
If you are waking up to a realization that you have a primarily external locus of identity, take heart. You are not alone and you are in the right place. This realization is the start to a long pilgrimage, and if you’re willing to take it, you won’t ever regret it. I’ll meet you on the path.
It’s been a year. I don’t quite know which adjective to put in front, so I’ll just say that – it’s been a year. A year in which the last of my daughters moved away from home, quickly following her two sisters. A year in which I sold my home, gave away most of my furniture and belongings, put my personal items into storage and intentionally stepped into the liminal space of homelessness. A year in which I set off on my “love and liberation tour”, starting with a few weeks across Canada and then three months in Europe. A year in which I journeyed with a dear friend toward his medically assisted death. A year in which I wrote the final chapters of a book of personal essays in Costa Rica and Spain and then sent it off to the publisher. A year in which I returned to teaching in-person workshops in two European countries after two and a half years of only online work during a global pandemic.
The personal growth and healing that happened this year felt monumental. I let go of some old beliefs, learned to be more and more tender with myself, practiced acceptance in a more profound way, and stretched myself into increased courage.
I’m in a rented apartment back in Winnipeg where my daughters (who live in cities spread out across the country) and I have gathered to close off the year together. My daughters are still all asleep and I’ve put the kettle on for tea as I sit here reflecting on some of the things I’ve learned and relearned this year. Here are some of those things:
Spend time with dying people. Few things in my life have impacted my growth more than time spent with dying people (see my viral blog post about my mom’s death) and this year I had the indescribable gift of walking with my friend Randy along his journey with ALS and toward his death. Our weekly Zoom calls and my two trips to visit him softened me, stretched me, challenged me, and grew me. Sometimes I watched him wrestle with the frustration of what he was losing as his body deteriorated, but mostly I witnessed the grace and acceptance as he chose to spend his final year in joy and connection. On the day that Randy was dying (with medical assistance), I was in Brussels, serendipitously traveling with my friend Brenda who is living with cancer that will likely kill her, and she was able to hold space for me in a special way because she has her own relationship with death. As I become more and more intimate with death, I am learning to be more fully alive.
Accept the fly. In my last visit with Randy, this was one of the final teachings he offered me. ALS had ravaged his body and he had little movement left. He told me about the time he’d been lying in his bed waiting to be moved into the chair where he spent his days, and a fly kept landing on his face. He had no ability to chase the fly away, so he turned it into a spiritual practice. “Can I accept the fly?” he asked himself, and then he practiced simply being present with the fly instead of being irritated by it. I have repeated that question to myself many times since, whenever something or someone is irritating me. “Can I simply accept and co-exist with this person/situation/challenge/inconvenience/etc.?”
Be tender with yourself. The tenderness practice that I started in 2021 has grown into one of the most meaningful things in my life. Being intentionally tender with myself has helped me learn to love and accept myself in ways I didn’t think were possible. It’s helped me cope with anxiety, course correct when I start spiraling into self-doubt and shame, and pause when I’m slipping into the Three P’s – perfectionism, performance measurement, and punishment. You can learn more about it in my free webinar, in the upcoming course Know Yourself, Free Yourself, or in retreat with me in Costa Rica.
“Let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.” After I listed my house for sale and prepared to embark on my liberation and tenderness tour in the Spring, I got the above line from the Mary Oliver poem, Wild Geese, tattooed on my arm. I wanted a daily reminder to honour what my body most wants and needs, to choose my own body’s version of love, and to let go of the social conditioning that taught me to shame, punish, restrict and ignore my own body while looking after everyone else’s needs before my own.
Let go of things and give them to people who need them more than you do. When we were nearing the end of our packing and purging process, just before transferring ownership of the house to strangers, my daughters and I lined up all the things we didn’t know what to do with along the sidewalk in front of our house, put a “free stuff” sign on it and posted it on Facebook marketplace. In our brief conversations with the many people who came, we heard stories of refugees who’d fled war in their countries, single moms on fixed incomes trying to create home for their kids, and international students setting up apartments for the first time. It felt meaningful to be able to support so many people in creating a sense of home even as I was dismantling the one that had meant so much to me for twenty-four years.
