I started my coaching practice in 2018 and tried to find a place for myself.

But I never seemed to fit anywhere.

I didn’t have a niche.

I didn’t have a program.

All I had was a Calling.

I just didn’t know what it was asking of me yet.

So, I started collecting modalities:

Positive Psychology Coaching.

Weight loss coaching.

Hypnotherapy.

Reiki.

Embodiment.

I even created my own modality: RHE (Reiki-Hypnosis-Embodiment).

But after all that, I still felt like I was trying to fit into places where I didn’t belong.

I worked online, modeling other coaches.

I joined spiritual communities.

I worked in a counseling clinic.

I kept changing environments: different healing spaces, different ways of working.

The scenery changed, but the feeling didn’t.

I was uncomfortable offering healing sessions and calling myself a healer never felt right to me.

Every time I didn’t fit, I came to the same conclusion:

I’m the common denominator.

There must be something wrong with me.

So, off I went to therapy. I uncovered stories, subconscious and generational patterns, too many to list. I learned how I coupled my worth with work and money.

No big surprises there.

But I still didn’t get clarity on my business, what I was offering, or where I belonged.

Clients would come and I’d be terrified.

I was scared someone would get hurt.

I was afraid I’d say or do the wrong thing.

I carried responsibility that was never mine to carry.

I worried about my pricing.

Too high. Too low.

I worried about my marketing.

Was it conscious, credible, and ethical?

What was my niche?

What problem was I solving?

More importantly: was I solving it, or just taking people’s money?

Eventually I realized no certification was ever going to give me what I was looking for or what I thought I needed.

I knew I wasn’t missing a modality, a niche, or a course.

I didn’t need to listen to another podcast or read another book.

No amount of therapy was going to make me trust myself.

No program was going to give me permission to clearly hear my Calling.

There was one nudge that followed me through every modality, every course, every therapy session:

Integration.

The word was everywhere.

It was treated like the final step.

“Make sure you give time to integrate.”

But no one really explained what integration was or how to support it. It felt like homework you were expected to figure out on your own.

That was the part I couldn’t stop thinking about.

Not the breakthrough.

What came after it.

The messy middle.

The triggers.

Meeting resistance.

The body without the story.

I was tired of the story.

I’d leave a breakthrough session feeling lighter.

Resolved.

Three days later I’d be repeating the patterns I thought I ditched.

Nothing was wrong with the breakthrough.

The insight was thrilling.

But insight is not embodiment.

My nervous system needed to catch up to my experience.

The personal development industry sometimes made it feel like we operate like phones.

Install the upgrade.

Restart.

Carry on.

Humans don’t work that way.

At least, I don’t.

So I stopped chasing the next breakthrough and instead stayed with what surfaced.

I noticed resistance.

I listened to my body.

I paid more attention to physical sensation than story.

I stopped trying to fix every uncomfortable feeling and became curious instead.

Bit by bit, I trusted my own experience over someone else’s framework.

Nothing was wrong with me.

I wasn’t failing because I didn’t fit.

I was exhausted from trying.

I spent years being palatable, hoping I’d be accepted.

Waiting for permission.

But I was never meant to fit in those spaces.

Maybe what I was looking for all that time wasn’t fitting in.

I was looking to belong to myself.

The Calling had never wavered. Integration didn’t create it.

It quieted everything that was drowning it out.

We spend so much time trying to master and become the best version of ourselves.

Collecting more information, more strategies, more proof that we’re enough, ready, and certain.

But an acorn doesn’t become an oak by becoming a better acorn.

It becomes an oak by growing what’s already inside it.

Maybe that’s what integration is.

Not becoming someone new.

But creating the conditions for what has always been there to emerge.

Lately a lot of things in our house have broken and needed fixing or replacing.

Vacuum.

Vehicle.

Dishwasher.

Fridge.

Toilet.

Even our kitten is going to be neutered; or ‘fixed’ as my parents used to call it.

At 47, I’ve somehow ended up on this list too.

My sleep has been disrupted, so I try to fix it.

My body is behaving differently, so I try to fix it.

My mind wants one thing, but my nervous system won’t comply, so I try to fix it.

I’ve always felt I have the mind of a cheetah but the nervous system of a sloth.

Fix it.

It didn’t just start as I got later in my 40’s.

It started decades ago.

For as long as I can remember, the equation has been simple:

Something wrong?

Find the problem.

Fix it.

I spent so many years with different therapists, counsellors, coaches, modalities, and programs.

All with the underlying promise that I’d be fixed.

And yet, after decades of self-improvement, I still felt like I needed more fixing.

They didn’t fail.

The premise was just all wrong.

Because it’s not the pieces of me that are broken or need replacing.

I’m not a broken system.

More like an instrument that’s been tuned for survival.

Not out of tune.

Just tuned for a different performance.

That tuning favoured fear, anxiety, hypervigilance, hustle, people pleasing, and perfectionism.

It served me well in corporate life.

It earned promotions and pay raises.

But the same tuning that helped me survive one season made it hard to inhabit the next.

Running my own business.

Parenting.

Actually enjoying my life.

It amplified some notes while muting others.

Fear louder than joy.

Vigilance louder than play.

Survival louder than aliveness.

I’m tired of fixing myself.

I’m tired of optimizing my days like I’m some kind of machinery.

Lately, I’m craving something new.

Acceptance.

Wholeness.

Reorganizing what’s already there.

Because those parts I tried to fix protected me.

They helped me survive.

They’re not wrong.

They just don’t need to set the tempo anymore.

Maybe I don’t need to become the “best version of myself.”

Maybe all I need is integration.

The instrument is the same.

Only the tuning is changing.

And with it, the music.

Perfectionism was a Loyal Guardian

The rules didn’t stay tucked beside a photograph in a velvet pouch.

They followed me.

Into my goals.

Into my work.

Into the way I measured my worth.

Work hard.

Persevere.

Be respected.

Those rules governed the goals I wrote on that paper.

They promised that if I worked hard enough, proved myself enough, controlled enough, I’d be rewarded:

Joy.

Freedom.

Ease.

Authenticity.

Those rules became a way of living.

A way of earning safety.

A way of proving my worth.

The backbone of that strategy was perfectionism.

Not because I wanted to be perfect.

Because I wanted to feel safe.

Perfectionism had been my loyal guardian for many decades.

It protected me when I felt unsafe and in danger of exposure before I was ready.

It helped me achieve.

It helped me belong.

It helped me feel safe.

But it couldn’t provide pleasure, play, or aliveness.

Safety was its job.

Thriving was not.

I remember thinking repeatedly during that time:

Every day is such drudgery.

Just doing all the things I thought I had to.

Get up at 4:30am.

Walk to the gym in the dark.

Workout.

Eat breakfast and lunch at my desk.

Spend all day in a windowless office in a fast-paced industry where performance and image felt like everything.

Groceries.

Cleaning.

Meal prepping.

MBA studies.

Rent. Bills. An old student loan.

Go to bed at 8:30 because I had nothing left.

Some mornings I’d be making my bed while looking at it longingly, wishing I could crawl right back in.

Not for forever.

But for longer than a day.

I Had It All Backwards

I thought I was doing it right.

I identified my values.

Then I built goals that were aligned with those values.

The missing piece was never the goals.

It was the journey.

I hadn’t considered how my values would inform how I got to the goal.

How joy could already be present.

Freedom.

Ease.

Authenticity.

I had placed those things at the finish line.

Subconsciously I was re-living an old story:

Work hard.

Play later.

Earn it.

I claimed to value joy, freedom, ease, and authenticity.

While building a life organized around exhaustion, control, achievement, and external validation.

This is how I’d become someone who wrote “joy” in a velvet pouch while constructing a life of drudgery.

A New Definition of Success

For years, I believed my values lived at the finish line.

Joy.

Freedom.

Ease.

Authenticity.

I thought success would grant me access to them.

Now I see the subtle misunderstanding.

They were never rewards.

They can’t be rewards.

They already exist.

They always did.

I’d been earning a life I already had permission to live.

The values are the foundation.

They’re where I begin.

Joy.

Freedom.

Ease.

Authenticity.

Maybe these were inherited too.

Not just the rules about proving my worth.

Not the bargain that said I had to earn my place.

But something deeper.

The part of my grandma who understood me without asking me to be different.

When she didn’t shame me for being quiet.

When she made it safe to be myself.

Maybe I inherited perseverance.

Maybe I inherited resilience.

Maybe I inherited grit.

I’m glad for those things, but that’s not the whole story.

There was something else too.

The pull toward joy, freedom, ease, and authenticity.

The desire to create.

To imagine.

To become.

I inherited these too.

The difference is that some things were passed down as survival strategies.

Others were passed down as possibilities.

And I have the luxury of discernment.

I choose what I carry forward and what I leave behind.

I keep the wisdom.

I keep the strength.

I keep the love.

And I let go of the outdated bargains.

I’m not rejecting where I came from.

I’m honoring it by living.

And this was the biggest reorganization of all.

It held every goal I’d written since 2008.

I had categories like family, health, love, friends, career, finances, personal development.

