What do you want to be when you grow up?

“What do you want to be when you grow up?”

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.