Be honest with yourself. As I transition into this new era, with no dependent daughters living with me, I am asking myself a lot of questions about what I most want and need, what makes me happy, which relationships matter the most, and how I want to live. I am learning to be more and more honest with myself, honouring myself in ways I didn’t know how to in the past. Sometimes this new honesty surprises me and sometimes the choices that come with it don’t make sense to other people, so there is growth and some discomfort involved, but in the end, I believe it’s all worth it. “Tell the truth to yourself,” sing the Avett Brothers, “and the rest will fall in place.”
Wonder, wonder, wander. This is a personal practice I wrote about a couple of years ago and I put it into even more practice in the latter part of this year. First, wonder as a noun… “a feeling of surprise mingled with admiration, caused by something beautiful, unexpected, unfamiliar, or inexplicable.” Second, wonder as a verb… “desire or be curious to know something.” And third, wander… “walk or move in a leisurely, casual, or aimless way.” (Read more about it here.) I did a lot of wandering in Europe, for hours at a time in several countries, and all the wandering helped me find myself in new and meaningful ways. It also helped my body find its equilibrium.
Stay a little longer in the places where your body feels ease. When I was in Sitges, Spain, a beautiful seaside town that’s one of the most queer-friendly places in Europe, I felt my body relax into the kind of ease I hadn’t felt in quite some time. There’s something about large bodies of water that almost always soothes my nervous system while also making my body feel more alive and vital. Add that to the welcoming, safe feeling of the town, and I noticed a perceptible difference in the unsettled feeling I’d been experiencing since the move out of my house in the summer. Instead of moving on to my next destination, I gave my body the gift of a few more days by the sea.
Fly across the country for a friend who matters. My friend Randy lived on the east coast, thousands of kilometres away from me, but when he told me he was dying last year, I made it a priority to visit him (once in the Spring and once in the Fall just before leaving for Europe) and those are trips I will never regret spending money on. Friendships that are worth flying across the country for are immeasurable treasures and I will NEVER take them for granted. One of the things I appreciated most about Randy was the way that he showed his delight in people, showering them with a special kind of love, and I was glad that I could give that love back to my dear friend in his dying year. Invest in friendships and hold onto the people who delight in you. Those are friendships that help you see your own beauty.
Witness the world through the eyes of someone losing their sight. When I was in the Netherlands, I spent a few days with my friend Cath, a visual artist who is losing her eyesight. Cath is a reflective person (and grief therapist) who’s learning to witness the world differently as her eyesight declines and incorporate that into her art. My time with her helped me to be more aware of both the gift and the limitations of living with and navigating the world with a disability. Cath regularly shares images of the textures and colours that she sees on her walks through the city on social media, and it’s changed my perspective on the world and on what it means to live in a disabled body.
Talk to your inner child. Part of my tenderness practice involves witnessing the younger versions of myself that show up when I am triggered, anxious, disconnected, or overwhelmed. I’ve learned to pause to give that younger version of myself a voice, to allow her to express her concerns and needs, and to give her what she didn’t know how to (or wasn’t allowed to) ask for. Sometimes I sit on a park bench with my journal writing conversations with a younger version of myself or writing letters to her. It’s been a healing and empowering practice, integrating all parts of myself into who I am and who I’m becoming.
Talk to your emotions. Another part of my tenderness practice is to have conversations with my emotions. When I feel afraid, for example, I ask my fear what it is trying to tell me. When I am excited, I let that excitement have a voice rather than trying to dampen it with “grown-up” sensibility. (You can read more about this in The House that Tenderness Built.) I’m learning to feel more safe with any emotion when it arises and to course correct when my trauma wants to send me into dissociation.
Ask for what you need. This goes along with the above practices about being more honest with myself and witnessing my inner child. I’m learning (and relearning) how to honour my own needs and to ask other people to help fill them when necessary (without becoming too attached to an expectation that they do so). It’s brought up some discomfort and has forced me to confront some of the social conditioning I have about what it means to be a “good woman” who minimizes herself in service to others, AND it’s also helped me to have healthier boundaries and to be more tender with myself. Just last week, when the first AirBnB I’d rented for my daughters and I was a sad and dirty place, I practiced asking for what I needed by requesting a refund and finding a better place.