I wrote down things like train as a yoga teacher, become debt free, daily affirmations like ‘life is easy’, India 2012.

One day, probably around 2011, I was lying on my osteopath’s bed, and he was asking me how my plans to India were coming.

Initially, I was confused.

Then I laughed and said, “I got so busy, I forgot all about my hopes and dreams.”

I still haven’t gone. Or become a yoga teacher.

At the time, it felt funny.

Looking back, it feels more revealing.

The truth was, I’d prioritized the goals that were easier to justify:

Earning money.

Getting promotions.

Going back to university for an MBA.

The dreams that nourished me were always waiting patiently for “someday.”

At the back of the journal, I found a small velvet pouch with a folded piece of paper and a picture of my maternal grandmother.

It listed my values: joy, spirited, ease, abundance, freedom, health, love, authenticity, honesty, integrity, creativity.

It defined success as: affluent through my creative endeavors and doing my inspired work and being recognized as one of the respected leaders in my field.

Even my dreams were organized around safety.

And then there was the picture of grandma.

Inherited Rules

The picture of my grandma with my version of success felt meaningful.

Even though it wasn’t intentional or conscious, I think we store things together that matter.

My grandma represented safety. A way of being.

Strong.

Resilient.

Independent.

I always admired how she rescued my mom and her siblings, overcoming so much in the process.

Maybe I had unconsciously linked safety with self-reliance. Worth with hard work. Respect with perseverance.

It’s ironic that the values in the velvet pouch weren’t independence and achievement.

They were joy. Freedom.

My grandma got me.

As a shy, quiet kid, not having to explain myself was magic.

She gave me that gift.

She passed away when I was fourteen. We didn’t see each other often because she lived in California, but we wrote letters.

And her presence has stayed with me to this day.

As I got older, I learned more about her story. Her perseverance. Her resilience. Her toughness.

For a long time, I thought that’s what defined strength.

A part of me wanted to be like my grandma, but my soul was pointing a different way.

I remember being in my twenties and calling my mom after a yoga class, “am I like her?”

Yes, you’re strong like her.

She didn’t have an easy life. I doubt she had the privilege of sitting down and making a vision board.

She was busy surviving.

I don’t think it was a coincidence her face appeared beside my definition of success.

Work hard.

Persevere.

Be respected.

That doesn’t make me feel trapped.

It’s information.

It tells me where some of my old rules came from. And that makes them workable. Changeable.

It gives me a choice point.

Freedom.

Next: how those inherited rules became perfectionism

Inside was a folded piece of paper:

Joy.

Freedom.

Ease.

Authenticity.

And beside it, a picture of my grandmother.

I wasn’t expecting either of them to change the way I understood myself.

Or success.

Searching for Safety

After the shock of losing my mom and nephew within two months I had the privilege of taking time off work.

I wandered the house, a little lost.

I couldn’t write.

I couldn’t create.

I certainly couldn’t work with clients.

So I floated.

And watched Bridgerton.

But mostly, I wandered.

The way they had died shattered the illusion that life could be managed, that bad things could be prevented.

And for someone that loves control, this was the lesson in surrender I knew was coming but didn’t want.

Since I couldn’t control what had happened, I looked to my surroundings.

Where could I find control?

Where could I find safety?

Making Space

As I wandered the house I started reorganizing.

Reorganization gave me a sense of control.

I remember doing a lot of this kind of thing before my son was born, but then it was called nesting.

Birth and death had both asked me to prepare for a version of life that didn’t exist yet.

The first thing I did was buy a bookshelf for the bedroom and create a cozy meditation corner.

My husband had decorated most of the house. He always asked my opinion, but I rarely had strong preferences and was relieved when he did.

It made it easier at a time when I felt overwhelmed by the move, a small child, and my business.

But as I searched for shelves and imagined making the space my own, I realized something.

I’d become accustomed to fitting myself into existing spaces rather than creating my own.

My office was the one room that felt distinctly mine. I arranged it the way I wanted. I painted. I wrote. I created. I stretched.

That was my next project. I wanted my desk to face the room, not the wall.

I wanted to make space for the version of myself that was coming. One who wrote more, painted more, and moved differently.

I recognized immediately that the person that existed months before was gone.

There would be no going back.

At first, it was just a bookshelf.

Then it was my office.

Then it was my son’s closet.

Then it was mine.

My eyes landed on the boxes on the upper shelves of my closet.

An old box of keepsakes: my first roller skate key, you know, the big metal one?

A plate from Sydney when my brother traveled there.

A keychain from my first triathlon.

A CD of photos from my first trip to Vegas.

Tiny artifacts from lives I had already lived.

And then there was a box of journals.

Before we moved across the country in 2020, I had thrown away dozens of old journals, as I periodically do. I read through some and toss or burn them, whatever feels more appropriate. I do a good purge every few years, but it had now been five.

Most of my journals were oriented around business. I started my business in 2018, and entrepreneurship is not an easy thing.

My business has been through so many iterations. I’ve tried and failed at so much. There are ideas I keep returning to, not quite ready to give up.

I was living the embodiment of hope over experience.

But this time I saw something different.

Instead of seeing failure, I saw perseverance.

After all, success comes after failures, plural.

Page after page, year after year, I kept showing up.

There’s only one tiny journal I never throw away.

It holds all my goals starting from 2008.

Next: the one journal I never throw away

I’m not a good acquaintance.

I think it’s because I’m not great with simplicity.

My 9-year-old came home with fraction homework, broken down simply.

It took me an hour to figure out.

I process through layered contextual meaning, not linear reduction.

Some people simplify to understand. I contextualize to understand.

Things that should be easy, like small talk, are agonizing.

Neighbours, my kid’s friends’ parents, coaches, friends that have drifted in another direction; I just don’t know what to do with them.

How often do we talk?

How much do I share?

Is this performance, or real?

Why does it feel both intimate and distant at the same time?

It’s too much for me, so my system defaults to two lanes:

1. Soul-deep connection

2. Closed gate

No middle ground.

Depth feels safer than ambiguity for me.

Ironically, total distance also feels safer than ambiguity.

The In-Between

Acquaintances are ambiguity.

They live in the in-between.

For most of my life, I treated these kinds of relationships like incomplete versions of closeness.

But what if they were never meant to become more?

Maybe they have a different purpose:

To create lightness.

Community.

Evidence that not every relationship has to become emotionally consuming to be valuable.

Which means I need to practice:

unfinishedness,

casualness,

being misunderstood at times,

and not needing to merge.

All of which feels oddly vulnerable when I’m used to depth.

Guardrails

Although I’m not a linear thinker, I do like a good set of rules, and acquaintances lack this.

They feel uncontained. Half-formed. Context dependent. Sometimes warm, sometimes absent. Sometimes oddly performative. No defined container.

When my nervous system asks for guardrails I can’t provide, it’s interpreted as ‘unsafe.’

Unlike intimacy and isolation.

Intimacy says we’re close, share deeply, and we matter to each other. We’re there for each other.

Isolation is clean. It simply says, ‘no access.’

At parties, I look for one person I can have a deep conversation with or leave.

When I’m out running errands and recognize someone, I hide.

It’s not personal. Grocery store interactions just feel strangely loaded to me.

My brain cycles through questions:

How long do we talk?

What’s the correct depth level for this interaction?

Questions like these make me feel like it’s my first time ever on earth.

People often open up to me quickly and in ways that feel unexpectedly intimate. And afterward, I’m never quite sure what happens next. Are we friends now? What obligation, if any, does vulnerability create between people?

What if I ignored them last time?

Sometimes I’m warm but sometimes I’m unavailable. Does that mean I’m misleading, inconsistent, untrustworthy, insincere?

Are we becoming friends?

We spent a week at a tennis camp in Spain, sharing meals, conversations, and long days with a group of adults and their kids. By the end of the trip, I was emotionally invested. Like I was ready to be part of their lives, although they lived all over the world.

But once we got home, everyone slowly faded back into their own worlds.

I know this is normal. Temporary proximity. Shared context. Human nature.

But something about it feels jarring to me.

Invisible Social Threads

My husband is a genius at all of this.

He’s a charming extrovert, happy to talk to everyone, all the time.

The other day he pointed to a couple walking down the street.

“They used to live behind us. Two houses over, a few years ago.”

“How do you remember that? Or even recognize them?”

“Because I talk to people.”

I imagine familiarity is regulating for him.

For me, it feels more like accrued obligation.

Which always makes me think about my business.

Would I be more successful if I were an extrovert? Out there talking to everyone all the time?

Maybe that’s part of why I gravitate toward online work.

I show up when I want to be seen.

But I don’t always have to stay.

What feels especially difficult for me is when an acquaintance goes through something terrible. What do I do then?

How involved should I be?

We’re connected. Doesn’t that mean something?

Doesn’t that make me responsible for caring?

I don’t experience humans casually.

Connection immediately carries ethical gravity for me.

Acquaintance relationships can feel emotionally expensive, which is often why I shut the door before they have the chance to become anything at all.

But I’m starting to wonder if I’ve misunderstood the purpose of these relationships.

What if connection doesn’t require emotional merging to be meaningful?

