This is my story
I’ve been in therapy for more than 10 years. Her name is Marta and she’s one of the smartest, kindest and most patient women I’ve met. I decided to take control of my own life and call her after a romantic misfortune. At that moment, it felt like a pretty good excuse - it was too painful to admit “I don’t know what’s wrong with me”.
As I sat on her couch, I was 23 years old, she looked at me and asked, “what brings you here?” I gave her my cover and she accepted it with grace and patience. As if she could look straight through my soul, at some point she asked me “who do you live with?” Back then I was living with my mom and my older sister. So, she followed up, “is your father alive?”. I replied “yes, but I don’t have a relationship with him”. Long pause, she tilted her head with the subtext “is that all?” And then I began to admit what was so painful that my ego wouldn’t let me say out loud: “I don’t want to talk about it”.
I once read that it’s seductive to think that not talking about our pain is the safest way to keep it from defining us, but ultimately, the avoidance takes over our lives. And that is exactly what happened. This is the story of a takeover governed by avoidance, and a re-discovery commanded by introspection.
I was born the second daughter of my mother and my father, who raised me as a princess. They invested in my education, in my social activities and helped me get to know the world. I was my mom’s little girl from day one and I was inseparable from her. Knowing that I would always have her support no matter what has allowed me the luxury to make decisions freely and without any other restraint than what I believe is good for me.
And I never questioned this bond. One Saturday morning, Marta asked me: “Julieta, next week I want you to bring me details about your relationship with your father as you were growing up”. My brain went blank. I told her, “I’m sorry I don’t really remember”. And it was true. I wasn’t avoiding the subject; I simply didn’t have many memories. I only had a vivid feeling of discomfort. As Marta and I began this journey together, I was oblivious to the all-encompassing effect that this relationship, or lack thereof, has had in my life, even though the examples were all over the place.
I met my best friend playing field hockey and we became sisters in the fastest way possible. She knows everything about me, she can scan me with one look, she’s my person and the one who has always had my back. I once told her: “If you are going to spend the summer in Australia, I know you will end up staying there, so I’d rather not be friends anymore”. Yes, I was breaking up with my best friend. The pain of losing her was so unbelievably unbearable and the story in my mind was that she was abandoning me. My world was collapsing, I couldn’t take it and so I thought I’d rather push her out of my life than deal with rejection. Being the wonderful person that she is, she did not allow for this to be the end of our story.
Hurt people hurt people, period.
Sadly, that was not the first time I was cutting someone out of my life.
It was a summer evening, and I was 19 years old. I got in my father’s car, we drove for 10 minutes with minimal exchange of words, that was normal. We ate and I was nervous. It wasn’t until dessert that I built the courage to tell him I did not wish to see him anymore. I told him I did not feel comfortable around him and that I preferred to distance myself from him. He told me: “I hope there’s something of me in you”. Wearing my thickest skin and the angriest of eyes, I replied “I don’t think so”. This was the first time I saw him cry out of sadness.
It took me about three years since I began therapy to start unpacking what had happened with my father. By that moment, I had enough datapoints or red flags that were telling me something was not ok. I was angry and emotionally closed off, and the worst part was that I didn’t know it. A narrative about myself began calcifying: “you are a bad person, you are selfish, and you are cold”. And I believed it so easily, after all, what kind of person chooses to separate from her father? I think I tried to make myself as unlikeable as possible to beat people to the punch of hurting me.
Unpacking everything has been painful, but has also been freeing, and has allowed me to understand what happened to me, as opposed to what was wrong with me. The irony of it all is that nothing happened, it was simply the absence of love from someone who’s genetically predisposed to love you.
In 2017, I found myself one Saturday morning walking to my therapist’s house and, suddenly, there was an unfamiliar feeling. I was feeling lighter, it was as if a huge weight had been lifted from me. I walked and it felt like flying. I was thinking about what I wanted to tell Marta, and I started to cry out of joy. I was in the process of healing. I was discovering not who I was, but who I was in the process of becoming.
Although therapy helped me understand intellectually what happened, there was an integration that was missing. There is an emotional education that took place, that allowed me to physically feel the feelings and let my body incarnate its duty of guiding me through intuition and embodied wisdom.
One experience was a romantic endeavor. It was surprising to me to learn that I, the horrible person, was capable to fall in love. It was a vertiginous experience, both falling in and out of love. When he decided to end our relationship, my heart broke in one million pieces. Falling and getting back up was one of the hardest things I have ever been through. But unlike other falls, this time there was a huge difference. I was not bypassing my feelings; I was feeling it all. It became very clear that the emotional stoicism that had been my trademark for so many years was no longer an option. Turning grief into compassion and loss into gratefulness was the story of an alchemist.
Going through this experience has allowed me to bring light to corners of my being that had been in the dark; it has taught me about the size of my heart and has made me a better person by helping me demystify some the toxic narratives I was creating about myself. Now I knew I could love selflessly, passionately, and purely. And this knowledge gave me a newfound strength and belief in myself. I’m truly grateful he broke my heart because, in a way, he made it bigger.
There is a second experience that completes the circle. When I visited the Sacred Valley, in Peru, I participated in a plant medicine ceremony. San Pedro is the medicine that I took. Its name comes from being the one that holds the doors to Heaven. I learnt it is a powerful empathogen, that it usually helps you access feelings of love, and that intention, as you go into the ceremony, matters. This has been an extremely powerful experience for me that has singlehandedly changed the trajectory of my emotional education. For the sake of brevity, I’ll keep it short. If you are interested in reading more about my experience with San Pedro, please continue to this article.
During the ceremony, it was the first time in my life I felt pure shame -not the effect of shame but shame itself. And I could not stop crying. The shaman asked what was hurting, and this time I did not use any covers: “I feel shame for not having a relationship with my father”. The medicine worked its way through my body and that shame was drained. What happened after that was the restoration of innocence after experience. It was finally the integration between knowledge and feeling.
So, where am I now?
I will be lying if I say it gets easier. It doesn’t. I just got more patient, mostly with myself. The patience brought compassion and a sense of respect for my agency. The journey has made me a more empathetic and aware person, who acknowledges limitations and is not trying to make something what it’s not. It has made me realize that you can’t change what happened, but you can decide what you want to do with it moving forward. And I found that that allowed me to stay curious, hopeful, creative and defiant of the status quo. But most importantly, throughout the journey, I have rediscovered my power. I discovered I have the power to not let a tag line define me. I have the power to change the narrative. I have the power to design my life for continuous renewal. For better or for worse, I live at the threshold of renewal.
With love,
Julieta
Mandalay, Myanmar, 2018
