In a podcast, Brene Brown mentioned that while many people share when they broke and how the rose back up, they rarely talk about the uncomfortable part in between - when they were down and out. I’m guilty of that too. There is a part of my story I refrained from sharing because I hold shame about it. Will I come across as weak or whiny? As a failure? Immature? Spoiled? Ignorant?
Sharing with full honesty requires vulnerability.
I am going to be vulnerable.
(I know you can’t see it, but trust me, I am trying not regurgitate what I just ingested.)
This is the in-between part of my story.
My emotional capsize happened after a duration of tragedy in the form of three deaths. Yes, three deaths in a row, in a span of only several months, of being that were close to my heart. It was a heap load in a short amount of time. Rather than tend to thyself, I stockpiled every bit of grief and kept marching on. Like when you pack as many clothes as you can into a plastic bag and suck all the air out. Efficient yes, but effective, no.
Here is the timeline that lead to my break-through:
March 2012, Easter Sunday - my mother announced she had terminal lung cancer.
April 2012 - one of my dearest friends died in her sleep from an aura seizure.
June 2012, Father’s Day - my mother died.
September 2012 - we put Dan’s dog Rocky to sleep. Rocky had been a champion of strength.
June 2013, the following year, Dan and I got married. Because of this beautiful, full light at the end of the tunnel, I tucked my grief in like a running back and charged forward. I told myself, “I got this! I can take care of everything and totally do everything and blah blah - I. Am. Ok.”
But, I wasn’t.
The following year, January 2014, I had my first ever anxiety attack.
I had done such a good job of shoving my grief down that eventually it hurled itself back up in the form of an anxiety attack. The trigger was pretty harmless; my husband asked me which terra cotta pot I wanted and I lost it. I wanted to tremble, throw up, cry, fall to my knees and run out of the store all at the same time. Fight, flight or freeze. My nervous system was so compacted my body wanted to do all three things, all at once. That’s the break.
In my recent blog “Leap of Faith”, I shared about the revelation of knowing I had to take a leap of faith and quit my job. This decision inspired my husband to join me. We both quit our jobs, left our lives in Los Angeles and traveled for over a year. That’s the rise.
Here’s what I haven’t shared: the time in between the break and rise.
After the anxiety attack, the reality of just how unhappy I was career wise got deeper and darker. I would wake up in the middle night from a dream about work. Not my mother dying, not family conflicts as result of my mom’s death - but work. I would dream about typing in information into the digital filing system I had created. It was robotic; required no heart. I did it every day, over and over again. I had the same dream over and over. It felt like a nightmare because every day was the same and now my dreams were a repeat of my every work-day.
I would awake in the middle of the night exhausted and then struggle to go back to sleep. This went on for months. Then, it became that I would wake up from that dream and immediately start to cry. I would slide out of bed and go to our second bathroom, where I knew I Dan could not hear me, and collapse on the floor in tears. We had cushy dark brown bathroom mats and that’s where I’d lay. When I was cried out, I’d go back to bed. This went on for some time. I hid my sadness from Dan for as long as I could because I was afraid for him to see how I was hurting - to see me sad, broken and afraid. I was afraid to be seen as weak and as a failure. I was afraid I was not enough.
Eventually, enough was enough and I had to face what was happening; what I was feeling and what was really going on deep down. I acknowledged it and accepted it for what it was: misery. I gave in and stopped fighting myself and the perception of me I had once thought so important to uphold. I surrendered, I let go. The acceptance certainly didn’t feel graceful - it felt coarse, harsh and hard. Looking at yourself when you feel like you’re covered in muck and grime - to see yourself as you truly are - can be one of the hardest things someone has to do.
The only place I could have gone otherwise was further down, deeper, into the well of a severe depression. I know that place, so I know what the door to despair looks like and feels like for myself. Without much grace, but with conviction, I said, “Fuck this, I’m done.” One evening, I finally told Dan everything. I allowed myself to fully be seen and heard; for him to see and hear my pain.
From that conversation on, is when things begin to change. I decided I would leave my job at the end of the year and take a few months to decompress and figure things out. Once I let my boss know, I began to feel as though I could finally breathe.
The recovery took time. Things happened in stages. Nothing happened overnight.
That’s what I want you to know.
We will all fall. But, we can all rise.
It takes time. Time is what you owe yourself. In that time, consistent self awareness and self care is what you need to give yourself.
Patience. Everything you experience - especially if well compressed - will take time to decompress, process and understand. From understanding can come compassion. From self-compassion comes the ability to genuinely love and live from that love.
Honesty was and is so greatly required. In my case, both with myself and my husband. The more you lie to yourself, the greater a lie you live and the deeper you sink into the muck. That is such a hard, dark place to be and exist from.
I am grateful for that anxiety attack at Home Depot. It was the beginning of the avalanche that needed to happen. It was the first tipping point of turning my snow globe over. To look at the landscape of the life you have painted and admit that it is not an honest depiction of how you feel or how you want to be living is big, deep and profound. Once you acknowledge the truth you have to own it and move forward; you can’t go back to the way things were or who you were.
“We can rise up from our failures, screwups, and falls, but we can never go back to where we stood before we were brave or before we fell. Courage transforms the emotional structure of our being.
Vulnerability is not winning or losing; it’s having the courage to show up and be seen when we have no control over the outcome. Vulnerability is not weakness; it’s our greatest measure of courage.”
After the anxiety attack and months of nightmares and telling the Dan my truth, I picked up a copy of “Eat, Pray, Love” by Elizabeth Gilbert while strolling through Target. I knew the book was popular but wanted to know if was for me. To asses if it was, I randomly flipped it open and read the first paragraph my eyes landed on. Turns out Elizabeth Gilbert and I had something in common; we both knew bathroom floors really well. I thought, “Someone out there gets me.” and put the book in the cart.
Someone, somewhere does get you too.
I hope you choose your Truth and Trust that where ever it takes you is where you are meant to be. Be courageous, be vulnerable and live the way your heart wants you to, not the way you think you have to. Changing the course of your life can be scary because we don’t know what is down the road, but I can tell you from personal experience, that road is a heck of a lot better than staying in the muck.