I’m waking up to the fact that some relationships are meant to be:

the tennis parent I see a few times a month,

a dinner invite from Roger’s coach,

the neighbour who offers to drive my kiddo to school.

Relationships built less on emotional intensity and more on small moments of trust, care, and proximity.

Invisible Social Threads

When I was nineteen, I moved to a city from a small town.

Small town living felt hard to me. Everyone knew everyone.

I was excited by the idea of anonymity.

But I quickly realized every little borough in Vancouver functioned like its own miniature small town. Soon enough, the grocery store clerks, coffee shop employees, and gym members recognized me too.

I moved over a dozen times in my twenties, all over downtown Vancouver.

As soon as people started recognizing me, I’d think:

time to move.

At the time, I thought I just liked change.

Now I think recognition itself felt overwhelming.

Like once someone knew I existed, there was an invisible social thread to maintain.

When I moved across the country in 2020, I didn’t tell anyone I hadn’t spoken to in over a year.

I was shocked to later learn they were offended.

I think I’m finally understanding that these kinds of relationships matter more than I thought they did.

If anything, I can let these relationships show my nervous system that connection can be easy. Breathable. Non-consuming.

I probably just need a third category between intimacy and isolation, the two places I’ve lived quite comfortably for most of my life.

Warm familiarity. Community. Light-touch connection.

Orbit people.

Relationships that don’t require full emotional excavation to be real.

Orbit People

It’s probably not fair to say I’m a bad acquaintance.

It’s more accurate to say I didn’t really understand them. Or exactly who belonged there. It all felt blurred together.

But now I think an acquaintance can be:

not a stranger,

not a best friend,

not emotionally insignificant,

but someone woven into the rhythm of my life through repetition, trust, care, and proximity.

And just because someone tells me something intimate or vulnerable, or because we spend a week together in Spain, or even an evening in their home, doesn’t necessarily mean the relationship needs to become something deeper.

Maybe some connections are allowed to simply exist as they are.

Warm.

Real.

Meaningful.

And lightly held.

Connection Doesn’t Mean Obligation

Maybe part of understanding acquaintance relationships is understanding that connection doesn’t automatically create obligation.

This helps when making decisions.

I have a neighbour I’d consider an acquaintance. Sometimes she asks if I can take her kids to school.

If I can, I do.

If I can’t, I don’t.

And I don’t feel guilty about it.

Not because I don’t care, but because acquaintance relationships don’t always carry the same expectations as deeper friendships.

Connection Carries Weight

As a sensitive person, connection will probably always carry weight, meaning, and emotional texture.

Giving acquaintance relationships more definition and context helps my nervous system relax around them.

Apparently, fractions weren’t the only thing that took me a lifetime to understand.

When Grief introduced me to Hope, I was confused.

Confused is polite.

It pissed me off.

I was back in BC, this time with my husband and son visiting mom for Mother’s Day.

Things had progressed in the few weeks since my last visit. She was still home, managing pain, and going for endless tests. But when I found myself packing for a four-day trip, I braced myself. Somehow a part of me knew I wouldn’t be home in four days.

As a family we hadn’t talked about chemo, but I heard their hope in the subtext. That maybe there was a chance….

I’d heard the specialist’s voice catch when he mentioned chemo. He knew there would be no chemo. I knew there would be no chemo. But I didn’t want to be the one to say it, so I kept it to myself. I didn’t want to steal anyone’s hope, even if I didn’t have it.

The Language of Hope

I’m a practical person, but I also believe in signs. They give me comfort and remind me to broaden my perspective. There’s more to this world than just what I see or think, and I love a little mystery, magic, and whimsy. Just like my mom: a practical woman with a love of all thing’s whimsy.

~

On my many walks in BC the signs were abundant. Most notably, I was met with all representations of rainbows. Sidewalk chalk drawings, clothes on other walkers, keychains, backpacks.

This confused me. I always thought rainbows symbolized a calm after the storm and gave hope. Certainly, they didn’t belong in the middle of a storm?

To further contradict my limited thinking, I kept seeing yellow butterflies. They offered hope, optimism, transformation, and new beginnings.

My parent’s house is yellow, ironically.

But what business did symbols of hope have here? Wasn’t it a little premature for rainbows, transformation, and new beginnings?

Wasn’t hope reserved for when there’s a chance?

Because it looked like we were all out of chances.

Which led to my old belief of: isn’t hope careless at best, dangerous at worst?

Hope is for suckers.

All or nothing / black and white

I’m not proud to say my relationship with hope has often sounded more like, ‘I hope something bad doesn’t happen,’ than genuine belief in something good happening.

Disappointment always seemed to linger longer than joy ever did.

A few days after mom was admitted to hospital, my husband and son said their goodbyes and flew home. It had been four days since our arrival. Just as some part of me already knew, I was staying longer.

It was hard saying goodbye to them. Amid losing one person, I was terrified of losing more. Everything suddenly felt fragile.

I was left hoping for a swift ending. It’s true that I didn’t want her to suffer long. But it’s also true that I didn’t want to suffer long.

I wanted to be there for her last breath, but I also wanted to go home. I wanted to start healing and moving forward. I allowed myself all the uncomfortable thoughts because they are so human.

Somewhere inside all that contradiction, I started reconsidering hope altogether.

Reintroduced to Trust

When I struggle with a concept, it helps me to completely reverse it. Like, what’s the opposite of hope?

Resignation? Apathy? Hopelessness?

I felt hopeless, so I started there. Leaning into hope was too big a leap from where I was.

I learned a lot about hope after that: like, there’s a difference between hope and trust.

Hope felt uncomfortably expansive and unreachable, but trust meant I could handle whatever happened. It was something I could hold onto when the ground felt like quicksand.

And that kind of trust, I do have.

I trust myself to handle what happens.

I know I occupy an inner strength and resiliency because it’s one of the many gifts passed down from my mom, her sisters, my grandma, great grandma, great – great grandma, my dad, my grandpa, etc., and so forth. I know their stories, but not just what happened. I heard how they kept going.

I leaned on that. I trusted my resiliency.

I could trust my knowing and still let others hold hope of chemo and recovery.

I practiced becoming an anchor through presence, no words needed.

I also trusted my mom’s personal timeline. I can’t possibly understand the intricacies of her soul’s journey. That’s not for me to know, take personally, or interfere.

Trust anchored me.

Redefining Hope

It turns out hope isn’t denial.

Initially, feeling hopeful meant one outcome: recovery.

It’s dangerous to rely on only one outcome:

If she lives, I’ll be okay.

If she dies, hope failed.

That kind of hope is fragile.

Maybe like Grief, I needed a broader definition; one that survived uncertainty and wasn’t tied to control.

Trust was the bridge.

Trust allowed me to stay present without requiring certainty. I already had a relationship with Trust. It felt woven into my identity.

As I warmed up to Hope through Trust, here’s what Grief showed me:

Hope doesn’t mean denying or fixing what is.

Hope is believing more is possible, even if I can’t see it yet. The rainbows and butterflies understood that before I did.

Sometimes hope is tiny: one person showing up when I thought I was alone.

My dad sending me back to the hotel to nap because I was exhausted. My aunt flying in from California. People sharing the responsibility and pressure saved me.

The most important thing I learned was that hope is not only an outcome.

It’s about who I was becoming in the liminal space. Grief can create new identities, a new way of relating to the world.

I could shape this by choosing to love even when it’s hard.

To choose to stay present even when I want to abandon everyone, including myself.

Or I could let pain, fear, and hopelessness shape me.

This wasn’t a one-time decision.

It’s an ongoing decision I still waver on.

I’m still shaping who I am in the aftermath, and I’m still shaped by it.

~

As I write this, it has been a year and two days.

We are still in relationship, although our relationship and the way we communicate has obviously changed.

I miss her voice and her smile.

But I still have her presence.

She was the most positive, open-minded, kind-hearted person I ever met.

So maybe what those rainbows and butterflies were showing me is that hope really meant she doesn’t ever leave, regardless of outcome.

It’s finally understanding why I kept seeing hope in the middle of the storm.

And you know what, I like knowing Hope can be more than one outcome.

Maybe hope isn’t for suckers after all.

Unexpectedly losing two loved ones within two months was a crash course in Grief. It collided with a belief I didn’t know I carried: that grief was rare.

I didn’t realize then, but Grief had been patiently waiting for an opening.

Anyway, there I was, surrounded and consumed. Not just by recent loss, but a lifetime of unprocessed moments. All the times I had stood Grief up.

We could call it miscommunication. Crossed wires. Or maybe I simply didn’t know I was supposed to meet it.

It really doesn’t matter.

What became clear was this: introductions were happening now.

Old Grief. New Grief. Grief appearing in places I didn’t expect.

It reminded me of confirmation bias. I remember being pregnant and suddenly noticing childrens parks everywhere, wondering when the city had built them all.

They had always been there. My mind had just filtered them out.

Not relevant. Not recognizable. Not something I had the tools to see.

Grief was the same.

It hadn’t been absent.

Just unseen & unmet. Yet.

