Divest

Lately I’ve been teetering precariously along the line of burnout. I have found myself somewhat obsessively on Redfin, Zillow, or AirBnb with this fantasy of fleeing with a destination that shifts daily. Toronto, Denver, Portland, New England, the UK – quite literally ALL over the map. I have racked my brain for months trying do identify what it is I’m really doing with this behavior – because I am about a year away form a professional license I’ve been pursuing for over five years…I’m not going anywhere, at least until my name ends in LMHC. Nevertheless, the sirens are going off full blast begging me to evacuate a sinking ship before I drown with it.

So, here I am putting my clinical skills to work to investigate what I am feeling desperate to escape.

Some days – some moments even – I feel like I can’t handle hearing the word “mom” one more time, knowing that it is surely to be followed by never ending need. And then comes all the guilt for feeling this way and the dissonance in snuggling these babies to sleep and looking in awe at their peaceful faces and wondering what kind of cold heart could feel anything but unconditional love and grace towards them. 

There are moments in the therapy room that feel like the thin veil between the sacred and mundane has been pulled wide open and yet I drive home ruminating on the moments of misattunements or misses. 

I get sucked into a never-ending swirl of shame and powerlessness with every big and small loss that has added up in our world over the past few years and the way I find myself so ideologically distant from the people I love. It is paralyzing. I am equal parts wanting to share myself authentically knowing I am securely loved and wanting to hide out of fear of conflict, more loss, and more distance. 

I have been struggling with body shame and recovery from a binge eating disorder I didn’t even know I had until I started working with a dietician around it. I am healing my relationship with food and learning to love my body for who she is while rejecting weight stigma, but sometimes I just want to whole30 myself back to a size six so I can get rid of all these feelings and look like the girl in these picture again.

I want to stop trying to understand our differences and throw in the towel sometimes. I want to give up making space for dissonance and move into judgmental binaries out of the sheer exhaustion it takes to reconcile complexity. 

I have just been hearing the word evacuate over and over, screaming through my head, and as I sit here and breathe some space into it and sink back into my body, I am realizing that the evacuation instinct is internal, not external. My inner landscape as it stands today is untenable, a sinking ship that can’t even pretend to look seaworthy anymore. The ship doesn’t need to be abandoned, it needs to be healed with radical love.

I’m realizing that it’s not really about evacuating – it’s about divesting. Divesting from a cultural and inner narrative that values perfection over peace, hustle over joy, and conflict avoidance over true vulnerable and authentic connection. Divesting from diet culture, colonialism, and capitalism that privilege certain body’s to the great harm of others. Divesting from a belief system that privileges the power of institutions over the lived experiences of bodies. 

So I’ve started doing yoga and trying to get comfortable feeling present in my body. I’m reading The Body Is Not an Apology by Sonia Renee Taylor and taking more walks with my dogs. I’m eating delicious food and taking time to eat the things I want and not only the leftovers from the plates of children. I am investing hours in therapy, supervision, professional development, and work with my nutritionist. I am asking hard questions, leaning into tough conversations. 

If you’ve made it this far with me, how are you divesting? I am genuinely asking both to stoke your curiosity but also because I value the gift of your lived experience.