Outlier

I had a long reprieve from my Elizabeth Noble experience and thought maybe it hadn’t even happened.

I was busy “adulting.”

At age 26 I opened my first private practice and got married shortly thereafter. We bought a house, settled in, and had a beautiful baby girl five years later.

I continued to attend seminars and even began teaching seminars. However, the experiences I had were very disassociated from my “real” life.

There was not space in my “real” life for such “out of the box” adventures. I was literally the only therapist in upstate NY and all of Vermont that was using MFR openly.

My spouse was extremely conservative and did not “believe in” anything resembling somatoemotional release and was threatened by any form of spirituality outside of the Catholic Church.

I was my own private enigma.

I participated in seminars where my cells remembered the history of my body and soul and observed the same occurring in those around me.

Then I went back home and privately struggled to integrate what I had learned while maintaining a “normal” outward existence.

Knowing my patients would only “go as far as I was willing to go,” I limited their experience and mine to amazing techniques with minimal “unwinding” or somatoemotional release.

I believe therapists draw the clients they need to learn from, and this forms their client base.

It is the gift of being a caregiver or bodyworker. If you pay attention, your client becomes your mirror on the table.

At that time, I needed to learn how to hone my craft, run a business, and privately integrate another world.

The Tsunami hit when I turned 30 years old.

I felt like I had finally “grown into my own skin.” It was as if I had always felt 30 and was just waiting for my life to catch up with me.

I was what people would consider successful.

Everything “looked” perfect. I was married, had a child I wanted desperately, a beautiful house, and a successful practice.

My world crumbled the day my then-husband placed his wedding ring on the kitchen counter and told me we were no longer married.

Looking back, it should not have surprised me. While we were never in open conflict, we had been asynchronous for a long time. I did not realize how unhappy my first marriage was until years later when I became happily remarried.

However, the event was so jarring and sudden, I did not see it coming. And it was not just as easy as a ring being set on a counter.

We were in the middle of construction, creating an addition so that I could move my practice home to work part-time. I wanted to spend more time with my baby.

In fact, I didn’t just want to be with my baby. My need to be with my baby outweighed my fierce will to maintain an independent income source for the first time in my life.

The irony of “letting go” of my independence and being forced back into it was not lost on me.

My “adult” life was put together so carefully and with such precision. This tsunami took it down with rapid force and chaos.

The absence of my husband was actually a relief. I felt so humiliated, sad, and betrayed, that it was easier when he was not around me.

I was not prepared for the loss or change in every other relationship in my life.

Most devastating and immediate was the requirement to “share” my daughter and let go of what “family” meant to me.

The slow realization that I would also “lose” my inherited “in-law” family whom I loved, our shared friends and social network, the common places we went and things we did, was much more devastating than the loss of my husband.

My chronic internal questions were, “How did I get here?” And, “What do I do now?”

What I “did” was strap my daughter to my back – literally put her in a backpack – and went back to work.

Her cute little face would peak over my shoulder as I treated my clients. When she began walking, she would help change the sheets and entertain them as I worked. (She is still an entertainer today.)

It was not ideal, but it gave me a little time to digest my circumstances and make some decisions.

It was during this time that I learned how to turn hours into minutes and minutes into seconds.

I was totally unaware that I was in a deep depression. I only knew that it was excruciating to be in the moment and the only way for me to force through was to break time into small enough micro-bits that I could talk myself through them.

I shared this with no one.

I autopiloted through work until I could not bear to “touch” any longer because I was forced into my body when doing bodywork.

The same week I closed my practice, the packing van came for my then-husband’s belongings and his share of our belongings.

I said good-bye to my employees.

Sold my equipment.

Hugged my clients as they came to pick up their files.

Stored what was required and shredded the rest.

Seven days of purging, shredding, and tearful good-byes.

Tears came from everyone else. I was too numb to cry.