Why am I here?
The clock on the nightstand told me it was 3:30 am, I am only semi-conscious, I am sweating, I have become aware of the fact that my body is in a state of wanting to run. A feeling of total panic runs through me. I look around the room trying to get my bearings, the familiarity of my bedroom begins to flow through my consciousness. There is a storm brewing outside, I hear the tree branches whipping in the cool Michigan wind.
I am in my home; my husband Tony is sound asleep next to me, our children in their rooms, all seems fine and yet my body is in such a state that I felt like I needed to run away. A wave of nausea flows through me, nothing feels normal. I didn’t understand why I felt this way. I made my way into the bathroom, rinsed my face, and put cold water on a washcloth to lay across the back of my neck. Besides the nausea I didn’t feel like I was coming down with anything, it didn’t feel like those initial signs of getting the flu or a cold or anything.
What was happening to me?
I laid down on the cool tile floor trying to settle my body, what was this feeling, this feeling that was making my body want to run, run away, nowhere in particular just away from where I was. I couldn’t feel comfortable in my own skin, how could I get this to stop.
I took the next day off from work, something I never used to do and stayed home trying to get comfortable, nothing seemed to work. The day after, I went back to work and the distraction that work provided seemed to help bring things back into stasis. While the nausea would still come in occasional waves, the feeling of panic subsided. Once that feeling was gone, I became obsessed with finding out what was going on.
A check up at the doctor provided no answers, everything was normal. Perhaps I just needed to talk to someone, he said. So, I tried that but it felt like I was just talking through what was going on in my life over and over again without actually changing anything.
Two months later, I found myself standing in front of a rack of books at a bookstore in San Francisco. On a business trip, I sought out the familiarity of books as I frequently did but this time the shelves of books that caught my attention were labeled “self-help”. I wasn’t even sure what that meant at the time, but it sounded like what I might need. It might hold the answers.
In those self-help pages, I marveled at the confident words from those that seemed so clear on why they were here, what they were doing. This reading started me looking at my life and this knowledge started to become clear.
“Wait a minute, how did I get here?” Was the first question that emerged.
This question sent me back into my childhood and into my teen years looking at all the plans that I had had, the dreams, the adventures yet to be taken. Then “Is this all that life is to be for me?” was the next question to surface. These questions and their truth seemed to be related to the anxiety that had awoken in me that night.
The examination of these questions led me to the primary question, the question that seemed to place a thousand pounds of heaviness on my chest and shoulders, “What is my purpose for being here?”
It was in this primary question that I just knew that if I figured out that answer I could then get on to living in alignment with my purpose and everything would fall into place. I turned it into a project. Over the years I have lost count of the number of books read, quizzes taken, courses absorbed, weekend workshops, sharing circles, you name it, I think I have probably done it all on a quest for this one answer. Astrologers, tarot cards, sweat lodges and ayahuasca. All these things over the years have given me clues but I was looking in the wrong place. I didn’t know that I was looking in the wrong place of course.
It was just a matter of blowing up my life that got me to start looking in the right place, inside of me.
On October 19th of 2020, I moved out of the home that my then husband Todd and I had sold and into my own apartment. It was the first time that I had lived on my own since my freshman year of college. It was also the first time that the only person I had to take care of was me. If someone would have asked me that day what I would have wanted for dinner I wouldn’t have been able to answer that question.
I was so utterly out of touch with myself and what I needed and so much more concerned with what I thought other people needed from me that I had lost me.
It took me a bit of time, being on my own to realize just how much of me was missing, to realize that I had to go looking for me. This knowledge sent me on a journey to find me.
What did I need? What did I want? Who am I? What do I stand for? What do I value?
These were all examinations that were actively in my awareness each day. While the weightiness of the question about my purpose was always there it became clear that without knowing who I was, there was no way to know my purpose.
Bit by bit I got to know myself.
