Earlier this year, I made the most significant commitment to my personal growth than in all the 30 or so years that I set foot on this path. It’s been mostly a journey of fits and starts. One step forward, two back....long plateaus where I stuffed my realizations back inside and did my best to live up to everyone’s expectations. After all, it was what I was trained to do, and I learned that lesson well. It kept me safe.
Somewhere around my 50th birthday, I knew this behavior had to stop. I was tired, depressed, and despite being outwardly successful, I didn’t feel as satisfied as my outer trappings suggested. So with my knees knocking and my stomach in knots, I embarked on a journey to discover myself as if my very life depended on it. And it did.
I’ve studied with many teachers, the longest being in the Siddha Yoga tradition, for the last 13 years or so. It’s provided me with a steady spiritual foundation, and it’s led me to other opportunities as well. About three years ago as I wandered through my local bookstore, I stumbled upon Jack Canfield’s The Success Principles: How to Get from Where You are to Where You Want to Be. I bought it without hesitation. I worked with the book on and off over a couple of years, but never really made steady progress. I made some progress, but not as much as I experienced in the last few months.
In February, I attended a Success Principles workshop in Dallas while I was separated from my husband. (We have since reconciled.) That one day was enough to unearth a desire to explore Canfield’s work more deeply. I worked with earnest with the principles for the next few months, and with the help of my accountability partner, Meg, whom I met at the workshop, I made great strides in beginning to write my book and deciding to train as a life coach. I committed to additional programs, including Breakthrough to Success (BTS) in August, and then Advanced Breakthrough to Success in October. Both dovetailed with my coach training, and I couldn’t have planned it better if I tried.
While I made significant headway on the limiting beliefs that consistently derailed many of my goals during BTS, it wasn’t until Advanced that the real unearthing occurred. And one exercise left me stunned.
In a guided meditation, we identified the single event where we experienced our most significant failure to please. The scene of my father standing in our tiny bathroom, facing the sink, with a white beard of shaving cream lathered upon his face popped into my consciousness. I said, “Dad, I got A’s on my report card.” He turned to me and said, “Why didn’t you get A+s?” He turned back to the mirror with a razor poised in his hand. Even 40 years later, I felt the disappointment. (Thankfully, I had a Releasing the Inner Magician session with Dr. Deb Sandella with which resolved much of that residue.)
Coming out of meditation we were to note the limiting belief that arose from that event. I had two: Men always know best, and no matter how hard I try, it will never be good enough. From there we were to determine what decisions we made based on that event and those limiting beliefs. Without hesitation, I began to write.
- Married my first husband at 18 out of rebellion. My father hated him.
- Reconciled during my first separation with him after 13-years of marriage with my first husband because my father disapproved of me breaking up the family and hanging out with “the lesbians.” (I was so naive at the time that I didn’t realize that my friends were lesbians.)
- I didn’t write the first article assigned to me by a major magazine early in my freelance writing career out of fear that I wasn’t a good enough writer (also directly attributed to my guidance counselor who said I would never be a writer––I now teach writing and have written hundreds of articles, a couple of books and a screenplay.)
- I’ve been struggling with my latest book proposal, fearing that it’s not good enough. (I hired a coach to keep me accountable.)
- And then the heart-stopper I realized my 12-year marriage to my current husband has provided me the opportunity to work out my issues with my father. Scott has played his fatherly role very well in many instances in our marriage, particularly in the last six years when I’ve been pursuing my own goals rather than merely supporting his. (He’s also 7 years older and has an uncanny resemblance to my father.) I dropped my pen, and this thought popped into my mind: “What the hell do I do with this?”
The next morning in my hotel room, I bent over to pick up my iPad to journal, and my body felt different. I felt like a woman for the first time in my life and no longer a little girl looking for my father’s approval.
The trip back home was bittersweet. I was thrilled with the discoveries I had made and my newfound sense of presence about myself. It was exciting. Yet it also raised another question: If I married my husband to win my father’s approval, would the woman unveiled during this workshop choose the man whom I’d been married to for 12 years? The relationship has been strained for a number of years, and having learned my mother’s trick very well, I knew how to build a life away from the one I shared with Scott. I had my time away for my professional/personal development, and to visit family. I had my life on campus where I teach and live during the week––and then I had my life with Scott. Our time together was becoming less frequent with all my travels and with living near campus over the last two years rather than do the 500-mile per week commute It had worked, up until now. And while the little girl seeking approval was willing to do whatever it took to keep the peace, the woman in me just doesn’t have the energy to do so anymore.
There are times when I wish I could just flip a switch and be either fully committed to the marriage or firmly convinced that it was time to bring the relationship to completion. I have been in this place often, but this time it does feel different. I’m exploring my feelings and my wisdom at a much deeper level with a greater understanding of the dynamics that have been operating in our relationship. I’m trying not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I’m not extremely comfortable with this unknowing, particularly since it adds to the tension in the relationship. As Jana Stanfield says in one of her songs, I am “between the no longer and the not yet.” And for now, it’s a the place I must be.