~

In my twenties, I worked in a busy broker’s office alongside a row of other assistants. One day, I passed a coworker’s cubicle and saw her shoving random papers into an already stuffed bottom drawer.

“What’s that?”

I was genuinely curious. My own cubicle was meticulously organized. Order felt like safety.

“That’s where I put things I don’t wanna do.”

She said it casually. Like it was obvious. Like it was allowed. Like she had permission.

I remember standing there quietly stunned. You can just…decide not to deal with something? No stress about it? No panic?

What happens to it?

I think about that drawer almost weekly, but lately a lot more.

Because that’s what I’d been doing with Grief. Closing the drawer before I ever had to look inside. Telling myself I’d get to it later, or that maybe it didn’t matter enough to open at all.

But it was still there.

Waiting.

Grief isn’t just about losing someone, but everything I never made space to feel.

HELLO, GRIEF

I vividly remember our first meeting.

I was visiting my parents in BC, after Mom’s diagnosis.

A week earlier, I had been on a call with the specialist. I wrote down the long, foreign word he used: cholangiocarcinoma. After we hung up, I looked up the survival rate.

Less than 5%.

This was March.

I flew home soon after. I knew, somehow, this would be the last visit like this.

It was a beautiful weekend. We talked about spirituality and healing. We did EFT and Reiki for the pain.

And when she rested, I walked.

March in this part of BC is beautiful. Cherry blossoms are coming into bloom. The abundant green is a stark contrast to the wintery tundra I’d left behind in SK. Still frozen and buried under snow.

I noticed everything.

Owls. Rainbows. Feathers.

Signs everywhere.

This was the first time Grief showed herself to me.

Or maybe, the first time I’d recognized her.

She joined me on those walks.

Not loud. Not overwhelming.

She didn’t burst in.

She tiptoed.

Careful not to scare me away. (She was right; I was skittish.)

At first, she showed me small things through pictures in my mind.

The end of a good meal.

The last bite of dessert.

The quiet ache at the end of a good weekend.

That subtle pull I had when I left Hawaii, not knowing if I’ll ever return.

There was sadness, but it was also tinged with joy and satisfaction.

She showed me how endings carry both.

And slowly, as I softened, she went deeper.

Images came.

My son, outgrowing diapers.

Feeding himself.

Walking into school.

That moment I felt it… the strange mix of relief and ache. Freedom and loss inexplicably tied together.

Nothing was wrong.

Nothing was broken.

This was Grief, too.

She paused while I explored the sensations in my body. It felt like murky, thick green liquid in my belly, moving up and down.

I let it move within me as I moved under the trees swaying in the wind.

Soon, my mom would be the wind.

~

When I came back from those walks, something had shifted.

Grief no longer felt threatening or heavy.

She felt familiar.

Like a piece of me I’d long forgotten.

~

The backlog came soon after.

All the endings I had rushed past.

Graduation.

Moving out, leaving home.

Marriage. Divorce.

I never paused to grieve what I was leaving behind because I was too busy racing towards where I was going.

That Grief didn’t just disappear with time. My body held it, waiting for the safety to resurface.

I didn’t have the language for it then, but something had begun.

Not just grieving.

Unraveling.

Who I thought I was…and meeting what had been quietly waiting underneath.

~

Part IV coming soon.

When Grief arrived, I was already well-practiced in ignoring it.

Well practiced in not feeling too much.

I remember being eight, playing a board game with my family. I don’t remember what was so frustrating, but I got mad, really mad, and everyone laughed. Something in me snapped. I pushed the table over and ran to my room, slamming the door several times for good measure.

Re-entry after that incident felt shameful. I quickly adapted: anger is not allowed.

I can’t remember what made me mad. But I can’t forget the response to my anger.

This wasn’t cruelty; it was inheritance. I come from a loving, working class family. Parents doing the best they could with what they had. My dad worked, and mom stayed home for most of my growing up years. There wasn’t a lot of money, hand-me-downs were welcomed, and we were guided to treasure the sentimental over the material.

“If the house was on fire and you could grab one thing, what would it be?”

“Photos.” Things that can’t be replaced. Obviously.

I was a teenager when we lost our remaining grandparents, and it seemed like a natural course of life. We all quietly moved along without a lot of discussion.

The unwritten rule in our family was “Shhh… Keep emotions quiet and be happy, but not too happy.” Anything veering outside that guardrail was too loud, too much, and should be experienced quietly and privately.

Mom’s British lineage showing itself in quiet ways: don’t be disruptive. Be nice. Beneath it all, my great-grandfather’s generation whispering, children should be seen but not heard.

~

I became accustomed to interacting with life at arm’s length.

Transactional would be the easiest way to describe it: I do this, so I get this.

I work to get paid.

I exercise to lose weight (and be accepted).

I work hard for success and money (measures of my worth).

And you know what? I was good at it.

Good at being good.

Good at being nice.

Good at doing things right.

You know how I know?

Everyone liked me.

There was no conflict… except the conflict within me.

It seemed like a worthy price to pay.

Until it wasn’t.

Perfectionism had been the perfect disguise for the vulnerability of not being good enough.

People pleasing masked a deeper need for control. Control what others thought of me. Control life, in general, so I would be safe.

“The safest thing you can do is take a chance.” Elaine May

I operated with the misconception that there was a right and wrong way to “do” life. I didn’t know it at the time, but Grief was about to amplify everything I could no longer afford to ignore.

I had spent a lifetime learning how not to feel.

No wonder I missed every earlier invitation to meet Grief.

No bother, Grief was patient. It didn’t judge or scold. It waited with open arms.

(Part III coming soon)

For more behind the scenes (or just cute kitten photos), follow me on IG @highly_sensitive_entrepreneur and FB @jenpillipow

Grief is a mainstream word but not always used accurately - kind of like how people (me) misuse emigrated and immigrated; or mix up affect and effect (also me).

For most of my adult life I thought “for all intents and purposes” was all intense purposes. Which, I kind of like better, to be honest. It feels more accurate.

Also, for most of my life I thought grief was something you experienced on the rare occasion that a loved one passed away.

I’m sure, dear reader, you caught the naivety and privilege in that belief. You’re not wrong….

I could never write a guide or even recommend how to grieve. How could anyone? But still, I can’t help but write about it. Especially since I only feel we just formally met (Grief and I).

When Grief came knocking abruptly last year, I took it as a divine invitation. I wanted to grow from it, not shrink. I wanted to understand.

That meant not responding from my conditioning, what I’d been taught, witnessed, or inherited.

I needed to know what Grief and loss meant to me.

I started at the beginning by referring to my advisor, Google, and located the dictionary definition of grief: “deep and poignant distress (sorrow).”

Already I was skeptical.

I mean, it wasn’t totally wrong. It just felt incomplete. I didn’t know much, but it felt like grief was more process-oriented than a long-term emotional state, like sorrow.

That definition felt too one dimensional for the complexity. Grief is so much more texturized and personal…. isn’t it?

And don’t we all grieve differently?

So how do I define it? Embody it?

And why bother defining it? Well, for me, I can’t move through something I don’t understand.

So, I packed my emotional bags and took an intentional rendezvous with Grief.

Literally translated, rendezvous means, “present yourself.”

And present itself, it did.

And present myself, I did.

It was a beautiful coming home that was simultaneously terrifying and incredibly disruptive.

It showed me how sneakily I’d been organizing my life around perceived safety and comfort; but the scaffolding was rotting and my ladder was leaning against the wrong wall.

I was building a house I didn’t want to live in.

But I’m getting a little ahead of myself.

If you, too, also like deep thinking, meaning making, and the idea of meeting yourself, I hope there are pieces of my story that resonate, or spark something in you.

The following reflections are my rendezvous with Grief (part II coming soon).

If you’d like to see more behind the scenes you can find me on IG @highly_sensitive_entrepreneur or on FB @jenpillipow

Until next time.

“The problem is that you think you shouldn’t feel lost, confused, afraid, insecure or like a failure, if you are ever to create something meaningful.

That is an inverted form of dehumanization that we often conflate with self improvement.

Why is aspiring to reach a state where you are unable to feel insecure, lost or afraid, an inverted form of dehumanization?

Because it would require that you separate yourself from what makes you human… your ability to feel the full emotional spectrum, dark or light.

Doing that wouldn’t be self improvement. It’s dissociation.” - Xavier Dagba

This quote got me thinking about how comfortable I had let my life get a few years ago.

Don’t get the wrong idea - this wasn’t the “living on vacation” kind of comfort. I wasn’t comfortable with the place my work was at, or with relationships or health or money related things…. but I was having nice hot showers everyday. Sleeping in a cozy bed. Never getting too hot or too cold. Most importantly: not trying new things. Not taking risks.

It was the kind comfortability that comes with accepting what I’d always accepted. The comfort that comes with being in debt vs. having money. The comfort of complaining to myself, but not doing anything about it. The kind of comfort of “at least I know what I’m getting.”

THAT kind of comfort.

It’s like that saying “choose your hard”. Taking care of your health, eating right, moving your body, is hard; but not doing that, then dealing with repercussions later is hard too. Either way it’s hard. Choose your hard. A lot of us tend to defer the hard.

