The fragility of someday
We have so many dreams for someday. Someday I’ll live in a big beautiful house. Someday I’ll take that trip to India. Someday I’ll lose those 10 lbs and finally be happy. Someday I’ll get married and my mom will help me pick out the wedding dress of our dreams. Someday is a figment of our imagination, a beautiful dream we create in our minds. Unfortunately, someday doesn’t always come. The dream can die from years and years of saying “next year,” or it can be ripped away from you with no warning. The day my mother died, her someday evaporated away with her last breath, and the someday I had imagined was ripped away in an instant. It felt like I didn’t even have a tomorrow much less a someday.
In the first days of grief, you have no imagination. Shock and emotion encompass your brain so effectively that it is impossible to see past the pain you are experiencing. It feels like the pain will never end. When someone we love dies we don’t merely grieve the person, but also the future we imagined with them in it. I spent the first few months of being motherless constantly asking myself how am I going to live without her. Our mothers are often our greatest guiding influence, and my mother was no exception. Mama had high expectations for my brother and me. Expectations born out of her incredible love and admiration for us, but also heavily gifted to her by the society and the culture she was raised in.
I come from a small town, the same small town she was raised in and stayed in. We spend our entire lives receiving messages from society and our culture about how we are supposed to live our lives. It puts us in our place and tells us our role. Sometimes that role coincides with who we are at our core, and sometimes it traps us into a tiny box we never wanted to be in. These roles are especially present in a small town. When everyone knows your name, where you live, and can probably list your family members three generations back it is pretty hard to hide. If you stray away from the duties of the expected role, it will be noticed (and it will probably come up at the next church bazaar).
My mom flourished in many ways in her roles. She owned the local beauty salon and the ladies left her shop with not only a fresh perm, but also a lighter soul after baring it to her in the safety of a styling chair. When the time came she fell in love, got married, had the babies, and became the fierce and loving mother I knew. She wanted the absolute best for us so she pushed for us to succeed in our own roles. I was “Susy high school.” I got good grades, led student government, and was involved in nearly everything from theater to cheerleading. I was the picture of well-rounded. I performed my role with a smile on my face. It feels good to be accepted and even admired at times. But much of it was just that, a performance. My life was entirely dictated by what I was supposed to be doing, and I felt a lot of shame for the ways I felt I didn’t measure up, particularly for being overweight when I was supposed to be skinny. I made my choices based on what would make my parents and small community most proud.
At the ripe old age of twelve, I decided I was going to be a doctor and never looked back. I loved the “wow” that came out of peoples’ mouths when I told them my plans and made note of the lackluster responses to the plans of other adolescents. I made a choice that was so naturally reinforced by my surroundings that I never even considered another option. I struggled through the upper-level calculus and chemistry classes and ignored my natural inclination and talent for English and the social sciences. I chalked the latter up as an “easy A” to help keep my GPA high. I charted this course into my college days with tunnel vision. It became harder and harder to ignore my lack of skill and enthusiasm in the sciences, yet I still never wavered enough to change course. When I had thoughts of pursuing writing or sociology, classes I actually enjoyed, they were quickly squashed by the false narrative that there is no future in such studies. What they mean by no future is no money. So I pushed on and pushed past the obvious truth glaring me in the face. I reached a point where I completely lost my reasoning for why I was on the path to medical school. When asked why I wanted to be a doctor I gave a rehearsed and unmindful answer of “I want to help people.” As if getting an M.D. was the only way to better the world. As time went on I entered into a state of autopilot. I was doing what was expected and needed to get to the next step in the path. Until my world was shaken.
I had just finished my junior year of college when my mom died very unexpectedly. She went to bed one night seemingly fine and just never woke up. She was 55. It felt like the world stopped turning. I handled my grief the same way I handled everything else in my life up until that point, by doing. I didn’t think and I tried to feel as little as possible. I thought my mom would want me to move forward and that’s what I tried to do. But the automatic spell had broken and my pilot had died. My senior year was a kerfuffle of grief and hard truths. I learned that feelings don’t go away just because you tell them to. I discovered my spirituality, as it was the only way to make sense of my loss. I embraced journaling, singing, and counseling as ways to release and process my emotions. And I learned you can only bend so far until you break, and I finally broke.
I realized I had been bending for the last eight years. Contorting myself to fit along the path I believed I was supposed to be on. I was able to bend and not break all of these years because I was so heavily supported and molded by my mother. Without her, I finally snapped. I had nowhere to lean when the demands of being well-rounded became too much to handle alone. Between the rigor of fourth-year sciences and the distraction of grief, my grades flailed and I couldn’t deny how much I hated it. After nearly a year of pushing and failing, I finally let go and released the dream that was never mine. I had been chasing a someday that was designed by my surroundings. After a year of learning to accept a new someday without my mom in it, I developed a genuine understanding of the fragility of someday. It doesn’t always come and when it does it doesn’t always make you happy.