Stop trying to change people. This is one of those life-long learning things that didn’t just land in 2022, but seemed to gain more clarity this year. Perhaps it had something to do with my daughters all setting off into lives of their own while I supported each of them in making choices that were best for them. This year, I practiced internalizing a mantra I’ve heard my friend Michael say many times: “Nobody and nothing has to change.” When I let go of the expectations that other people would show up in the way I wanted them to show up and leaned further into an acceptance of just who they were, I became more resilient in the face of their inability to meet my needs AND I learned to turn elsewhere to have the needs met that they weren’t able to meet.
Let go of beliefs that don’t serve you. Again, this is lifelong stuff that gained increased clarity in 2022. I spent quite a bit of time this year interrogating my belief systems and asking myself which of my beliefs were genuinely mine and which ones belonged to my parents, my culture, my lineage, my trauma, etc. (There will be lots more about this in the book I’ll be publishing in the coming year. It’s also an important part of Know Yourself, Free Yourself, a course I’ll be offering again in March – registration opening soon.) Some of the beliefs seemed worth hanging onto, some seemed like they were holding me back in my evolution into the next part of my life, and some I continue to wrestle with. This is all part of the “liberation” that I’m referencing when I say I’m on my “liberation and tenderness tour”, and it will be part of the upcoming retreat in Costa Rica. (Join us at the end of January – there are still spots available.)
Learn to love your own company. As I’ve grown older, I’ve grown increasingly comfortable with solitude. In fact, I crave it whenever I’ve been with people for too long. I spent much of my time in Europe (especially the last month, after the teaching portion was finished) in solitude and I genuinely loved it. Many people assume that traveling solo is second best when you can’t find anyone to travel with you, but I love it just as much as I love traveling with friends or family. (I’m happy to have a mix of both.) I like making choices that are solely focused on my own comfort and delight. I like exploring places by myself. I like being alone with my thoughts for hours and hours. Most importantly, I like ME.
Go on a quest to find the version of you that wants to evolve next. This year when my daughters left, I stepped into an intentional liminal space that felt like a vision quest. I let go of familiarity, let go of home, let go of routine, and let go of my comfort zone. I wandered into unknown places to meet myself in a new way, I asked important questions of myself, I followed my curiosity, I sat with discomfort, and I played with new ideas and possibilities. I called it my “liberation and tenderness tour” because I was liberating myself of old baggage and old stories and learning to be increasingly tender with myself. It has already been life-changing and it’s not over yet (I leave for Costa Rica next week). I would highly recommend some version of this for anyone who’s going through an important transition, especially for those whose children are moving into their adult lives.
Thank you for journeying with me in 2022 in whatever way you have, even if you’ve just discovered my writings recently. I hope that what I have offered will inspire you to live with more courage, intention, liberation, tenderness, and ease as we step across the threshold into 2023.
A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of spending time in the company of a group of twenty-somethings. At the Winnipeg Folk Festival, for four evenings in a row, my daughters and their friends gathered on our tarp for the mainstage shows and I (together with my sister) got to play the role of benevolent elder, offering them food, blankets, and kindness.
It was delightful. My daughters’ friends are all interesting people whom I’ve grown fond of and being with them was easy and fun.
Watching them, I caught a glimpse of the person I was, back in my early twenties, when I first started attending the Folk Festival. There was nostalgia, grief, and tenderness in that realization.
I wanted to go back in time and give that young Heather a hug. If she’d listen to me – a ghost from her future – I would assure her that, despite her feelings of self-doubt and the many times she’d worry about finding a place to belong, and despite some of the hard stuff she was going to face in the years ahead, she would turn out alright. I might even let her know that someday, in the far distant future, she’d bring three beautiful daughters along with her to the Folk Festival, and they would bring their beautiful friends and she would feel the warmth of all of those years in tender moments on the tarp. (I probably wouldn’t tell her about those two years when the pandemic would take the Folk Festival away – she wouldn’t need that kind of burden weighing on her.)
