My Life Started with Death
*A dark title for what is generally a light-filled blog! I wrote this after a call with a client where we discussed the events in life that encourage us to truly live. She mentioned she had spent so much of her life not living and always admired that I had truly lived mine. I realized my courage to live came from my up close experience with death. I hope you can appreciate this post even though the topic is a bit darker.
If you had met me as a 21 year old, you would have met a very different version of me. Sure it’s been a decade, but with aging doesn’t always come change or even growth for that matter. Just because we age doesn’t mean we are getting closer to our true selves. Another year past can mean simply a year of life that has gone by.
At 21 I was more deeply imbedded in the world of “shoulds” than I would have liked to admit. A passionate environmentalist, I dreamt of helping the world in big ways, but I felt myself consistently shut down by more “rational parts of self”. It would be time to buckle down and get a job after graduation. I could fantasize all I wanted, but my conditioned self just wouldn’t have it.
Then on January 23, 2015 I got a phone call that would forever change my life. I was driving back from a hot yoga class with my friend when my mom called. I wish that my mom had more tact. Or I should say, some tact. She never has and she probably never will, so she told me right there on the phone that my dad had passed away.
He had been sick, but not that sick. We all thought he was on his way to recovery. The concept of him dying never entered my conscience. Ever. I knew it would happen one day, but not at 21 with my whole life ahead of me. I really needed him for this life.
If you’ve received devastating news in a sudden way, you know how irrevocably tragic it is.In one 2 minute phone call or message, your whole life is different. The magnitude of such trauma is incredibly hard to process. The body goes into shock and I think I spent the following year of my life in survival mode. Just trying to get through the day.
And while some days it was really hard, deep down a part of me knew that I had to choose to let my life begin that day. That didn’t mean I was jumping for joy or denying what happened, but it meant that if life was going to go on without my Dad, I was going to live it to the fullest. It’s like my soul swooped in to save me on that day. It reminded me that, yes my life would be hard and different, but I would not squander it on the “shoulds” of the world. Fuck that.
Before this day, I had glimpses of my soul. An ocean fanatic, I remember every summer going to The Sea Ranch with my family and feeling such a profound joy I could barely describe it. The ocean and the quiet filled my heart with what can only be described of as bliss. It was there I felt my soul.
At 20 I studied abroad in Bocas Del Toro, Panama. A destination known throughout Latin America for partying that I will always know for its absolutely stunning nature. It was there I felt my soul again after many years feeling it drain away in Los Angeles.
I knew this feeing of soul and I decided that I would go after it. Even if that meant choosing the path of nonconformity and non-compliance with my “inner-Karen”, or the part of myself who demands a serious life by the rules.
I frankly had no time for rules. I only had time for heart and soul and the visions of my destiny.
My life had just begun and I promised myself it was going to be a damn good one.