By the end of senior year, I had my ducks in a row enough to apply to medical school with a decent chance of getting in. My GPA was solid, my MCAT score was acceptable, and my volunteer and extracurricular experiences were on point. I was in the someday I needed to be in, to get to the next phase of someday and I was miserable. I spent hours staring at a blank screen wracking my brain for an authentic reason behind my med-school desires that I could share with an admissions board. But was at a complete loss. I had been riding this train blindly and now it was time to get off, despite the many miles traveled.
So, a month before graduating I did just that! It was a hard and scary decision to make. One that brought me to tears in my advisor's office as I enlightened him about my decision. He calmly reminded me that I was not the first person to change my mind a month before graduation. Those words were an incredible relief I desperately needed. After years of feeling alone in doubt and a year of feeling alone in grief, I was reminded that I was not alone.
I left that office feeling a lot lighter. Hopeful and empowered. For the first time, I felt like I had control over my someday. Within the next hour, I was googling the Peace Corps. Early in my college career, a different advisor had casually mentioned the service as a gap year option if I didn’t want to go straight into medical school. That conversation lived in the back of my mind and for some reason was the first thought I had after stepping off the MD path.
After getting over the initial fear of leaving the country and being away from family for two years I applied and was accepted to serve as a Community Health HIV/AIDS Program Volunteer in Namibia. The Peace Corps is not a perfect program. It intends to foster cross-cultural relations and aid other countries sustainably but is flawed in its origin and perpetuation that U.S. culture and ideals are greater than those of other nations. Yet, my service caused me to evolve in ways that have made me a better person. I learned not only about the world abroad but also gained a greater understanding of the United States. That is entirely thanks to the incredible and patient people I had the privilege of serving beside.
My time in Namibia created the setting I needed to connect with myself after years of disconnection. I had the space and time to grieve my mom in a place where time moves at a slower pace. It created a setting where I had enough distance from the expectations and influences of the society and culture I grew up in to look at it through a new lens. A monumental part of Peace Corps service is learning how to build cross-cultural relationships. It’s learning how to set aside judgment and pick up curiosity. It is asking questions to learn history and build an understanding of a new culture. It is choosing to be aware of and analyze the predispositions and beliefs you carry that are false and misguided. Developing these skills to understand Namibian culture directly translated to understanding my own.
I began analyzing the messages I had been receiving from external sources about race, body, gender, sexuality, and religion. I learned to go inward to assess whether at my core I agreed with the ideas that had been ingrained in me and developed skills to release what didn’t match up. It was in this transformation I discovered a purpose I wanted to pursue. I wanted to help other people have the opportunity to gain these insights and experience this transformation.
As my service neared completion I began considering my options for carrying out this purpose. The knowledge I had at the time pointed me in the direction of psychology and therapy. I have a deep faith that opportunity and information will present themselves to us when the time is right, as long as we are listening. That information came to me at my cohort’s Close of Service Conference, a meeting that serves to help Peace Corps Volunteers reflect on and process their service before stepping into their next chapter. As our country director spoke he briefly mentioned his certification in life and leadership coaching, and friends I literally felt the lightbulb above my head turn on. As I learned more from him about coaching, I soon found that I was drawn to the path because of its focus on developing deeper understandings and translating them into action. I was attracted to coaching initially because it was what I needed. I had gained all this insight that I wasn’t quite sure how to utilize it.
I pursued coaching and found a training program that aligned with the values I had connected to throughout my journey of transformation. A vital component of the training process is to receive coaching yourself, through this I learned how to design and pursue a life that would truly bring me joy. One that allowed me to be the person I was innately born to be. Throughout the process, I gained the confidence and courage to actually live this life, even when it defied societal expectations or norms. Best of all, the training gave me the skills to help others live aligned with their core self.
We as individuals need to live in alignment with our truest selves because it breeds a better society. When we are accepting of ourselves we tend to be more accepting of others. When we release the beliefs that don’t serve us we take part in the greater humanity releasing the ideals that do not serve it. The confidence, compassion, and courage that come from personal transformation are contagious. It translates in every connection we have, from the deep bond we build with our children to the nod and smile we share with a passerby on the street. I know this because I have experienced it. I am a better sister, daughter, and friend than I used to be, and I am a more open and accepting stranger.
Investing in the space and time for personal growth and change is how we break out of the autopilot cycle that serves no one, least of all ourselves. I have learned the hard way that someday does not always come, so we can’t spend our lives living for it. Our time is too precious to spend on autopilot. Losing someone you love and living on the other side of the world are not requirements for transformation. It was my call to action, but yours can be as simple as this blog post. What you need for change is a space of safety and exploration. That can be time spent in nature, reading a thought-provoking book at your favorite coffee shop, observing the innocence of your children in your own home, or embracing the safe spaces created by therapists, counselors, and coaches. Grow in the space and way that suits you best, but choose to grow. Choose to do it today over someday, because it’s not guaranteed, and if you do get your someday, don’t you want it to be one you’ve built with intentionality and true joy?
“The content of this website is mine alone and does not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Government, the Peace Corps, or the Namibian Government.”
