Your New Life “Story” in this Season of Liberation and Renewal
With Passover and Easter coinciding this weekend we can’t help but land squarely in the season of liberation and renewal. Amen!
“Come sit with me by the running water you gorgeous darling.“
—Anonymous
If you’ve ever wanted to chart a new course for your life, a new path that could route you to a new destination, perhaps there could be no better time than right now. And the way we start is with a new “life story”.
Your “story” is the bite sized theme that sums up the way you live and relate to the world. Neuroscience tells us that we have 70,000 thoughts each day. And each one of those thoughts is responsible for generating the story we live, setting our behavioral course of action.
In my mid-20s my life story was pretty grim, “sick poor, and alone forever”.
At 25, I had ended a series of fraught relationships, had no money and some debt, and was suddenly diagnosed with what was then believed to be chronic fatigue syndrome. My hot mess of a life came to a screeching halt.
There was no cure for CFS, and the prescription was to basically retreat to a monastic life and rest as much as possible for an indeterminate amount of time. Ugh! Not what an ambitious 25-year old wanted to hear.
I had been living in Paris, studying graphic design, and then in graduate school at Pratt Institute in New York. This was supposed to my time to spread my wings and prove myself in the world. I had many ambitions.. But as life would have it the universe had other plans.
Through the grace of God, I found the life-changing work of Dr. Bernie Siegel. Love, Medicine and Miracles helped me to understand how my illness could be my teacher. When I called Dr. Siegel‘s office in New Haven, Connecticut, they referred me to a therapist, and an entire holistic clinic geared towards helping people recover from chronic fatigue syndrome in Great Barrington Massachusetts that happened to be just 35 minutes up the road from where I was living. So many miracles!
Through working with that very kind and gifted therapist at the clinic, I realized I needed a new life story.
I soon found power in seeing my illness as a very powerful life initiation. An initiation into becoming personally responsible young adult—instead someone looking for everything outside of myself.
I used the illness to get underneath the core beliefs and illusions that had gotten me into such a dark place.
My new life story became “this is an initiation“.
This is where I first learned to stop fighting with life and use all of life as my teacher. This was my pathway out of victimization and how I learned to be a co-creator of my own life.
The stakes were really high if I didn’t get well I probably be sick for the rest of my life and so I worked really diligently to transform my beliefs as well as my health.
So began and enormous journey of personal recovery that is probably responsible for why I am a psychotherapist and ontological coach today.
I dug into the programs of Codependence Anonymous and Adult Children of Alcoholics to address the shame I felt about everything that was imperfect in me. You see I didn’t realize that I could make a mistake, because at the time I believed my imperfections meant I was a mistake and somehow defective. But that’s shame for you.
Three nights a week I’d share with a room of 20 people how crummy I felt about myself, and the room with explode with, “Thanks Margo!”. Talk about redemption! There’s nothing like it for exposing our feelings of defectiveness in those 12-step rooms. Another blessed miracle for sure!
For four deliberate years I was busy designing my series of botanical posters for income, while attending 12-step meetings—learning how to be a personally responsible adult.
What an amazing time of revelation, rebirth, and personal liberation.
Over time my story moved from to something less ascetic. The life I wanted to create for myself was going to be “healthy, prosperous and surrounded with love”. I was fortunate to meet future husband near the end of my recovery. Yes, another miracle for sure!
As a therapist I fully understand that we must acknowledge and process our individual trauma and wounds. Personal recovery demands our own kindness, attention and outside support.
Though through recognizing the power of our life story, we can literally re-author what it is that we want to be generating with every one of our 70,000 thoughts and the action those thoughts compel us to we take.
I’ve re-authored my own story many times since then, and feel fortunate to have been able to build a secure and self-referenced foundation for myself. A viable profession, A healthy body, a balanced life, a beautiful home and a circle of love and connection now define my life. This did not happen overnight mind you, it’s the harvest of a lifetime of conscious and deliberate co-creation. Co-creation between me and my higher power.
There’s a quote that I saw a couple years ago that made me cry because it spoke of how I had chosen to live my life from here forward.
“Come sit with me by the running water you gorgeous darling.“
That’s the story of how I want to show up and serve in the world, whole and balanced, creating as a safe place for others to be as they are, and dream about who they could become. That’s the story that makes me come alive.
Through Passover we experience the liberation of the Jews and all oppressed people, a potent metaphor for the mercy and redemption needed for personal liberation. It’s still Easter morning, the most meaningful day in Christian calendar—meaningful in how how Easter gives us the promise of a personal and societal rebirth. The opportunity for your rebirth today has never been stronger.
Perhaps there’s a new story that’s awaiting you today, you gorgeous darling.
Margo