She was young, no more than late 30s, but she was hardened. I could feel passion underneath the surface, but she did her best to control her emotions the first couple of days of the workshop. She wasn’t stand-offish as she emotionally attended to others in her cohort, but she was more of a caregiving observer than a support-seeking participant.
On the third day, she asked if we could walk and talk. She told me she was doing the workshop like she did her life: safe, prescribed, banal. She felt a lake of tears and mountains of anger, but she was afraid to express all of this for fear that she’d take up too much attention, she’d never stop crying, she’d be altered in a way that meant she could no longer be functional the way she’s been.
I asked her quite simply, “Do you want to be functional the way you’ve been?” Her reaction: deer in the headlights. She realized she didn’t want that but couldn’t imagine another way. She started tearing up and told me about her “starter marriage” in her twenties that lasted only five years with no kids. But, now she has two young kids with a new husband who’s basically a repeat of her first husband.
I asked, “Are you a repeat of being the same wife you were in the first marriage?” She started sobbing, but also resisted my question with, “I’m a great mom…..” Her sentence trailed off and more tears came. “I’m a great mom and a lousy wife. No one knows I’m this unhappy.” We stopped walking and looked at the Santa Fe landscape, staying silent for a couple minutes. After the pregnant pause, I said, “You do,” and she looked back knowingly and nodded her head.
I told her something I’ve told many of you, “Change is situational and circumstantial. You can change your job or marriage and you may be complaining again about your new boss or spouse. Transition is psychological and spiritual because you changed inside and the glasses you’re wearing changed as well. Maybe it’s time for you to be open to being altered by this experience in the workshop.”
She spent the rest of the workshop fully engaged and speaking from what we at MEA call the “third vault,” not our facts and stories, but the essence of what we need to say and feel in this moment in order to unclog the emotional plumbing to our truth. It’s a Roto-Rooter for the soul.
At our final celebratory dinner after graduation, she pulled me aside, radiantly grinning from ear to ear, and said, “No more Stepford Wife for me. I will be the ‘Step Forward Wife’ who speaks her truth as a role model for my two daughters. I’m tired of reading someone else’s lines. It’s time for me to start writing my own script with my own voice.” And, with the support of her cohort, she’s now doing that.
The past year and a half since I moved to a stage 3 cancer diagnosis, I’ve had many long nights when I wondered what the heck am I doing? I could just be lounging by the pool in Mexico, purely relaxing and limiting my stress.
But, of course, in early 2023, I couldn’t turn back from launching a new book the that publisher was editing and opening an enormous Santa Fe campus that was under construction, but it’s taken a toll on me when I’ve had just 1-2% of my normal testosterone (due to the treatments) since February 2023. I’ve had to do a deep drilling into my core to find the energy to do this. But, it’s stories like these (and there are so many every week) that remind me “I am how I serve.” The more I serve, the more I feel alive, the more I don’t fear my death.
Thank you to all of you who’ve trusted in the MEA Method. It doesn’t just serve you. It serves me as well.
-Chip