There are a few other things I wish that twenty-something version of me knew and that I want those twenty-somethings who sat on the tarp with me to know. Here’s what I’d tell them…
It’s okay to hurt your parents’ feelings sometimes in order to be true to yourself. Let me tell you something now, from my advanced years, that not many parents will tell you… Despite your expectations that grownups be, well… Grown Up, most of us still have a lot of hang-ups and a lot of insecurities and a lot of wounds, and sometimes we project that stuff onto our kids (mostly because people expected us to become grownups without teaching us how to heal that stuff). It hurts, when you’re the kid, because you just really want to be loved and accepted for who you are and your parents should give that to you more than anyone, but sometimes parents aren’t very good at giving unconditional love. Sometimes we see our own flaws and parenting failures mirrored back to us through our kids, and sometimes that triggers our self-loathing and then the shame and punishment we heap onto ourselves also gets heaped onto our kids. And sometimes we expect too much (or the wrong things) from our kids because we haven’t met our own expectations and don’t want to see them similarly letting themselves down. I’m sorry this is true, but it is. You aren’t responsible for your parents’ healing or self-love, you are only responsible for your own, so do your best to love yourself and be true to yourself despite what you’ve inherited from your parents and despite the ways in which they sometimes fail to behave like the parents you want them to be. (Also… you might be one of those flawed parents yourself one day too, so you’re going to need to learn some self-compassion and some healing practices along the way. See also #5.)
You will be lonely sometimes, and that doesn’t mean you’re unworthy of love. You will have times when you can’t find a sense of belonging anywhere and you will go through moments when you’ll be fairly certain that everyone in the world is having fun with other people and you’re the only one left out. That’s normal. It happens to ALL of us (yes, even us not-very-grown-up grownups). And it’s just the lonely, wounded, self-protective part of your brain lying to you and trying to convince you that you’re not worthy of love. You ARE worthy of love, and a lot of the people who are posting shiny versions of their lives on social media are doing it so that nobody sees just how lonely they are. You know what two of the best defenses for loneliness are? 1.) Not comparing yourself to other people, and 2.) Learning to enjoy your own company as much as you can. Go out to movies by yourself, take yourself on play dates, travel alone… do all of the fun things that you’ve been waiting for other people to invite you to do. You might discover that those things are just as much fun alone as they are with other people (some things are even MORE fun), and you might even find other lonely people at those places who are fun to hang out with. (Note: Other people might feel threatened by your ability to have fun alone, and they might tease you because of their own insecurity, but don’t let their opinions become your guide.)
You will make new friends and you will lose old ones. It’s going to suck, sometimes, when relationships change, but sometimes it’s for the best. Sometimes there are friendships that hold you back, and sometimes you’ll realize that you can only grow if you let go of the people who don’t have your best interests at heart. And sometimes you’ll just drift apart because your lives are heading in different directions and it’s not because anyone did anything wrong. Learn to let go without resentment or fear and be grateful for the time you had with a person even if the friendship didn’t last. And always do your best to seek out people who lift you up instead of tearing you down.
You don’t have to be normal. Sometimes it will feel like you have to cut off pieces of yourself to fit in, and one day you might wake up and realize that you’ve lost yourself because of all of the pieces you’ve edited out. Please don’t lose yourself, even if you feel like that “self” is too weird or too complicated or too queer or too neurodivergent to be loved. You will find the most contentment and freedom in your life when you have the courage to be yourself. And while you’re busy learning to be yourself, look for other people who are courageous enough to be themselves too. They’ll be the right kind of people to spend time with because they won’t expect you to adjust who you are in order to suit them.
You also don’t have to be exceptional. It’s okay to have an ordinary life and it’s okay to make mistakes and it’s okay to not really have a clue what you want to do with the rest of your life. (Side note: One of the dumbest things grownups ask kids is “What do you want to be when you grow up?” As if there’s only ONE thing you’re going to be! And as if you should know that One Thing when you’re still a kid! And as if your life will only be defined by a career! Yeesh. Don’t get me started. Know this – you can let that shit go.) Let me tell you a little secret… my favourite kind of people are those who aren’t afraid to let their flaws be seen, who aren’t afraid to say “I don’t know”, and who reject the pressure of perfectionism and exceptionalism. One of the most important things you’re going to need to learn is how to forgive yourself and how to love yourself with all of your fumbles and failures. Start now – forgive yourself for the most recent mistake you made and then say to yourself “Hey you – I love you. You’re human. And imperfect. And you’re pretty cool just the way you are.”
Self-care is good, but you know what’s even better? Collective care. There are few things better than people learning to look after each other – people asking for what they need and offering what they can so that nobody gets left out. Look for people who want to look after you and who let you look after them. Look for people who tend to notice who’s being left out – and also try to be one of those people. Look for people who’ve got a sense of justice about who’s being marginalized and go stand shoulder-to-shoulder with those people (and the ones who are marginalized). There’s a lot of individualism in our culture, and far too much measuring of one person’s value against another person’s, and you might find yourself buying into the hype that you should be independently successful and that you shouldn’t need other people, but you DO need other people. And other people need you too. Be honest about where the gaps are and let other people fill them.