In early November of last year, I went on a sailing trip to Belize. On this trip I knew one other person and everyone else would be new to me. It was the first sailing trip that I would be taking without my now ex-husband and I knew that that was going to be emotionally difficult so as I prepared for the trip, I decided that I just wanted to relax, have fun, and get curious about knowing each of these new humans that I would meet.
During the initial days of the trip, I relaxed and observed and waited for any openings to connect and get to know people. The first one came when on the 2nd day one of the girls was sitting on the sunbed reading a book on Tarot. There was an opening for connection, I asked her “Why are you interested in Tarot?”
This single question started several hours of conversation about how she got introduced to Tarot, how her own abilities in it had scared her and me telling her how I had found shamanism, numerology, astrology, and human design. Throughout the week we would dive deeper into the conversation on these topics.
As I relaxed and stayed centered in my own connection to source, I would hear questions to ask, thoughts to challenge, as I shared these things when they came up it would take the conversation even deeper.
With others on the boat often sitting around listening in and joining. By the end of the week's sail, I felt really connected to these people, with a deep desire to see them all be happy and living their best life, taking their own growth further than they thought they could.
This week allowed the hurt in my heart and the sorrow to connect to something else.
Arriving back in the US, I had just two days to get ready for another trip, this time I was going to Canada to have a retreat in the dark, feminine winter that allows someone to go inside and reflect in the unknown. I had pages of questions to complete in preparation, some of which I had done on the boat the week before but as time ran down, I gave up and planned that I would complete that last page of questions on the flight to Canada.
As I sat in my window seat, pondering the page of questions, and staring out the window there was a question related to my purpose. I remember this wave of frustration at the question, and I just wrote down that I have no idea but whatever my purpose is, I want it to feel how I felt last week on the boat, being curious about people and allowing source to come through me to provide them a path to their own clarity. I knew doing that, spending all my time doing that made me blissfully happy.
And then I wrote, whatever my purpose is, I just know that it is something that I do like breathing.
With that I spent two days in reflection with business coaches, looking at my business model and what worked and what didn’t and while I didn’t walk away from that retreat with a perfect model that I just wanted to run out and go build, I now had my NorthStar. I had the guide that would take me to my purpose. That moment of frustration when I just gave up looking for an answer and spoke how I felt gave me that NorthStar.
As I moved through the holidays, looking forward to whatever 2022 would hold, I reviewed my life vision, I looked at my beliefs and strategies for achieving that vision, all things that I now do annually after having taken the Lifebook course through MindValley.com. It was clear that finally I had found all of me, I know who I am, I know what I want, and I am clear that there is nothing and no one that can take me off that center.
Two weeks into January, I was on a coaching call with my coach and friend Zoey, and I told her before the call that I wanted to talk about my purpose, I felt that I was so close to knowing what it was and yet at the same time I had no clue, I was hoping that processing on it with her would open it up. We were about 10 minutes into the conversation and once again I was feeling frustrated and just gave up and when I did, I simply said, “My purpose is to provide clarity where there is none.”
As those words were spoken while I heard them in my own voice, it felt like my soul had spoken.
I immediately broke out in goosebumps and the look on my face must have said it all because Zoey broke out in a huge smile and I just relaxed and so, “Oh my god, that’s it.” With that there was this overwhelming sense of “DUH''. Of course, it was that simple and it was something that I did and do like breathing. I immediately felt all that weight come off my chest and shoulders, the weight of that question hanging over me was gone.
The very next day on a call with my Shaman & Warrior sister, Diane, I retold the story, the goose bumps showed up immediately and then she simply said, “Can you see how you have always lived your purpose?”
In that moment as my life flashed in my head, tears immediately flowed, I could see it, it is because bringing clarity to something is something that I do like breathing, I just do it, it is a gift that I was born with, it is something that I have always done, it is my life’s purpose and my mission.
As I write this, the goosebumps appear again, they are my body’s knowing of the truth in this, I feel it in my gut. This is who I am.
Questions to Ponder:
- Do you know yourself?
- Do you know your purpose?
- What do you do in this world like breathing?
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