Transitions – The Power of Choice

Willemien de Rie – 1965 – Netherlands –  Running away to Australia and back

I was standing on London Bridge, a balmy summer eve in 1999. Looking at the water. Would I be missed if I jumped in? Would someone notice? I was 34. Professionally well on my way to a great career in finance. I felt lonely, unseen and detached. Didn’t really see the point of it all. A song playing in my head, that I had heard too many times already: Is this all there is, is that all there is …………

Fast forward to January 2001. My last project had been an enormous success. As a result, I was allowed to pick my next role and location. I chose Australia. Burying myself in my work allowed me to hide from my misery, and now it was allowing me to run away further than I had ever done!

My first choice: Running away

Sydney. Working hard – for those of you that think all you do in Australia is sit on the beach, catch a wave, and throw another shrimp on the barbie: think again. Partying and adrenaline kept me going in my spare time. To the outside world I worked hard, but also had fabulous holidays, sailed competitively on Sydney harbor and was an enthusiastic scuba diver. Shark dives were high on my list of favorite dives. With hindsight it is amazing how you can live such a great life on the outside and feel so miserable on the insight. In the meantime, every two or three years a new job. Every two or three years a new place to live. No real, meaningful connections. I just kept running away. Is that all there is, is that all there is ……

My second choice: Radical detachment

Moving up the corporate ladder. Learning the mechanics how to motivate an Australian team – the Dutch way was a tad too direct! How to take them on a journey. Still not getting attached. Not to friends. Not to colleagues. Not to lovers. Kept moving. Jobs. Locations. Interstate. Moving up. Running away.

I knew I was in trouble after my 2^nd burnout. All work, little play. No roots. No connections. I was done. I had, by this time, methodically planned my suicide, and how to do it without traumatizing anyone around me. Typical, in hindsight. Before making the final choice, I felt I owed it to myself to make one last ditched effort at changing my life.

My third choice: One more try
I booked myself into an expensive retreat in New Zealand. Hiking, raw vegetarian food, yoga ……… That was about as far away from my normal lifestyle as I could get. Great experience (although I do hate yoga with a passion to this day), and it still had not really changed my perspective on my exit strategy. Until I was on my flight home. I read an article about Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction – also known as MBSR, which is effectively an eight-week training based on the teaching of Jon Kabatt-Zinn, the granddaddy of mindfulness. It just resonated with me: That’s it! I am just too stressed and need to slow down!

I enrolled in the training after I got back to Melbourne, chuffed that my trainer was an ex-lawyer. She would really understand my world and get what I was struggling with. Now MBSR is normally a group training because learning from each other’s experience is incredibly valuable. In my case the universe provided what I needed, rather than what I had in mind. Accept that challenge or don’t, you choose ……….. And I embraced it.

My fourth – and pivotal – choice in hindsight: Follow my instinct

For personal reasons the original ex-lawyer trainer had to withdraw from teaching the group. Her replacement was a social worker and yoga trainer. My instinct just kicked in here and took over: that was not going to happen. I cancelled the group program, contact the original trainer, and talked her into doing the training, on a 1:1 basis which I preferred anyway. It was the starting point of my return journey.

One of the first exercises in the training was a body scan. The point is to connect to your body, and feel it, feel the parts and what is happening in your body. I couldn’t do it. I could imagine what was required, I could pretend it was happening but feeling something: nope. Mind-Body connection was not existing for me. Then a draft of air brushed over my toes. Ah, so that was where my toes were! From there I slowly learned connecting with my body. Connecting to what I was feeling was less easy. I was by now in my early fifties. Up to that point i might as well have been a talking head, as I had lived my life in my head, from my neck down was a vehicle, not a part of my identity. Not feeling, not connecting, not letting anyone in (me included) had meant less pain. And led me to the point that life was no longer worth living.

Over the course of 2 months the first level of excavation of my past started. Emotional & Psychological neglect. Sexual abuse. Rape. Rejection. Running away to Australia had been a coping mechanism. Building a career, being a workaholic, detaching, were all coping mechanisms. And the coping mechanisms were failing catastrophically. I had to look my past in the eye and deal with it. I had to go home.

