Dear 2023...
A love letter to one of the most difficult years of my life.
Meeting you felt like being T-boned at an intersection by a hit-and-run driver. I’ve been spun around and around until I lost all sense of which way is up. As the blur of ‘what just happened?!’ fades, the scene shapes up, I regain my senses, and I turn to see your tail-lights speeding away. I never saw your face, but I did catch the last four digits of your license plate: 2023.
I probably should’ve seen you coming when I pulled the Tower card from my tarot deck at the beginning of the year. Tower indicates expect the unexpected—massive change, upheaval, destruction and chaos.
The Tower shows a tall tower perched on the top of a rocky mountain. Lightning strikes set the building alight, and two people leap from the windows, head first and arms outstretched. It is a scene of chaos and destruction.
The lightning represents a sudden surge of energy and insight that leads to a break-through or revelation. It enters via the top of the building and knocks off the crown, symbolizing energy flowing down from the Universe, through the crown chakra. The people are desperate to escape from the burning building, not knowing what awaits them as they fall. Around them are 22 flames, representing the 12 signs of the zodiac and 10 points of the Tree of Life, suggesting that even in times of disaster, there is always divine intervention.
~ Biddy Tarot
🚒 Accurate.
The lightening struck my family on January 2 with onset of extreme symptoms. And again with misdiagnosis. And again with three Emergency Room visits in as many days just a week later. My son’s health was engulfed by flames.
Witnessing your child in excruciating pain and suffering, no matter their age, is a heart-breaking and life-altering experience. I’d have done anything to trade places with him.
CT Scans, IV medications, blood draws, tests (so many tests). Morphine. Acute diagnosis. ‘Lifelong’ chronic prognosis. Googling, the harsh reality and the mental hurdles set in. The search for treatments, researching alternatives, complications from the IV medications. Assembling a squad of specialists, healers, functional medicine, allopathic medicine, Chinese medicine. Mindset matters. Navigating food restrictions, meal plans, sourcing food differently, dozens of supplements, infusions upon infusions, the USA’s web of health insurance and exorbitant medical costs, out-of-pocket costs, credit card debt. More labs and tests. Staying positive, seeing improvements. Keeping the faith that if we create the conditions for healing, this doesn’t need to be a life sentence.
All this—while also juggling a high pressure, demanding job, chronic lack of sleep, witnessing my own health declining, extreme adrenal exhaustion, teetering on total collapse.
Do I wish I could’ve swerved and missed the impact?
Yes… but also, No. This is a love letter to 2023, after all.
I’m grateful for 2023, because…
…this year reminded me that we can do hard things. In the face of maximum uncertainty and discomfort, we not only survived, we found profound new ways to thrive.
I’m a firm believer that challenges and tests are mirrors that reflect light into the dark corners of our psyche, bringing awareness to those ignored or unexplored edges that hold us back from our limitlessness.
In these moments, I know that if I can make space (even amid the chaos) to explore those edges, the most profound lessons await me.
This year was a deep initiation, but one that I felt ready to hold because it felt familiar. I’ve been able to respond differently…
On the surface, this year was a masterclass in patience. Feeling bound to a stressful and emotionally exhausting job for financial and healthcare safety (welcome to America!) was a huge, hairy test for me. A test of my ability to stay present, aware of my discomfort but not ruled by it, and—more days than I want to admit—a test to not give my energy to the overwhelming urge to light a match, burn the whole house down, and run for the hills.
Fact is, if I didn’t have this critical need for employer-provided medical insurance, I wouldn’t have sat with this sustained discomfort for as long as I have. Historically, I’ve moved on from a situation the minute it becomes clear that it is not for me. But this year, I was forced to balance the ‘Hard NO’ I felt towards my work situation, with the gratitude I felt for having excellent medical coverage for my son as part of the benefits of my employment.
Staying in the discomfort of holding both of these feelings at the same time left me staring at myself in that mirror and lingering long enough to see what it would teach me.