A few years ago I was very uncomfortable. New mom, starting a business, quit my corporate job, moved across the country. Then, I retreated into a period of time where I stopped going out of my comfort zone.

So much is lost when we stay in our comfort zone.

We settle.

We stop growing.

We accept what we don’t like, even though we have the power to change it.

The paradox is that it’s not actually comfort, comforting, or comfortable. Our brains confuse comfort with known.

I’ve shared many times the misconception that following my calling would be blissful. What I found was exactly what Dagba speaks of: lost, confused, afraid, insecure, like a failure.

When those emotions came up, they set alarms bells off for me.

I wish I’d known those were “correct”, “normal”, acceptable, reasonable, even welcomed responses. That it meant being fully human.

Part of the process. Not “oops, must be on the wrong path.”

To do something new IS scary, unknown, and you will have to face yourself. It does feel like you’re failing, until one day you’re not.

That wasn’t something to run from. That was something to embrace.

Embrace your humanity. The spectrum of emotions.

Let’s normalize that.

Now when I take my son to trampoline parks, climbing gyms, waterslides, the park I’ve made a contract with myself to join in, instead of just watch (may have recently pulled an arm muscle on the monkey bars).

Now in my work I do things that don’t feel cozy and comfortable. I go to the event, the lunch, I do the Live.

Granted, there was a long dark night of the soul where it was probably right to cocoon. But I’m not in that anymore.

It’s time for me to get uncomfortable in the unknown because that’s where the fullness of my humanity lies.

In my latest pod episode I share a story from a time in my journey where I was not in a place to be out of my comfort zone. If you’ve ever thought to yourself “why isn’t my business working”, you’ll enjoy this episode!

We took a short, guided hike to unpopulated waterfalls that gathered water into small, neck-deep pools.

I’ve always dreamed of swimming under a waterfall.

In my dreams these waterfalls and pools were the temperature of bath water.

Not these ones!

I’ve never cold-plunged.

I’m already always cold. Yes, even in a tropical place!

I bought the biggest winter coat I could find when we moved from Vancouver to Saskatoon, and I started wearing it in Vancouver before we left.

I got comments, but I was finally warm. I remember thinking, “I can’t wait until we move to Saskatoon where no one will judge me and my big coat.” (LOL – they still did)

Now, I’m known for wearing this coat into June (sometimes).

Stepping into the cold waterfall I thought, “it’s too cold, I’m getting out”. It was also very rocky, not the soft, white sand I was expecting.

I waded in up to my shins and quickly got out.

“It’s too cold! I don’t want my shorts to be wet all day!”

My husband teased me a little, but he wasn’t getting in either. Nor was my 7-year-old, who runs the opposite of me - always hot, always in shorts (even in -20 winters) (yes, he wears ski pants over the shorts when he’s outside, don’t report me).

The hiking group was getting ready to move on and there wasn’t time to jump back in or change my mind.

The moment had passed.

I put my shoes back on.

Something inside me was lost.

My words repeated in my head like a broken record, “It’s too cold, rocky, I don’t want wet shorts all day…”

I remembered my dream of swimming in a waterfall.

I thought about how unlikely it would be that I’d ever be here again.

How fleeting this moment was.

I got sad.

Disappointed.

We kept hiking.

I thought about all the fears and discomfort I’ve experienced in my business over the years.

All the decisions I made from fear, choosing to comfort myself by saying I was listening to my intuition.

Fear is an incredibly overwhelming feeling to feel.

It’s so uncomfortable, it creates an impulse to make decisions that bring quick relief.

From personal experience, I can say that relief is also a symptom of staying small.

When it’s overwhelming, we can’t name it, pull it apart or understand it, which is a recipe for staying stuck.

Without that awareness, we have limited choices.

It feels powerless.

---

As we hiked, we came to one more waterfall. I understood this was my last chance.

My shoes were off before we even got close.

I didn’t think about it.

I knew what I had to do.

I walked in, dipped my shoulders under, and the cold absolutely took my breath away.

Taking back my power felt incredible.

Things start to shift when you reach under the overwhelm of fear.

You could call that accepting or acknowledging the fear, or maybe you would just call it BRAVE.

The layers underneath are likely unique to your story, perspectives, and experiences.

I do have a hunch, though, that many of us share a similar root cause: low self-worth and minimal self-acceptance. Always giving our power away to external things in exchange for some sort of attachment; fitting in, disguised as belonging.

My business is taking me on a new journey, and I’ve been resisting it out of fear.

It’s not the 1:1 or group work I imagined it would be. The models I was taught.

The coaching industry has changed so much since I started, and I don’t find the old models sustainable in any way. Maybe it’s from being highly sensitive, empathic, or maybe it’s just because it simply wasn’t a sustainable model in the first place.  I’ve written more about this in previous posts – Re-imagining Work for the Highly Sensitive.

The new way my business wants to run is bringing up a lot of discomfort. A lot of what-ifs. A lot of “but it’s cold, rocky, and I don’t want wet shorts all day” kind of feelings.

This is what I was feeling before Kona.

That fear got transmuted in that waterfall that day.

I came home and it felt washed away.

In it’s wake I noticed all the opportunity, abundance, growth, potential in my new journey. I couldn’t see it before.

Then, in came the gratitude.

Then, the love.

It surprised me, to be honest.

I’ll have to write one day about my complicated experience with gratitude.

But I felt so much love for this new opportunity.

A few days after coming home I caught up with my Shaman @blue_thunder_bird_woman. She had two timely teachings for me around fear.

There are two ways to transmute fear, she told me.

One is slower, but effective, and it’s through a fire ceremony. We’ve done this many times together in studying the Munay-Ki.

The second is the fastest way to transmute fear.

The second way is through love.

~

The waterfall washed away my fear; however, because I’d been doing some deep healing work around fear for years, the water was able to transmute it.

Through my personal experience, I can share a possible framework of bridging the gap between fear and love; consider if it resonates for you.

First: acknowledging the feeling / sensations of fear can be incredibly overwhelming.

Second: practicing naming the sensations (Vibration? Temperature? Color? Size? Where in the body?). Maybe moving the body (stretch, dance).

Third: what is the fear actually afraid of? It helps if you can vocalize it.

-A fear of being misunderstood? 

-Not accepted? 

-Making the "wrong" choice? 

-Regrets?

-Doing something wrong, getting called out?

-Wasting time?

-Not accepting your self?

-What others will think?

-Alienating yourself?

-Fear of being seen trying or struggling or not knowing?

Sometimes fear is connected to shame, which is connected to self-worth.

Keeping a secret that you could be exposed at any moment as not good enough has the ability to create an abundance of overwhelming fear.

Naming fears is a way back to our inherent self-worth, our inner power, our authenticity. It’s a bridge.

Fear takes us out of our power.

Love brings us back into our power.

Naming fear has the potential to neutralize and disarm it, so you can cross the bridge to Love.

Or, maybe your bridge is your version of a cold waterfall.

What do you think?

What I’ve come to know is this:

With awareness comes choice, and with choice comes change; but it starts with awareness. Even if that awareness is, “holy F$%^&* this is an intense feeling” and all you can do is breathe.

What is your fear voice saying?

What’s your metaphorical bridge to Love?

You know how kids are so spongey, they believe what you tell them? How they think in black and white? They’re fully in their subconscious mind 24/7 until about 12-ish.

We have a 7-year-old and I see this in action all the time. He asks questions looking for absolute answers and doesn’t / can’t yet understand nuance or grey or “it depends.”

For example, he wants to know, “how much does a car cost?” Well, it depends. He doesn’t like the “it depends” because he can’t instantly categorize it.

Once I put a number in my phone with the wrong name. When the number called, and it wasn’t the name of the person I programmed, I got so confused! My mind only trusted what it could see, and the name on my screen didn’t match the voice. It was bad programming, but my mind struggled to accept it.

It’s useful to remind our adult brains the truth can change.

Just like my phone is only as good as the information I program in, my actions are only as good as the information I program in my mind.

The idea that truths can change is a learned adult experience that didn’t make sense as a child. As a kid, we’re forming our beliefs about the world, how it works, and we learned to categorize things in black and white. It’s true or false.

But our minds are only as good as what we program them with.

Just like our phones need updating, we need to update our adult brains from thinking all-or-nothing, black-or-white, true or false beliefs we created as kids.

Sometimes something that was true is now false, and vice versa. Ever fallen out of love with someone? Or, hated a job you once loved? Remember believing in Santa? Have a different memory than a sibling about the same event?

Believing in only true or false is not supportive for our growth because it doesn’t allow for discernment, nuance, or the gray area needed to update old beliefs. Sometimes a car costs $1M, sometimes $500. Some days we love our job. Some days we hate it. It’s all true.

The truth is slippery.

I’ve noticed something with clients about “truths” when we do memory regression. They’re stuck on one truth about a past event. They formed a belief about that circumstance in that moment, and that belief got ingrained. The brain decided it was true and is operating from that truth.

Through confirmation bias, the world reflects back all the evidence of this truth, while filtering out anything that doesn’t support it.