Love your body. Love your fat body, your queer body, your black body, your white body, your differently abled body, your chronically ill body, your trans body, your thin body, your clumsy body, your short body, your tall body, your awkward body, your lumpy body, your beautifully imperfect body. Love it with a radical love that accepts it no matter how other people might criticize it or expect it to meet certain criteria of acceptability. Love it despite the way our systems of dominance and control (you know – those pesky things like patriarchy and white supremacy) might try to marginalize and shame it. Love it as an act of resistance and revolution. Love it in a way that makes the older generation uncomfortable. (Note: We, in the older generation, can be kind of squeamish about too much self-love because we’ve been well-trained to punish ourselves and each other for any deviations from the norm. Please do your best to reject this pattern, even when we get pushy about passing it down to you.) And while you’re busy loving yourself that way… remember to love other people that way too. We all need it. (Yes, even us older folks.)
Find people who can help you. You’re going to go through rough patches in your life. There’s just no point in pretending otherwise. Maybe you’ve already gone through rough patches and you know this to be true. Don’t try to navigate that shit alone. I hope that someone in your family will step up to help you, but if they don’t, or if they gaslight you into thinking the rough patches aren’t as rough as you make them out to be, then find other people who won’t judge you for it. Find a therapist, find a friend, find another grownup you can trust – find someone who will listen while you try to work through whatever rough patch you’re in. If you’re going through mental health struggles, find someone who can point you toward the right professional. Don’t be ashamed of needing help, even if that help comes in the form of medication. And try not to listen to that lying part of your brain that tries to tell you the rough patch will last forever. It won’t. You’ll see the light again someday, I promise. Hold on.
Be happy. Don’t become one of those boring grownups who gets too serious about life and loses their sense of fun. Have fun and stay playful. You might be surprised to discover how much play can help you find yourself, bond with your friends, and heal your trauma. Pay attention to the things that make you feel joyful and do more of those things, preferably with your friends. (Unless, of course, those things become addictive and unhealthy and you’re mostly doing them to numb the pain – that’s a whole different thing. See #8.) A wise person once told me that in the same way that we have trauma triggers that send us back to painful moments in our younger lives, we have joy triggers that bring us back to the joyful moments. Find your joy triggers. If you love to make art, then make art. If you love to ride bikes, then ride bikes. If you love to play on swings, then play on swings. Be radical in your pursuit of joy. (That doesn’t mean you should bypass the grief – it just means that a fully lived life includes being in touch with ALL of your emotions.)
Tucked into the corners of the mirror in my bedroom are two photos of me. In the black and white photo, I’m a young child, reaching across the table to dip my finger into a bowl of sugar. In the coloured photo, I’m a twenty-six-year-old, standing next to my sister, with a large backpack on my back and a smaller one on my front.
Mostly, I forget that the photos are there, but sometimes I catch sight of them and then I pause for a moment to remember those younger versions of me. When I’m feeling particularly reflective, as I am today, I wonder about the thoughts, fears and dreams of each of those younger versions of me.
They are both, in their own ways, reaching for sweetness. The young child, with a guilty look on her face, is trying to sneak some of the sugar before the grownups notice, snatch it away, or shame her for it. She’s already grown accustomed to being called chubby, and if she didn’t know by then, it wouldn’t be much longer before she’d find out just how undesirable it was to be fat and how shameful it was to want a little more sweetness in her life.
The young woman is standing on British soil on her first grand adventure. She’d reached for sweetness across the ocean, backpacking across Europe to feed her wanderlust. What you can’t see on the photo, though, is the engagement ring on her finger. She’s coming home from that trip to get married and settle down. It will be years before she crosses an ocean again.
Beneath the sweetness of both photos, there is an undertone of sadness. When you peel back the layers, they tell the story of a young woman who’s learning about the limitations of what she is allowed to reach for. She’s learning how far she can go before she gets pulled back. She’s learning not to want too much. She’s learning about shame and expectations and acceptability and responsibility and… all of what it means to grow up a woman.