This year, I filled pages and pages of my journals with my exploration of those dark edges. I asked myself more questions this year than I’ve asked in the previous four combined. Hard questions.
Does my anxious-attachment style keep me stuck in a rut with money and career? Can I be brave enough to critically examine the ways I seek validation at work for the illusion of ‘safety’? What are the unhealthy ways I create a feeling of control?
Can I admit that I have a co-dependent relationship with my work? Can I take responsibility for my personal contribution to my unhappiness and show up differently?
Can I have compassion for the ways my childhood forced me to find safety in ‘having all the answers’? How has that served me in my career and created my identity? And, more importantly, how is my attachment to this identity holding me back from living a more restful and effortless lifestyle? How is it keeping me stuck in the strong, independent woman archetype?
Why do I feel such an overwhelming sense of responsibility and obligation to others, at the expense of myself?
The Drama Triangle
Recently I was reminded by an incredible coach of the principles of Karpman's Drama Triangle. As I re-familiarized myself with this framework, I could immediately recognize how that ‘overwhelming sense of responsibility’ I feel towards others stems from the unhealthy habits of the Rescuer.
While it felt like a breakthrough to admit aloud that ‘I have a codependent relationship with my workplace’, it wasn’t until I connected the dots between my codependence and the Drama Triangle that I could appreciate WHY.
I grew up needing to ‘always have the answers’, because I essentially raised myself from fourteen years old. I’m not talking about being a latch-key kid. I mean, alone. Getting myself to and from school and my part-time job. Making my own meals. Locking the house up each night before bed. My mother lived 5 hours drive away, and when I turned 14, my father also moved to a new apartment closer to his work, 2 hours drive away.
Having the answers to every situation that presented itself while living alone at a young age was how I took care of myself. It became the (mal)adaptive behaviour that kept me safe in the absence of parents or adults creating that safety. What started as taking care of myself, quickly became an instinct to take care of others as well, often without invitation.
And yet, this served me well in the workplace—I got many promotions, emotional rewards, and acknowledgements for being the first to jump in with a plan of action. But now, I can see how this behaviour (and the validation I receive for it) has become a crutch for my sense of self-worth.
Without this self-awareness, I’ve subconsciously sought fuel for my self-worth by taking the posture of the Rescuer in more and more situations, especially at work.
Assuming the role of the Rescuer has led to:
feeling like I need to be at every meeting anyone invites me to
taking on other people’s work or fixing problems that aren’t mine
feeling overly responsible for the work output and career growth of the 80+ people that report to me
working longer and longer hours to the point of exhaustion… because the list of things for which I feel responsible piles up well beyond the hours in the day
With this new understanding of my subconscious motivations, I began to appreciate why it has been difficult to sustain my previous commitments to inhabit my feminine energy, to soften, to slow down, to feel safe while at rest, to create better boundaries for my self-care.
I recognize now that my tendency to assume the role of the Rescuer is very much the source of the codependency I feel with my work. It is also the genesis of feeling stuck in my masculine energy, and that stuckness contributes to feeling constantly drained and exhausted.
For years, I’ve struggled to shed the ‘strong, independent woman’ archetype. I just assumed that the workplace requires a masculine energetic to survive. Now, I’ve been able to identify where I am responsible for this dynamic. And that’s the first step towards choosing differently and embodying the lessons.
Every time I have a breakthrough like this, it feels like I’m just getting started.
So, thank you 2023. I could never have envisioned that a family health crisis would peel this onion of self-awareness. I am grateful for the discomfort, the challenges, the mirror you forced me to stare into for months.
After a Tower experience, you develop a new perspective on life you did not even know existed. These moments are necessary for your spiritual growth and enlightenment, and truth and honesty will bring about a positive change, even if you experience pain and anxiety throughout the process.
~ Biddy Tarot
What’s next for me? How is my son’s health progressing? How am I integrating and embodying these lessons? Join me here next week as the next chapter begins.
Thanks for coming on this journey with me.
