Spring Cleaning the Inauthentic Life…part 1

So many mornings like this breathing my way through the voices.

I’ll admit, I’ve been sitting on this one for a long time.

Eighteen months? Twenty years?

I recently read a post from someone who admitted to feeling like a bag of hammers with a panic disorder since late 2023. You know, the time when EVERYTHING started to shift. I was like, “oh my goodness, I am not the only one!”

That was around the time of our formidable departure from Peru, which included a scary home invasion and a fire sale of all that I owned—all while in the infancy of the change of life that makes every woman a WOMAN.

Back then, when we announced to the community that we were leaving, we received a spectrum of responses, and I know for some it was a shock. Why would we destroy everything it took years to build? What about our employees? What about all the people we had worked with long-term? Shouldn’t you be super happy because you serve medicine and have it figured out?

Well, there’s the rub. I wasn’t, and to be honest, there are many days I’m still not.

When you spend a good portion of your work in the shadows, there’s no avoiding your own if your eyes are open and you’re willing to be honest. In 2023, a lot was coming up. I heard someone describe it as a deep, primary guilt that arises when you feel there are inauthentic aspects to the way you’re living. On one level, I had made a commitment to do what it takes to journey toward selfhood and understand why I’m really here and what service I’m meant to do. Yet, there was another piece that found comfort in staying between the lines and seeking approval from the herd. Like the neurosis called social media that curates if we are included or not.

COVID really showed me that. So many times, I wanted to speak out. I wanted to share some of the truly awful things I experienced that I really can’t share publicly, but I was afraid of being lumped in with the ‘right-wing trucker convoy lunatics’ . This is what we do. You’re in the group and agree to all the rules or you are ostracized. Nuance went the way of 2019. The neurosis of needing acceptance kept my posts tight and my mouth tighter. There is this peice that wants to be seen as inclusive. Present tense. She is sitting right here now in the room with me.

Have I felt the events of the last five years with aching depth? Yes. Did I have the energy to fight the wars online? No. Not with what I was facing internally. Was that even called wrong? Yes.

You see the loop here. Also as I am hovering near my fifties, I also have the benefit of remembering when I told everyone exactly how they should live. Uniqueness is only welcomed if it conforms to the group think. True uniqueness of the individual to self-direct, is a threat to tyranny. The tyranny I was wielding in the name of righteousness. Sorry mom and dad.

The other nail in the coffin was questioning how people (including me) could come to medicine over and over and/or dieta, yet still have some gnarly elephants in the room. Isn’t this work supposed to massively shift consciousness? I’m not saying it doesn’t contribute a lot—I’ve changed a lot—yet I still felt like there was a piece missing. Why do we have moments of knowing God, only to find ourselves feeling hopeless six months down the road?

One has to ask: Are we just doing a quick spray-paint upgrade or spring clean for an inauthentic life that’s challenging, or are real breakthroughs happening? How does one know the difference? Looking back, I can say both definitely happened.

The deep push toward authenticity and self-direction was the soil and fertilizer for these questions.

I was ready for it to look ugly, to leap without answers, and to have absolutely not one shred of stability during perimenopause… because why not? If I was going to examine my relationship with the societal matrix, why not make my place in it as ambiguous as possible?

Thus began the 18-month (and counting) journey.

Stay tuned for part 2.