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In the movie Everything Everywhere All at Once, Evelyn Wang is a Chinese-American woman who runs a struggling laundromat with her husband, Waymond. Through a strange turn of events, she discovers that she’s living in a multiverse and that every choice she’s made throughout her life has created an alternate universe where another version of her continues to live out the consequences of the other option of that choice. (For example, in one, she chose not to marry and is living a successful life as a movie star.) In the Alpha Universe – the original universe – people have discovered the existence of other universes and they have found a way to “verse-jump” between them, to access the skills, memories, and bodies of their parallel universe counterparts. They have come to Evelyn for help.
The multiverse is being threatened by Jobu Tupaki, who turns out to be Evelyn’s daughter Joy, whose mind was splintered in the Alpha Universe when the Alpha version of Evelyn pushed her to extensively verse-jump and inhabit other bodies. Evelyn (the laundromat version) is tasked with stopping Jobu Tupaki in order to save the multiverse. To do so, she must verse-jump and briefly inhabit other versions of the person she could have been if she’d made other choices.
In the end (spoiler alert), she must repair a breech with her daughter and talk her out of a nihilistic, destructive view of life so that she doesn’t destroy the multiverse.
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As I stand in front of the mirror, remembering those other versions of me, I can’t help but wonder what life could be like if either of those two younger versions of me had made other choices. What if young-child-me had chosen not to accept the shame imposed by a fatphobic culture and had learned to live a life of radical self-love right from the beginning? What if young-adult-me had admitted to herself just how much she loved to travel and how much she doubted that marriage was the right path, and she’d sent back the ring and extended her stay in Europe?
Where would I be now, if I hadn’t been trying so hard to live in a way that was acceptable to my family/community/religion of origin? What if I’d had – right from the start – the kind of safety and belonging I needed to know it was okay to make different choices?
I used to think it was wrong to have regrets, but then I listened to Dan Pink talk about his new book, The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward, and now I’ve changed my tune. I’m letting myself see the places where I could have made other choices. I’m holding that regret with tenderness, not with judgement, so that I can make more conscious choices going forward.
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What we only see a glimpse of in Everything Everywhere All at Once is the long-term impact of laundromat-Evelyn discovering the alternative outcomes of the choices she made throughout her life. I want the sequel, the rest of the story. Does she simply accept the status quo, accept that she’s doing the best that she can, or does she recognize the possibility for making new choices that free her from some of the restraints of the old ones? What adjustments does she make in order to live a more liberated future? How does she learn to love herself into her own wholeness?
That begs the question outside of the multiverse… Is there a moment when a person can wake up and see the past, present, and future through less clouded lenses? Is there a moment when you have both the vision and the strength to hold the possibility that your life could still turn out differently? A moment that doesn’t bury you under the weight of regret over the intervening years since those original choices were made? A moment (or, more likely, a series of moments) when you can choose a path toward a life more free of the burdens of other people’s expectations and rules, and the weight of the cultural systems that have shaped you?
I believe there is. Like Richard Rohr in the book Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life, I believe that most of us reach a threshold in midlife when something happens – a fall, a tragedy, a failure, a relationship breakdown – when we can choose to cling to the life we’ve worked so hard to construct (a life that lives up to the standards we thought were acceptable and that offered us safety and belonging), or we can lean into something more ambiguous, more openhearted, and more authentic. It’s a liminal space moment, when we can choose to fall into the abyss – to release the past, deconstruct the rules and expectations we were working so hard to follow, and dare to become more fully ourselves.
Like a giant game of Jenga, we construct our lives out of the pieces we’ve mostly inherited or constructed based on what we’ve been taught – belief systems, values, rules, cultural practices, relationship patterns, identity, career path, gender expression, and so on. Then, somewhere in the middle, a few pieces get knocked out of our foundation, or we choose to remove them, or we see that they are made of nothing but vapour. Then suddenly what we’ve constructed begins to tumble. Suddenly we see that what we’ve built is precariously balanced and not as sturdy as we’d imagined it to be.
We can choose to accept the deconstruction of the tower, sit in the messiness for awhile, and then find the courage and strength to carry on. Or we can desperately cling to what was and keep plugging the holes and propping up the tower.