My fifth choice: Retrace my steps

In the meantime, I lost my job, blew most of my savings. I was going through my network, looking for jobs and found I could not bring myself to going through the process. I was exhausted, still burnt out, and resented having to prove myself again. Two people were instrumental to what happened next. My closest friend had just lost both her foster parents in short time and was devastated by this. She had no family left, and acutely suffered because of this. This friend was the first deep connection I made, without realizing, sharing our stories, our pain, and our mutual thoughts of suicide. By sharing our pain and where we were, neither one of us acted on our feelings, and we both found what was needed to carry on.

The other person that made an immense difference was my youngest sister. She knew of my background, having been raised in the same family. She saw the cracks in my armor, wiggled her way through those and created a connection. Different from my friend, but just as life changing for me. Talking with these 2 wonderful women and doing the mindfulness work was the basis for my next move: I had learnt to listen enough to what was going on inside of me to understand I had to go home.

My sixth choice: Stop Procrastinating

I didn’t quietly run away, as I had done all those years ago. I took a period of 6 month to say my goodbyes deliberately. If I was going to do things differently, this was the point in time to put my money where my mouth was. I had little money left, no job to go to and no idea where I was going to live, but I was coming home.

My sisters were waiting for me at the airport – balloons and all! My future brother-in-law had a fully furnished flat he was not really spending time anymore, so I could stay there. Earning my keep by supporting my youngest sister in setting up her own coach training business. The practicalities were sorted out quickly. That left me with time and reluctant energy for the real work that had to be done.

My seventh choice: Doing the hard yards

My sister is an excellent coach, and she is caring enough to ask me the hard questions. The hard questions and subsequent answers made me enroll in a program for Secure Based Coaching. My intention was not set to become a coach, I just wanted to make sense of why I was so miserable and lonely. I learned that secure basis, places I can withdraw to either physically or in my heart are important and that my family and connections with people I cared about were a strong secure base for me – the irony!

The other important thing I leaned was to own my past. Not hide from it and pretend it didn’t exist. It meant looking my demons in the eyes, acknowledge the horrible things that had happened in my life and to take the first steps in understanding the emotions that were the result, were part of me but not all of me.

My eighth choice: Radical Ownership

In the early 14^th century, a monk by the name of Dante Alighieri wrote a poem called the Devine Comedy. It describes Dante’s travels through Hell, Purgatory and Heaven. Hell, according to Dante consists of 9 circles. I think he was wrong. During the Secure Base Coaching program, I found a new circle of hell that Dante didn’t describe in his work: radical ownership. Radical ownership is about accepting what has been, without the drama and the stories we tell ourselves that make us become our emotions.

Seeing things without the drama, releasing the anger, the sadness and owning up to where I had to take ownership of my own behavior, actions, and other not particularly nice things in my past, felt like going through the 10^th circle of hell. It was also the last time I considered taking my own life. My personal descent into hell led to the next choice.

My nineth choice: Connection

Taking full ownership of my past whilst losing the drama made me open to life in a way, I had not done in over half a century. I was connecting to people, in a real meaningful way. It wasn’t necessarily easy, not for me and certainly not for those that provided my first safe, secure connections. I couldn’t stop testing those relationships. Did they really accept me for who I was? Did they stay, no matter what I did? They did. Despite me behaving like a spoilt child. Continuously asking for reassurance, continuously asking to be loved. Eventually I started believing and accepting that I was ok, and that life was worth living. New friendships and connections were built, one of them turned out to be the most unexpected and special.

In the years since running off to Australia, I had been pretty much single. Not exactly a nun, but commitment phobic enough to avoid relationships. That lasted for over 20 years, and I was quite happy to remain single for the remainder of my days. After I had made the choice to open myself up to connecting with people, I met someone during a board games evening, in the local village. Sparkes flew, and we are now in a loving, committed relationship. Yes, I did test this relationship as well – extensively. And he stayed, I am very happy to say.

My tenth choice: Consciousness

I had started to develop awareness of who I was, how my story had affected me, and accepted my past and my part in it. Awareness and Acceptance gave me an incredible valuable gift: conscious choice. It enables me to live the life I want to live, rather than live happening to me. By me vs. to me.

It is the difference between standing on London Bridge wondering if I will be missed if I jump versus choosing to live my life 100% engaged. And yes, I would be missed.

Are you looking for change in your life? Do you feel it can be done differently? It can be done. The choice is yours.