A Different Kind of Freedom

As we say goodbye to another July, I realized this year that the month now holds a special meaning for me. While we celebrated our country’s birthday, I also quietly celebrated my version of a birthday.

July 2nd, marked two years since I took the terrifying leap into the unknown, leaving my career of 20+ years, and setting off on what I thought would be a short break to formulate a new direction in my life. 

I like big changes. I am a big fan of big risk, but this particular leap felt significant as it arrived just after my 50th birthday, and felt less like a choice and more like a mandate.

Long story short, I was falling apart. While my life as an event planner and mom of three looked pretty tidy, I wasn’t doing well. I was a chronic overachiever who didn’t know how to rest unless she was on the verge of collapse. I was a chronic savior, who put everyone else’s needs first believing that someday she would have her own needs met if she could just grab a minute to figure out what those were.

I held my breath. I held my tongue. I held my power.  As a result, I was quietly seething in resentment over the life I wasn’t living. This showed up in my body as chronic muscle pain, TMJ, anxiety, sleeplessness, and ambient panic attacks. For a woman who was hellbent on feeling in control, I was powerless and lost. 

And yet, I kept pushing. Until I couldn’t anymore and I collapsed. In that collapse, I let everything fall away. Among many were my career, certain friendships, and the unspoken obligation to hold up managing most aspects of our household.

Doesn’t that sound amazing - to let all of life’s responsibilities fall at the doorstep, and then close the door on them, and pull the covers over for a few months? But letting go is a painful process because the ego has no place to perch. The ego is an insatiable dopamine addict, so the withdrawal from achievement can be a long and painful one. It’s a detox that leaves no cell untouched. 

The purge was deep. I did a full house cleaning both literally and figuratively. I set boundaries in my marriage, with my children, with my friendships, and with myself. I lit a fire and started pitching things into it with abandon. I turned up the heat in every aspect of my life. I made requests without apologizing first. I stopped using the words “I’m sorry” in my emails and text messages. I stopped saying yes and instead enlisted the power of a polite no. I plugged up the slow leaks of energy that we think make us likable and palatable, but only serve to weaken our resolve to be seen completely. 

So, I did all of this work and discovered something worth noting. It turns out you can get rid of everything that feels like an obstacle to freedom, but the greatest obstacle of all lives in the mind. There I was, still married with kids, but as free as I had been since my mid-twenties. I had a fortress of newly erected boundaries, I was rested, I had time to create, and yet I was still there wrestling with myself over what I deserved to be true about my life. I had what I wanted, but yet the question remained, did I deserve it? 

Author Jamie Kern Lima, writes about this dilemma in her book WORTHY. We can come earthside stacked with gifts and talents and abilities and yet find ourselves always short of stepping into our deepest desires, simply from a lack of feeling worthy to have them.  Life can change in countless ways to align with a greater purpose, but unless I believe it is my purpose to claim, I am still in a jail of my own making.

How ironic. How ironic, indeed. This is a sobering revelation for a recovering dopamine addict. Not doing, is not enough. Not achieving, is not enough. The only thing that truly brings freedom is believing I am worthy of my gifts and the precious uniqueness of the life I’ve been given. 

This is a poignant revelation as I am on the threshold of launching a new business that is built only on the foundation of my gifts and talents. The audacity! Who do I think I am, anyway? That is the question, isn’t it?

Take the judgment out of that question, and there you have the most important question of your life. Who are you? 

The answer then gets a quick follow-up question: What are you going to do about it? 

This is where the rubber meets the road. It’s one thing to feel the freedom of these questions, and another thing entirely to step into the freedom of bringing the answers forward. How did I not know this was a two-step process? To believe and then to execute on that belief. It’s a different kind of freedom. One where the mind cooperates in the desires of the heart. For all of the years I thought there was some magic threshold OUT THERE that I needed to cross, it turns out all the thresholds that matter are in here (points to my head, lays a hand on my heart). 

It’s a freedom of worthiness. It’s a freedom to value my life as the treasure that it is meant to be. It’s a different kind of freedom that continually takes a brave step into the unknown. One that steps before the path has risen from the dark. One that knows I might falter, but I will not be dropped. It’s a freedom that comes from only one source, born from within. Divine as the day is long. Endless as the universe is vast. It’s a potential freedom we all hold and is the one reason we are all here. 

Deserving. Loved. Free to be the fullest and most liberated version of me.

And you.

You get this, too.