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Easter weekend always brings back memories of a particular moment when I knew my Jenga tower was about to crash. In 2011, on Easter weekend, we got confirmation that Mom had cancer that would likely kill her. At a family Easter gathering, just after we’d learned about the cancer, my former husband and I got into a big fight. On the way home, while I tried to keep the conversation restrained so our sleeping daughters in the back of the van wouldn’t hear, I told him I was ready to end the marriage and would only give it another chance if he would take the initiative to find us a marriage therapist. Then, on Sunday morning in church, after years of trying to hang onto the shards of my faith, I finally admitted to myself that I no longer knew how to find meaning in the version of the Easter story I’d always heard in church.
Two years earlier, I’d quit my job to start self-employment, but didn’t yet have a stable income. A few years before that, my dad died. That meant that the four foundational pieces on which my Jenga tower was built – marriage, faith, career, and parents – were all at risk simultaneously, some by my choice and some by forces outside my control.
I woke up on the Monday after Easter with an all-consuming sense of dread, terrified that my whole life was about to be destroyed and that my daughters would be taken down with me. For the next few years, I tried desperately to plug the holes and prop up the tower. I kept going to church and I kept trying to save my marriage. Five years later, though, everything was gone – mom had died, my marriage ended, and I stopped going to church. There was nothing but a pile of Jenga pieces on the floor at my feet.
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In a game of Jenga, the toppling of the tower marks the end of the game. Life is not like that, though. Instead of marking the end of the story, deconstruction offers an invitation to write a whole new narrative. It’s the moment when you learn that you can let go of the pieces of the tower that don’t belong to you, and you can begin to build something much more sturdy, beautiful, and true. It’s the moment when you realize that the tower was probably also a cage.
My life was not destroyed the way my anxiety told me it would be. It was wobbly for awhile, and I woke up many mornings with that familiar sense of dread, but then I discovered that my deconstruction was liberating me from my tower/cage. It allowed me to tell the truth and to free myself of the parts of my life that didn’t feel true. I discovered I could build the kind of work that gave my life purpose and joy. I could grow relationships with much deeper and more authentic roots. I could search for the version of faith that felt most alive for me. I could say yes to what I loved and no to what limited me. I could find healing for the wounds left behind by the cage and I could grow in ways I never dreamed possible.
Today, when I look at those two photos of younger-me, with the reflection of current-me in the mirror between them, I invite them back into my life and I tell them that, from now on, I will do my best to be true to them. I will build a life that their dreams can be proud of. I will not let them be shamed for the ways in which they reached for sweetness. I will not let them be tethered to other people’s fears or limitations. I will continue to dismantle any of the pieces of the tower/cage that might still bind them.
Unlike laundromat-Evelyn, I can’t step into a parallel universe to discover the alternative outcomes of the choices made by either of the younger versions of me. But I can make choices on their behalf that honour and liberate them, choices less bound by whatever kept them caged.
There’s a pedestrian tunnel I pass through regularly, in all seasons. In summer, I often cycle through, and in winter, I pass through on foot. The tunnel provides a safe passage under a busy freeway. It’s a connecting point between my sister’s house and mine, and it’s also along the best cycling route from my house to downtown.
While it’s designed for safety (keeping pedestrians off the busy freeway), there are many times when the tunnel feels less than safe. It’s dimly lit, so when I pass through after dark, it’s hard to see what might be hiding in the shadows. Its walls are covered in graffiti and there are often signs that people have been taking advantage of the shelter and obscurity of it to do some late-night partying. In the summer on my bike, I am often fearful I might puncture a tire on broken glass.
While the tunnel offers shelter from the elements and a brief respite from rain or snow, it’s also lower than the ground around it and there isn’t proper drainage, so rainwater collects in large puddles on the concrete floor. In the Spring, when snow is melting, it’s nearly impossible to pass through without rubber boots.
A few days ago, I passed through the tunnel and found it especially treacherous (see photo). Melting snow and slush had frozen into an unpredictable landscape that made each step dangerous.
As I was reaching the far side of the tunnel, I looked up from my careful concentration on where to place my next step and saw the light streaming in. The bright sunlight made me pause for a moment to appreciate what it meant to near the end of my careful, dangerous journey. As I stood there, my body almost involuntarily took a deep, lung-filling breath. It felt like hope.
