“You give up everything to be something.”

For as long as I can remember, I've been a "good student", "rising star", or "high performer." I learned how to get the grade, get the job, and get the promotion. I relished in the satisfaction that came from "crushing it."

I've also been a seeker. I have had a sense that there's more to life and reality than meets the eye. As a child, this took the form of a felt sense. As a young adult, impassioned debates and philosophy. Now I explore my relationship to the mystery through meditation, prayer, openness to mystical experiences, reading, and befriending new people who seem to know something I don't.

Becoming aware of my emotions

It was this penchant for seeking that initially brought me to coaching as a client. I quickly felt the power of working with someone supportive who was as invested in my personal growth as I was. Coaching awakened me to a broader range of my emotional experience. I went from believing I was almost always happy, to being connected with "protector parts" like anger, to discovering the vulnerable feelings of my inner child underneath. I began to recognize the ever-changing and wide-ranging flow of emotions that was part of my experience. Rather than allowing these emotions to continue to rule me subconsciously, I felt through them - and felt so much lighter on the other side. While “I’m almost always happy” seemed like a harmless enough belief, it was limiting me from being with my actual experience and connecting with others as they experienced challenging emotions.

For years before, I had been cultivating body awareness through a daily Vipassana meditation practice and 10-day retreats. In that first coaching engagement, I began to recognize that emotions are body sensations that we label. I was introduced to a Hakomi practitioner and the approach immediately resonated for me as a way to deepen my relationship with my body and emotions and develop my intuition or "felt sense." As we worked together, my system began to allow me to feel the grief, shame, anger, and fear that had always been there but previously did not feel safe to feel.

With the same Hakomi practitioner, I began to learn more about the core beliefs and strategies that were subconsciously organizing my experience and dictating what felt possible. For example, I recognized my subconscious belief that I need to have everything figured out. I learned that while it was easy for me to accept that it's ok to need to be loved, it felt harder to accept that it's ok to let love in. I recognized that learning and unlearning core beliefs and strategies was where so much of my path ahead would lie.

I felt more connected to myself and others than ever before and so many things seemed to be falling into place. I was 26 and promoted four levels at once to a Vice President role (in part because of my careful, habitual management of others' perceptions but also because of ways I had grown through coaching). I was putting myself out there socially more than I ever had. In challenging conversations, I could express myself rather than shutting down. And when others expressed challenging emotions, I could show up and really be with them. Still, something was missing.

Taking the leap...after every big expansion comes a contraction

Through my own personal transformation, I felt deeply called to become a somatic coach and Hakomi practitioner.

I left my job to pursue my calling. And with that big leap, after years of what felt like life-changing expansion, new (but actually old) challenges emerged.

Initially, being more connected to myself, it was an easy choice to change careers. However, once I made the leap, I was no longer doing what was expected of me. While I had lots of support from some, others judged, doubted, or misunderstood me. For the first time in my life, I was not meeting others' expectations of me. This lack of understanding, acceptance, and belonging felt excruciating. Others' doubts mirrored and amplified my own, which drained my energy and, at times, left me feeling frozen. Although I was pursuing my dream, I was so impacted by others' perceptions that I was unconsciously limiting myself from bringing it fully to life.

Meanwhile, in a committed romantic relationship for the first time in many years, I learned how challenging it was for me to tolerate my partner feeling hurt. When she shared her feelings, I would often become defensive. I felt like she was saying that I did something wrong, even when she wasn't.

I also had moments of doubt. Was I better off before I was aware of my feelings? Was I better off with a job than a calling?

Going deeper…discovering my core limiting belief

Then, in a particularly memorable session, I became fully aware of an unintegrated core belief that was underlying these seemingly new and disparate challenges (as well as long-familiar ones), held by a part of me that did not feel "enough." This exiled part was showing up in all of my challenges: in my work as worries about others' judgements and perceptions, in my romantic relationship as guilt or shame beneath my defensiveness, and as doubts about my path. It was also showing up as familiar social anxiety: feeling unable to fully express myself, especially around new people and in groups.

For most of my life, I habitually anticipated and responded to what others expected of me rather than trusting my own inner authority. As I grew up, I made my own choices but they were constrained by others' expectations. It was a wise, adaptive strategy that won me love and belonging as a child, and “success” as an adult, that I now felt limited by. As long as I did what was expected of me, I didn't have to confront my sense of not-enoughness. As I gained enough inner freedom to embark on my own path, the not-enoughness became too painful to ignore. I had spent so much energy trying to be what others expected of me that I was disconnected from who I actually was.

Remembering who I am…the world needs me to be me

When I saw that I had given up who I actually am to be who others expected me to be, I was overcome with grief. With that grief came clarity that the world needs me to be me. Since then, I feel more myself than ever and inspired to continue to discover who I am, for myself and for others. I feel more able to express myself freely. With the energy that I was spending to consider others’ judgements freed up, I feel more relaxed, present, and alive. I recognize thought loops more quickly and with more distance and being able to step back from it. At moments where I would have previously felt shame, anxiety, and an impulse to "be a good student", I instead feel clarity, connection to my own truth.

"Hakomi" is the Hopi word for "How do you stand in relation to the many realms?" It's a way of asking, "who are you?" that acknowledges that we are always in relationship with others and the mystery. While self-discovery is a personal journey, our inner transformations come to life in our relationships. I deeply believe that this work creates big ripples in our families, communities, and the culture at large. I believe that more freedom, love, and acceptance is possible. Though pain is inevitable, I believe a world with less pain, and especially less pain held alone, is possible.

I am grateful to be on my path and to be supporting others on theirs. Together, we are transforming old patterns into new possibilities.