Something I needed to remember

And maybe you did too

A quick note: I usually record a voiceover for all of my pieces, but my voice is extremely overworked this week and uncomfortable from overuse at events, so I haven’t uploaded a voiceover for this one to give it a chance to rest. Thanks for understanding!

Dear Kula Diaries,

In 2017, I left my job as a railroad police officer and I stepped into the unknown. As I planned for my, ‘career in the outdoor industry’, I had taken several steps to, ‘get ready’ for this leap. One of those steps was signing up for a Life Coaching course. Prior to leaving my job, I had hired a coach named Hasna, and the experience of working with her completely changed my life. I wanted to learn more about the process of coaching so that I could continue the process of moving forward in my own life — and also helping others.

My husband Aaron was also interested in attending the class, since he had watched me do a 180 degrees turn in my own life — and so, in December of 2017 — we found our way to a retreat center in Mexico to spend a few weeks working with a master NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) coach.

Sunrise in Mexico during our training.

At some point during the week, we had a time scheduled on the beach for our class to participate in a beautiful practice of sharing and meditation. We all sat in a circle, and we slowly worked our way around the group — answering questions that were prompted by the facilitator. I can’t remember the specific question we were asked, but it was something very open-ended… something to the effect of, “What do you need to share with us tonight?”. We were all instructed to listen to each participant as we went around the group to share. Instead of responding back to each other or, ‘giving advice’, we just listened and held each other in awareness and presence.

As the time to speak was handed to me, I started to weep — from a cathartic and deep place that I had never felt before. I shared with these folks the deeply rooted fear of failure that I had never expressed to anybody. I shared the feeling of shame that I felt around my failed marriage and around quitting my job — with absolutely ‘nothing’ to show for it. The other people in the circle sat in silence and listened to me as I released what felt like three and a half decades of fear and disappointment and shame. The feelings of unworthiness erupted from me in such a force that it terrified me — I had always been, ‘the perfect one’, and had never ever revealed these fears to anybody before. To the world outside, I was always happy and seemingly infallible. But, inside, the truth of how I felt was very different.

The facilitator leading the circle asked me to close my eyes, and he asked me to bring to mind an image of myself as a young child. Almost instantly, I felt like I had been sucked into some sort of time warp: rationally, I knew that I was sitting in a circle on a beach, but in my minds eye, I saw something completely different. In the second that I closed my eyes, it felt like everything else melted away, and I was transported — oddly enough — back to a soccer field. I saw a young, vivacious little girl running across the field, her hair bouncing in the wind as her slightly disheveled purple soccer jersey and oversized Umbro soccer shorts swished back and forth. As I saw this image of myself, I crumpled into uncontrollable sobbing — it didn’t matter that I was surrounded by other people, and — for the first time in my life — it felt like I was letting out the emotions that I had never allowed myself to feel.

I looked at that tiny little girl, and I saw something that I had not seen in myself in a long time: I saw how free she was. She hadn’t yet saddled herself with the heaviness of all of the things that she should be… instead, she just was. I watched her bound down the soccer field and stop… stooping down in the grass to examine an ant hill. The parents on the sidelines screamed wildly as the opposing team dribbled the ball past her, but she was blissfully unaware and fascinated by the little mound of life that she had discovered on the field. As I watched her play, I could sense the true essence of who she was: kind, creative, innocent, loving and fun. She was trying her best to navigate life, and I felt such a deeply profound feeling of empathy for this miniature version of me.

I followed the facilitator’s prompts for a few more moments of this intense visualization, and gradually I navigated my mind back into my body. I felt the sand beneath my toes and opened my eyes. As I looked around, I saw my fellow students looking back at me with eyes that were reflecting a tremendous amount of love. Nobody offered me advice… nobody told me that they were going to fix my ‘problems’ or insecurities… nobody said anything, except for… Thank You. And, in this unbelievably cathartic way, that was enough. I didn’t want solutions or tactics… I didn’t want to be fixed. Instead, it was the most beautiful thing to simply be seen for how I was — which included the whole mess of everything in my life: my shame, my fear of disappointment, my dreams… all of it. For the first time, not one thing was hidden or suppressed or swept under the rug: it was all there for everybody else to see, and the thing that I felt in that moment was… love.

Aaron and I at our training together — this was just a few months after I had left my job with the railroad.