I never noticed pregnant women before I got pregnant; suddenly, they were everywhere. I never noticed playgrounds before having a baby; suddenly, they were everywhere. My beliefs shifted and opened new, relevant possibilities to match my new perspective.

We need to be proactive with updating our programming because what was once adaptive can become maladaptive. The belief that saved you then, can keep you from what you want now.

Feeling unaccepted and adopting people pleasing tendencies may have allowed you to fit in then; but it won’t allow you to shine in an authentic business now. Sometimes those old beliefs sabotage our current goals.

With hypnotherapy as a tool, we can review beliefs created from events with the gift of experience; we can zoom out and play with other possible truths. We can look at the whole forest, not just one tree.

We can make new suggestions to the subconscious that incorporate truths you couldn’t see before.

One client, years ago, told me of a memory from childhood that contributed to her feelings of abandonment: her mother left her in the car alone at the grocery store. When we zoomed out and looked at the whole forest, she realized her mother was just returning the grocery cart. She came back.

Through misunderstandings we can create wounds and triggers. They may be part of our lessons, but we can remember we have a voice and a choice. We’re not locked into one reaction, belief, or truth.

It’s useful to remind our adult brains the truth can change.

Because then, we can change.

With awareness, comes choice.

With choice, comes change.

This is amazing, but it's also created an oversaturated market.

So now we've got coaches / practitioners burning out, going broke, quitting AND we've got burnt out clients from doing all these expensive programs that were sold as solving some kind of problem - and didn’t deliver.

How many times did I think I was one course away from my business “working”?!

I have taken so.many.courses. Ranging from a few hundred dollars to several thousand dollars. Not one of them fixed me or made my business “work”. Many of them showed me new problems!

Sure, there were some useful takeaways; I dramatically increased my knowledge of the brain, nervous system, and trauma. I increased my self-awareness, self-confidence, and self-knowledge. I now have a connection to my Ancestors, Guides, and some truly amazing Mentors.

However, a lot of the courses I could've done without. I admit, I got 'sold' because they spoke to my pain points, I believed their promises, and I didn’t read the fine print.

Despite tens of thousands of $$ in programs, I still struggle with consistently seeing my innate worth, perfectionism, people pleasing (self-abandoning), scarcity + lack, fears + anxieties. These are lifelong lessons, not designed to be "fixed" in 12 weeks, or even 52 weeks.

Although we can't solve the problem of being human, we can become more whole, which paradoxically solves a lot of human problems.

As an entrepreneur, I've struggled since abandoning the old paradigm of narrowing your niche, selling high ticket programs, pushing pain points.

I’m seeing amazingly talented coaches, lightworkers, and artists quitting because they're burnt out and broke.

My friends. There has got to be a better way. ❤️

Let’s go back to why we’re even here.

Personally speaking, my original impetus of why I want to do what I do was to help other people. I just genuinely wanted to help other people in pain.

What I got was a lesson, which I turned into personal development and growth. Ironically, there’s a lot wrong with wanting to “fix” or take other people’s pain away.

The intention was pure, but it was wildly naive.

And now? I still want to inspire. I want to help other people see in themselves what I see in them. Remind us all of our innate worth. Remind us that all our parts deserve love. Remind us who we are. Again and again and again. As many reminders as needed.

I’m craving community, connection, joyful productivity, authentic work, continually uncovering the roots and layers of scarcity, lack, self-abandonment, perfectionism, and low self-worth and working through all of it.

This doesn’t happen in a 12-month program. I’m not that naive anymore.

I'm a deep person. I crave relational over transactional. I want to build a healing connection over YEARS and get under all the layers and shadows that come up and happen in real life, not just inside a program. I want to be a part of the integration that has to happen in order to process those uncovered layers.

You know what one of the best catalysts is for identifying those layers?

ENTREPRENEURSHIP.

There are a few things in life that are confronting in a way that you either embrace and heal; or run from. Entrepreneurship is one of those catalysts.

I'm seeing a new way of business for us sensitive, spiritual souls.

One where you don't pay a leader hundreds or thousands of dollars to heal. But one where we work on our businesses together, heal, and we all create income. A multi-year relationship in a container with guidance through the inner work that being in business brings up:

Perfectionism.

People pleasing.

Hyper Independence.

Self-doubt.

Low self-esteem.

Guilt.

Victim consciousness.

Harsh inner critic.

Anger.

Imposter syndrome.

Scarcity, lack.

All-or-nothing thinking.

Transactional, extractive living.

Comparison.

Self-sabotage. Sneaky self-sabotage.

I’m imagining a mutually beneficial industry where we heal together. We grow together; and each of our businesses and our impact grows, too.

I'm looking for a new paradigm.

❤️❤️❤️

Self-sabotage is latent; it’s only activated with certain conditions. To add to the nuance, it’s also hidden because it’s job is self-protection. It’s quietly trying to keep me safe in super sneaky ways.

This is useful, because if I own it and do nothing, I create more suffering.

It’s a pickle.

I want to grow my business, but I don’t. My Soul does. My mind is afraid. My nervous system is activated in all the ways.

The fact that I can spot this pattern (which tells different tales every time - how fun), and course correct is the result of a lot of awareness and inner work, over a long period of time. And also just getting tired of my own shit. There’s that.

Part of this awareness was realizing my business is not me, it’s a separate entity.

Part of this awareness is realizing how I do one thing is how I do everything.

Part of this awareness was unpacking generational and ancestral stories. Stories I inherited but have a choice about how I carry them.

In this podcast episode I share my lessons around connection, how being transactional, and extractive with my business led to feeling alone and playing small.

It’s a short episode and I don’t go down the rabbit holes of why; it’s more observational after coming out the other side. I don’t presume all my stories are universally relatable; my hope is you hear some pieces that remind you what you already know somewhere deep down. That allow you to expand the way you work with your business in really healthy ways.

~

BTW: I’m hosting a group Hypnosis taster in April 2024 / date TBA

• Virtual (Zoom)

• $25 CAD

• RHE Hypnotherapy is designed to get to the root of issues through memory, sensory, and relationship to parts of Self

• Session Focus: ABUNDANCE; exploring memories and connections that create experiences of scarcity, limitation, lack, and fears of not enough

• DM or hit reply or email me at info@jenpillipow.com to get more information on dates / times

PS many of you started following me when I was doing emotional eating coaching and more life coach-y stuff. I have a special package for you: 3-6 months of 1:1 work for as low as $108/mo. CAD. Hit reply / DM me for more information, or book a free call.

~

Thank you for joining me on the behind the scenes journey of building a business when you’re scared out of your mind - - - but doing it anyways (and making ALL the mistakes). It’s been an epic 6 years. Or 7. But who’s counting 😂😂😂❤️❤️❤️ I’m lucky (privileged) to be here.

I remember it vividly, but the age is fuzzy. I could be 4, I could be 9.

I’m sitting with my Mom, playing an imaginary game on the floor. The carpet beneath us is a familiar mix of light and dark browns and mustard yellow, common for the 80’s.

Bumpy in some places, smooth in others.

What did I want to be?

Isn’t it funny how we ask kids what they want to be?

Not who they want to be, or what they want to do?

The corner we’re playing in had a record player and a big radio, with some records and photographs of family on display. My grandmother who passed before I was born. My grandfather. School pictures of me and my siblings.

We were in the living room, beside the entrance to the dining room, which was attached to the kitchen. The design moment in time when rooms were separate. The kitchen didn’t bleed into the living room in an open concept space.

Separate, neat little boxes in a house.

A modest house in a small town with about 5,000 people, nestled in a valley, among the mountains. Sleepy and beautiful. The neighbourhood parents all said, “just come home when the streetlights come on.”

What do you want to be when you grow up?

A question I enjoy asking our 7-year-old; not because I want him to say “doctor” or “astronaut”, but because I want the opportunity to remind him of the endless options and that his only “job” is to just be him. Just be as much of who he is, to spend his life curious with meeting that mystery again and again.

I remember playing with my Mom that day and thinking I really wanted to say something shocking. To tell her I was going to be something girls can’t be.

I remember how nothing shocked her and she only replied, “you can be whatever you want to be.”

Years later I told my parents I was accepted to an acting school in New York City. A long way from the sleepy 5,000 population Canadian valley town. They supported me. I was the logical one that said, “it’s too much money and what if I don’t get work after? There are a lot of out of work actors.”

Where did that conditioning come from if it wasn’t from my parents?

What do you want to be when you grow up?

Over the years who I was being drifted from one thing to the next.

An actor, an out of work actor, a waitress, bartender, teller in a bank, personal banker, broker’s assistant, administrative assistant, student, executive headhunter, writer, podcaster, coach, hypnotherapist. A sister, daughter, niece, aunt, wife, ex-wife, friend, girlfriend, mom, employee, manager, cousin, entrepreneur.

Like the carpet in my childhood home, it was bumpy and smooth as I moved from box to box, label to label.

What was I doing?

Who was I being?

What was I being?

In grade 4 I remember a homework assignment asked us to write out who’d we be all grown up.

I was afraid to be different, so I copied my best friend at the time:  a teacher, married with kids, living in our small town. Seemed safe enough.