That’s very similar to how I felt last month when I landed in Costa Rica, where I’d traveled to spend a couple of weeks at my friend’s farm working on my next book and the new course that’s launching this week. After two years of no travel, two years of social distancing, two years of anxiety over COVID, two years of supporting my three daughters through big transitions (and one through complex medical challenges), I felt like I was finally arriving at the end of a long tunnel.
When my friend Mary picked me up at the airport, I burst into tears. I’d been holding so much anxiety for so long, tiptoeing through the treacherous tunnel, that I just needed to release it before my body could fully relax and enjoy the sun and warmth of Costa Rica. Once the tears settled, so did my body and breath.
Like that light shining on me at the end of the tunnel, Costa Rica offered me light and hope again (especially after what has been a long, cold, and hard winter here in Manitoba). It invited me to stop holding my breath and stop tensing my leg muscles for every step I needed to take in the unsafe territory of the pandemic.
Sometimes when we’re in the middle of the tunnel, we forget that the tunnel ends. We assume we’ll always be afraid of the next step, always be holding our bodies tense, always be breathing in that shallow anxiety-ridden way. Unfortunately, when that kind of anxiety is present for a prolonged period, our bodies assume they need to stay in high alert, and we get stuck in an activated state. I remember that feeling so clearly after my divorce, when a naturopath told me I’d developed adrenal fatigue from too many months of high stress. Our bodies can only take so much before they start to protest.
With Easter coming up this weekend, I’ve been thinking about an Easter eleven years ago when I entered one of the hardest, darkest tunnels of my life. We found out my mom had cancer, and two days later I told my husband we either needed to separate or go for counselling. (I wrote about it the following Easter, and now, when I read that post, I feel so much tenderness for past-me who was feeling hopeful that life was settling. She didn’t yet know that the tunnel was about to get darker.)
What I keep having to relearn every time I go through a tunnel like that is that the tunnels are the places that shape us most. Tunnels cause us to pause and take stock of our lives. They remind us that there’s no point in carrying extra baggage, especially when every step must be taken carefully. They help us re-evaluate what’s important and, like a kiln that turns mud into stone, they strengthen us into vessels with strength and purpose.
The tunnel I walk through regularly is dark and hidden. A lot of people in the city don’t even know it exists, because it’s not in a high traffic area. You only arrive there if you happen to live in the area or you know it exists. From the road above, it’s entirely invisible. Almost every time I pass through it, I walk through alone.
That’s how tunnels in our lives often feel. They are usually times of loneliness and isolation, when we find ourselves set apart from the people we love because nobody really understands what we’re going through and we don’t know how to talk about it. In the years between that fateful Easter, when told my husband I was ready for a separation, and the day five years later when we finally gave up on counselling and separated, very few people in my life knew what was going on. Many were surprised when I told them we’d separated. I simply didn’t know how to talk about it.
Part of the reason I do the work that I do is because I don’t want people to feel so lonely when they pass through tunnels like that. I want them to know that there are others going through similar tunnels, and others who’ve been through the tunnels before them. I want them to find encouragement and hope in community.
That’s one of the reasons I’ve created my newest course, Know Yourself, Free Yourself: Self-exploration as a Path to Liberation and Love. I know that self-exploration can be challenging and lonely sometimes, especially when we learn hard things about ourselves and we have to dismantle old belief systems or disrupt maladaptive patterns. I don’t want you to have to do it alone. I want to offer you guides, companions and insights to help you navigate the tunnel. Consider this course to be like a flashlight that helps you find safe passage through.
The route that I walk that includes the tunnel is nearly 10,000 steps long. Only about 100 of those steps are through the tunnel. That means that for 9900 steps, I don’t have to deal with the challenges of the tunnel. When I’m in the tunnel, I often overlook the fact that it is a relatively short period of time, but when I emerge, the steps that take me home feel much more carefree and easy.
The course that I’m creating isn’t just about tunnels. It’s about liberation and love. It’s about the light at the end, when your body feels relief and hopefulness and you know that you have grown and changed and will never be the same again. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in all of my years of going through tunnels, it’s that when we surrender to the tunnel, we always feel more freedom on the other side. And that freedom is worth every challenging step.
If you’re in a tunnel right now, I want you to know that you’re not alone. I want you to know that there’s a light at the end. I hope that you will see it soon and that you will discover that the tunnel offered you gifts you didn’t know you were gathering along the way.