When I stood up from the beach that night, I felt this strange sense of emptiness — but not the type of emptiness where you feel lonely and lost. Rather, I felt the emptiness of having released a heavy and burdensome weight that I had carried for a very long time. It was if the universe itself had lifted it off my shoulders saying, You do not need to carry this alone.

I’ve thought about that day a lot over the years — and while I can’t say that I’ve remained entirely free from carrying the heaviness of life, I have tried to remind myself that I do not need to carry this alone. Over and over again, I practice letting go of the things that I carry: the shame, disappointment and fear that weigh me down. I practice looking beyond the outer facade of who I think I am — and try to see deeply into the truth of what exists, when the stories and identity are stripped away.

Recently, I’ve printed out a photo of myself in that purple soccer uniform. My bright purple shirt says, Billy Baker Auto Sales on it. The other day, I Googled that name, and couldn’t find a recent record for its existence as a business. Apparently, Billy Baker is no longer selling cars. And yet, at the time that I wore that shirt, it probably felt like a fixture of the community that wouldn’t ever not exist. Life is transient and ever-changing. We are in a flow of impermanence… even the cells of our own bodies are never not brand new.

The photo I now having sitting on my desk!

And yet, there is this unchanging, precious essence to each of us — the unsay-able thing that we can see when we look at a photo of our child-self… or even into our own eyes. It’s a thing that we know is there, but at the very same time, we can’t say what it is with the words we currently have available to us in our vocabulary. When I allow myself to look beyond the ‘external story’ — and when I look into what is true, I discover what really matters.

In the very early days of my attempt to ‘piece together’ a life beyond my job as a Railroad Police Officer, I did a love and kindness meditation that included another powerful visualization. In this visualization, I was prompted to envision the people that I loved the most sitting around me in a circle. One by one, they took turns telling me what they loved about me. As I saw each of them, I felt the love pouring towards me, and I was overwhelmed with a deep sense of connectedness. Then, I was prompted to say those exact same things back to myself, and I couldn’t do it. It was the first time that I realized how conditional my own version of ‘self-love’ really was.

I’ve spent nearly my entire current lifetime trying to ‘prove’ myself through works and accomplishments… through checking off boxes… and by being the best at things. And, as I glance at this photo of little me, and see the wholeness of that girl, I realize how wrong I have been. In my attempts to find happiness through doing, I forgot that I already was everything that I thought I needed to be. For all of the chasing… and achieving and striving that I have done in an attempt to be better, I had misplaced the simplicity of life… the truth of what really matters.

This past week was a hectic one — among other things, we had the opportunity to participate in the grand opening of the Lynnwood, WA REI store. This was my first opportunity to host an ‘activation’ at a Grand Opening of an REI Store, and it was a pretty amazing experience to be able to share Kula with so many people. I had written most of this week’s Kula Diaries entry earlier in the week, but I was struggling to figure out how to ‘end’ the story. I’m not sure exactly when it hit me, but it might have been as I heard myself asking a customer, “What do you think about putting your cat sitting on a pile of donuts while floating in space?”, or, “How do you feel about an image of your dog sitting on a croissant in front of the Eiffel Tower?”, that I looked down and laughed: the shirt I had (intentionally) chosen to wear for the event was a bright purple shirt with a ridiculous golden cat bust screen printed on the front. Sure, it wasn’t a soccer jersey — but, somehow amidst the silliness and laughter, I knew that the little, playful girl was still alive and well. She was the one who was responsible for all of the things that bring me the most joy — not the overworked, over-achiever.

Our Kula booth at the REI grand opening in Lynnwood, WA.

Within each of us is a little, precious being that we may have forgotten at times, but that part of us is never gone: it is the part of us that loves to laugh, play, dance, and do all of the things that we’ve loved since a time before we can remember. It is the part of us that brings us the most joy, and it is the part of us that allows the most beautiful experiences to arrive in our lives. But that part of us sometimes remains hidden… overpowered by the doer — until we allow our unconditional love to include all of who we are. The greatest gift that we can give to ourselves (and to others) is to look beyond the things that we have done and to simply see ourselves for who we are … and to love all of it.

Friends, I hope that you are able to give yourself the gift of self-love today, and all days. We are so hard on ourselves, but when we remember the true essence of who we are… when we can sense the preciousness that exists within us… we can reconnect to a being that is whole and infinitely deserving of love. That being is you.

I am sending all of you so much love today, and all days. Thank you so much for being here!