But at home with my blank sheets of paper and coloring pencils I drew a woman in a power suit, unmarried, living in the city. By day.

By night? FBI Agent. Detective. With a little black notebook nestled in my pocket.

And also? A writer.

These answers didn’t seem to fit in the box on my homework assignment, or match the list of professions suitable for girls, so I kept those parts to myself.

Last night I went to a networking event in my city. I’ve attended two in-person networking events since … I don’t even remember. 6 years? A decade?

I hate the forced small talk, the nervousness I feel with the “tell me what you do” because still, to this day, I don’t know how to fit it in a neat little box.

I do hypnotherapy and although all my clients seem to have similar root causes (disconnection from innate worth), their symptoms and resolutions vary. Some are experiencing physical symptoms, some are overusing / underusing habits, some are sabotaging their goals.

Sometimes we look at childhood memories, sometimes we do energy healing, sometimes past lives surface, or ancestor and lineages are explored. Sometimes the person is an over-thinker / under-feeler, and we work on reconnecting to the wisdom of the body through emotions and sensations. It’s not exactly cookie-cutter.

I don’t know how to sum this up in 3 minutes after “what do you do?”

It was taught, and reinforced to me that the purpose of life is to work. A job is what would make me purposeful, how I could earn my worth. I started working as a busser when I was 14 and didn’t stop working until I was on maternity leave in my late 30’s.

When I started my own business, I had a very transactional mindset. Just like an employee, I thought the invisible contract was “work hard, get paid, be worthy”. 1+2=3. Except I discovered 1+2 didn’t even equal another number.

During the dark night of my soul that followed, I couldn’t work. I didn’t have the mental, emotional, or physical capacity.

I quickly realized how much my self-worth was wrapped up in being able to perform in a job, in work, and earn money. Without it, I felt worthless. Without making money, relying on support, my shoulders sagged, my spirit drooped, and my internal dialogue always started with, “I don’t deserve that. I don’t deserve anything.”

What do you want to be when you grow up?

I’m untangling the conditioning of earning worth and playing with the long lost memory that I don’t need to control and be transactional. It’s scary. But there are glimpses of absolute bliss with flashes of a feeling that can only be described as trying to hold the Universe in the palm of my hand.

If you ask me now what I want to be, I hope I’ll say happy. Connected. Inspired. Intentional. Joyful. Honest. Unapologetically me. Remembering innate worth. Brave enough to feel the depths of the good and the bad.

Using my gifts, talents, and strengths in ways that benefit others and fulfill me while helping me grow.

Turns out who I want to be is not a convenient job title on the side of a homework sheet that fits into a box.

Turns out the point isn’t to hustle, overwork, burnout, and earn worth (which is elusive because it’s not possible to earn, anyways; the bar is a moving target - it’s designed to be).

Part of my life’s work is remembering my worth is not attached to job or money or body or image or relationships.

Part of my life’s work is remembering it’s OK to just be me.

That its always been more than enough.

I understand the deer-in-headlights looks when I talk about this. It’s an intangible concept hard to wrap or minds around, or embody.

Every way we look we’re confronted with the opposition: we aren’t enough. We need to buy, change, be something different to EARN our worth. Not to mention the shame it creates on this endless consuming cycle.

Aren’t we set up for a vicious cycle of failure?

Where is this messaging coming from, and how is the messenger benefiting?

In this week’s podcast episode I explore what it would look like if the skeptics were right: what if our Soul’s came to Earth totally worthless, and the whole goal is to achieve and earn worth?

What would that look like amidst the moving targets?

Well, what are the standards of worth? The metrics?

• Money

  Oh - you mean that totally made up man-made thing for the purpose of exchanging things? The thing that is actually just energy?

• Image

  How much has this changed over the decades and eons? How do you achieve a moving target?

• Career / Title

  Does this win your worth? At what point? Is it sustainable?

My analogy is with the algorithm.

If you’ve been posting on social media or running ads, you’ll understand the concept of a moving target very well. As soon as you figure it out, it changes.

Or, if you’ve ever achieved a long awaited goal (image, money, work) and the shine wore off and didn’t last (shiny object syndrome, anyone?), you’ll get this.

Isn’t it wildly inaccurate to base our worth on external metrics that can never be held sustainably, even if achieved?

Where is this messaging coming from and how is the messenger benefiting?

What about the consequences of each of these 2 opposing beliefs?

If we believe we’re worthless and need to earn our worth, the consequence will likely be looking to buy or achieve worth through external measures. Trying to force something that can’t be earned because the algorithm keeps changing.

We’re set up for failure.

Contrary, if we believe we’re inherently worthy (and we just forgot), the consequence will likely be: increased self-love, self-acceptance, less comparison, jealousy, hyper independence.

We’re set up for community, growth, learning, support, abundance.

“What’s wrong with me?” is maybe replaced with a calm, sturdy, quiet confidence, or even joy.

If we’re accepting who we are and where we are, doesn’t the noise of conditioning soften?

Sometimes it’s easier to witness the worthiness we see in Nature. When bees go to the flower for nectar, they don’t need to dress up, wear make-up, or lose weight. They don’t ask, “am I good enough today?” They go to the flower for sweet nectar and by doing so, they also spread pollen for the whole garden to flourish.

We are made of the same stuff as Nature: cells, water, molecules. We are Nature. And just like Nature, we are inherently worthy and abundant, and more.

Where is THIS message coming from, and how would the messenger benefit? How would we all benefit?

Like the bees getting nectar and consequently pollinating the garden, how do we help the collective by doing what innately brings us sweetness?

My Nature analogies aren’t new ideas - they’ve been discussed organically for centuries, and I invite you to your own journey with the appropriate sources. Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer and the Munay-Ki are some of my current favorites.

Those exact words, “I don’t want to be married anymore.”

I’m 22, but felt petulant saying it.

It doesn’t make logical sense. I love him. He’s very nice. Kind. We don’t fight, there’s nothing “wrong”. Except I don’t want to be married anymore, and if I’m really honest, I didn’t want to get married eight months ago.

When he got down on one knee in downtown Vancouver and produced a ring (we BOTH picked out), I hesitated because I wanted to say no, but couldn’t. I couldn’t find one logical reason.

So, I said “yes”.  

Saying “I don’t want to” felt childish. That’s not a reason, that’s not admissible.

“Feelings aren’t relevant, valid, or acceptable,” I thought.

My mind resumed listing all the reasons to say yest: he’s nice, fun, I love him, and isn’t this just what people do?

I didn’t have reasons to say no.

So, I said yes.

Now that almost 25 years have passed and I have more years in a life to spot patterns, I know being highly sensitive and overwhelmed by feelings led me to that point.

Overintellectualizing to under-feel felt safer.

My inner dialogue told me, “Feelings don’t matter; only logical facts are valid” (masculine / feminine energy imbalance).

This created a lot of problems for the next 20 or so years of my life until I started unpacking and unraveling it.

~

I know now there was more to my “yes, I’ll marry you” than people pleasing and being afraid to say no.

It’s overthinking, under feeling.

It’s disconnection from my self.

It’s practiced self-abandonment.

The following year my best friend (now roommate), and I, are sitting in a huge empty stadium. John Mayer has left, the band is gone, all the spectators have left the building.

“I think it’s time to go,” she says softly.

Years later, he wrote In the Blood 🎵 🎵 🎵:

How much of my mother has my mother left in me?
How much of my love will be insane to some degree?
And what about this feeling that I'm never good enough?
Will it wash out in the water, or is it always in the blood?

How much of my father am I destined to become?
Will I dim the lights inside me just to satisfy someone?
Will I let this woman kill me, or do away with jealous love?
Will it wash out in the water, or is it always in the blood?

I can feel the love I want, I can feel the love I need
But it's never gonna come the way I am
Could I change it if I wanted, can I rise above the flood?
Will it wash out in the water, or is it always in the blood?

As a hypnotherapist and someone who works with generational and ancestral stories, I understand what’s in my blood, is not my fault.

As a Coach, and a Cycle Breaker, I understand that despite that, it’s my responsibility.

I know now there was more to the way I left my first husband (a story for another time), that it had to do with attachment and the paradox of connection.

As humans we all want connection, it’s in our DNA for survival. I inherited and perpetuated a dismissive avoidant connection style.

Paradoxically, creating disconnection is the kind of connection that felt safe for me.

I know, it’s a bit of a mind bend, and again, a story for another time.

Hyper independence was like a cozy, safe blanket.

Unraveling the stories of my Grandmother, and her Grandmother, and her Grandmother, helped me understand why, after 8 months of marriage, I self-combusted the way I did.

Fast forward almost 20 years, I’m bright-eyed and bushy tailed about starting a business. I work with a coach, I quit my job, I go all in (I know. Now, I know).

Unlike saying yes to my first marriage, this feels like a whole-hearted, soulful, resounding need. Not just a want, but a deep desire, and need. A full body Y-E-S. No fear. “I’m a hard worker, I’ve got this.”

I have a pretty good first year relying on all my go-to tools: hustle, over-work, try, try harder, try harder, control, try harder again.

I worked with coaches and trainers. I became certified in hypnotherapy. Every single coach or teacher I worked with mirrored my “values” of hustle, work hard, control, and following a “formula for success”. The perfect example of trauma-bonding.

It all came crashing down shortly after that, and the next five years plunged me into a deep healing and a very dark night of the soul.

“How could answering a calling with a resounding Y-E-S feel so bloody awful?”

All those pesky feelings I’d been pushing down for years finally had a quiet space to come up.

We’re a beautiful, complex, nuanced blend, us humans.

We’re made up of stories from generations past.

What our parents, grandparents and great grandparents survived.

They live as preconceived notions, but as we grow, the subconscious looks for ways to verify them.

Confirmation bias.

When we inherit the belief, we aren’t good enough, we start looking for proof.

We actively seek out examples proving we aren’t enough.

Just like if we started looking for yellow cars, we’d start seeing yellow cars everywhere.

Confirmation bias.

These beliefs now become our own stories, our proof.

We spend our lives confirming what we believe.

If we think we aren’t good enough, we’ll find those examples.

That laser focus will make us miss the beautiful examples reminding us we are good enough.

We forget that’s inherent and can’t be taken or given.

they’re so ingrained, so in the blood, so automatic, we forget we have choice about beliefs.

But what if even the ones we inherited could be washed out in the water?

What if we really do have a choice?

Coles Notes

I had been lumping HSP’s and empaths all together until I came across Dr. Judy Orloff’s work. She reports not all HSP’s are empaths, and furthermore, highlights 11 different types of empaths. She also offers this handy diagram:

The main difference between empaths and HSP’s being that HSP’s don’t typically sense subtle energy changes, or absorb energy from other people and environments.

The rarest and most powerful kind of empaths identified by Dr. Orloff is “Heyoka”. “The term “heyoka” comes from Indigenous tribes of the Great Plains of North America and means “sacred clown”. This type of empath challenges conventional norms and mirrors the emotions of others, causing them to see things differently.”

The part about challenging conventional norms and causing others to see things differently sounds very much like cycle breakers. Not sure about the mirroring of other people’s emotions, but sometimes that’s what we do when we’re triggered and reacting to what isn’t healed in us. We are all mirrors for each other.

So, is hyper vigilance being masked and called empathy? Or, are we born highly sensitive and empathic, which naturally leads us to be more hyper vigilant? Nature or nurture? What do you think?

Are we born to be cycle breakers with the gifts of empathy and high sensitivity? Or is our “empathy” derived from an adaptive response to attempt to stay safe and connected in tough situations?

The Connection to Our Work

Sometimes our calling is a profession from which we get paid. Sometimes it’s as simple as choosing to be brave and be who we are. Sometimes that’s being a cycle breaker.

Sometimes it’s all of the above and we choose to heal ourselves, our family line, and hold space for others to heal (the Coaches, Healers, Leaders, Creatives, etc).

That’s a pretty big calling.

Why I think all these words and labels matter and I why I talk so much about being highly sensitive and entrepreneurship is because hard things amplify our strengths and weaknesses.

When we amplify high sensitivity and empathic traits, it’s not useful. It often shows up as people pleasing, perfectionism, comparison, imposter syndrome, and a harsh inner critic. All those things create an enormous amount of self-doubt. Self-doubt and entrepreneurship are a tricky mix.

When we bring awareness to our traits, however, we can recognize when we need to pull them back, implement boundaries, and use them more efficiently, effectively, authentically, and sustainably.

No coincidence, that’s just the kind of business I’m aiming to build.

Our relationship to ourself often correlates and mirrors the relationship we have with our business.

This is why, IMHO, starting a business can be so confronting.

The things that need healing but you’ve been sweeping under the rug and coasting by…well, now the rug is gone. It’s the epitome of feeling like the rug got pulled out from under you!

It might show up as the shock of following your hopes and dreams and answering the call was not the yellow brick road to freedom you imagined. It can be discombobulating and hard to find your way back, or move forward. It can leave you feeling stuck.

To continue answering the call, we need support. We try to do it all alone, to be responsible, capable, and prove ourselves. But it’s impossible to build a business alone.

Ironically (or maybe serendipitous), hyper independence may be a thing that needs healing. Connection may be a thing that needs healing; connection to ourselves and our gifts and talents, and to others. Your business may be the catalyst for what you needed.

If we’re running around with empathy and high sensitivity overwhelming us and we have no knowledge of it; our capacity to expand will be low.

When we use our powers for good, increase our capacity to expand, our business can expand, and we stop holding it back.

Entrepreneurship can be the gateway to some deep healing. This kind of healing heals you, the generations before and after you, and your clients.

This is why I call Entrepreneurs that are healing themselves, holding space for others to heal, AND healing generations past (cycle breakers) the Superheroes of Healing.

Now THAT’S answering the call. 🎉🎉🎉

Does anyone know who I can credit this quote to?

I listened to the voice that said “you can’t draw anything realistic. You’re no good. Therefore, you can’t paint.”

Scrolling on IG one day an ad caught my attention: learn to paint abstract.

It took me an embarrassingly long time for me to realize I didn’t have to paint realistically, and I didn’t have to be “good” to paint. I could just paint.

So, I started.

I bought some canvas, some acrylic paint, and took that short online class.

It was a great distraction from flailing around in my business. It was a way to be in the creative process without asking for money. It was a way to surrender expectation and result and just be in the process. It was a way to let go. Until it wasn’t.

The voices came in…“what if I’m doing it wrong, what if I’m ruining it, what if I’m missing my chance.” Like there’s only one chance. Like I can even control the outcome and results.

Familiar tendencies, triggers, and resistances started creeping in…

·        Getting attached to what I’ve created

·        Scared to add more paint in case I “wreck it”

·        Scared to make decisions because they may be “wrong”

·        Scared of mistakes: they aren’t “fixable”

·        Scared of judgement: others will say it’s not very good

·        Trying to control the outcome / result

Where had I seen these before?

Ah, yes. Those are the same ideas that show up when I work in my business.

Hello, old friends.

This is exactly the kind of thinking that holds me back in my work.

You know that saying “how you are in one thing is how you are in everything”?

That tracks.

I wasn’t just sabotaging my work by trying to control what was not mine to control. It was my artwork, too, even the stuff I don’t get paid for, that nobody ever sees.

This makes sense because my business is also my artwork. My soul work. I pour everything into it, authenticity is my goal. When I write, create content or programs, I do it from my soul, from scratch.

Clearing the Channel

To create from an authentic place, in art, or in my business, I need to clear the channel for the creativity to flow through. I can’t be clogged up with conditioning and layers. I can’t be clogged up by fears of doing it wrong.

Conditioning and layers will ultimately take me in a different direction. One where I need to be liked, right, and where I lean on external success to prove my worthiness.

It reminds me of that analogy of flying an airplane from NY to LA. If you change direction by 5 degrees, you won’t end up in LA.

Creating and making choices from fear, anxiety, and scarcity will take me to one place.

Creating from authenticity, worthiness, wholeness; will take me to another place. A place I want to live.

With awareness comes choice, and with choice comes change.

I think of it like layers. My wholeness, my self-worth, abundance, all these things are inherent; they’re IN there SOMEWHERE – but buried. They never left, I don’t need to do anything to earn them, they can’t be taken away; they’re buried under layers of conditioning and safety.  Buried under adaptive responses that became maladaptive as I grew. It’s ok. It’s changeable with awareness and choice.

Understanding them allows me to reach the place where I can make authentic choice.

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” Carl Jung

As a hypnotist, my favorite saying is “with awareness comes choice, and with choice comes change.” Hypnosis is all about giving the subconscious a voice with choice. We can’t change the past, but we can change our perception of how the past affects us today.

Part of that choice is the magical space between the trigger and the response. The pause. The pause interrupts the reaction and leaves space for the response, the growth, the choice.

Case in Point

Yesterday I sat down to write this week’s Substack. I was making the decision from “should”, and “I’m running out of time”. Not terrible, but not terribly inspiring, either.

I showed up to my desk, I wrote. It was OK. It left me feeling self-doubt, exhausted and unsatisfied.

I went for a walk.

I slept on it.

I woke up understanding I had created from a place of “should”. Not terrible, but maybe 5 degrees away from where I wanted to go.

I started thinking about the rhetoric in my head as I wrote: it needs to be better. The other stuff I started isn’t good enough. The other writers on Substack are really good. I need to up my game. I need to be something other than me.

So many layers and conditioning hiding the real me. And just me, is enough. It has to be, ‘cuz I don’t got anything else. What else can I do?

This morning I sat. I journaled. I listened to an inspiring podcast (We Can Do Hard Things, no less).  

Then, I sat and wrote.

And it felt good.

I felt “clicked in”.

Is it amazing?

No. ha ha.

But it felt amazing.

I’ve decided that’s what I’m going for because that’s what will take me to where I wanna go; not 5 degrees towards generic and inauthentic.

Just like painting, when I slip into the flow of it, release the need to control the outcome, the process of it is so much more enjoyable.

And isn’t that the point, anyway?