allow me to introduce myself.
December 2, 2020
This is the first day I’ve gotten out of bed before 8am – on my own accord – in quite some time. I never used to have any problems waking up; in the past, I could have considered myself a morning person. I would wake up at 4:30 AM, make myself a double-y chocolate milk for my sippy cup, and then I would watch PB & J Otter on PBS until it was time for preschool. My body was naturally on farmer’s time, just like my papa.
We both enjoyed the early hours of the day. It’s the time when the world sits in stillness. While I was too young to have obligations to attend to – like emails, phone calls, the news – I enjoyed having free time alone. Be myself, uninterrupted, unbothered. My dad is the same way. We would have our mornings alone, together.
I’ve always appreciated that about my father. We can sit in silence and be perfectly content. Sometimes, it seems like the more words I know, the less I understand about the world. The language that goes unspoken is all-encompassing; intuitive; understood by all.
This is quite ironic for me to say since I am a writer. I’ve never called myself a writer before. I have been journaling since I was a child, throughout my teenage years, and now into young adulthood. I string words together to form a complete thought, in a wild attempt to recognize some universal truth. This has always brought me home to myself. Whether it’s through writing, speaking, conversation, or movement, language is the universalism that holds me in my truth. It’s my way of conceptualizing the world.
. . .
Today is the first time I’ve gotten out of bed before 8am for myself and only myself. It’s been like this since I graduated college. I’ve woken up for reasons outside of myself; for example, waking up to go to work, or to study for my medical school entrance exam, or for appointments with other people. But when given the opportunity to start my day, with the only reason being to benefit myself, I wake up at 8:30, 9, 10 am.
Why does this even matter? Why is this important?
Because I have been living in fear of myself.
. . .
I recently quit my job as a cardiologist’s medical assistant. This was the last shiny sticker I needed on my resume to be a successful applicant for medical school. I started this role in the beginning of April 2020, right around when the coronavirus was just beginning to claw its way through the fabric of our lives. Needless to say it was a strange time to enter the medical field.
To be honest, I have never been particularly scared of the coronavirus. I have had fears emerge over its influence, in regards to my family & friends’ health, or my parents’ small businesses, or to the reactivity and hyper-polarity of our society and the fragility of freedoms all over the world. But the virus itself doesn’t scare me personally.
In some ways this helped me be good at my job because I wasn’t afraid. Cautious, certainly. But I was not in a state of fear every time I walked in the hospital or worked with my patients. I really enjoyed that aspect of my job, actually. Working with patients, having a real conversation, sharing a laugh, gently placing a hand on them as reminder of love – even if the original purpose was to take their blood pressure or perform an EKG – this brought me joy.
But there were many aspects of the job that were annoying. Taxing. Even, in all honesty, depressing. I could only spend about 5-10 minutes with each patient before I would get in trouble for taking too much time. I hated staring in front of a screen for 90% of my day, having only thirty minutes for a lunch break, being stuck indoors under fluorescent light for 8-9 hours a day. Every time I wrote medication script I knew was way too fucking expensive, or was not only for a preventable condition, but could also treated holistically, my blood boiled. Sometimes a patient would ask me if there was any way they didn’t have to take their medicine, or if they could try something more natural. I would bite my tongue and say, “Well, you can ask the doctor”. I knew far too well they would not receive the answers to the questions they were asking.
Between coworkers and patients, conversations were inundated with negativity & “jokes” about how unhealthy they were. How unhappy they were, how little sleep they got last night, how much they despised their jobs. Laughing “Oh, I’m fine,” but then being sent to Urgent Care in the middle of a shift because their blood pressure is 200/120.
For those of you not in the medical field, that’s called a hypertensive emergency. It happens when your physical disposition, your stress (or, biologically speaking, your cortisol) levels, your caffeine/stimulant consumption, plus a couple other factors, put so much strain on your blood vessels, and ultimately your heart, that you are at palpable risk for a heart attack or stroke.
Why are we, as a collective, so okay with overworking ourselves to the point where we no longer enjoy our lives? Or we work ourselves into a cycle of sickness, to the point where we CAN no longer enjoy it?
I really had a lot of compassion and empathy for these people in my life, so much so that I started taking on similar problems. A few months in to working, I’d notice my heart racing in the middle of a shift. A coworker would take my blood pressure and, while not an emergency, somewhat concerning for a healthy, active 23-year-old woman. I’d have a hard time catching a breath and no, not in a COVID-type way. Most notably, I was experiencing emotional exhaustion and anxiety to the point where I wouldn’t even want to spend time doing things I loved outside of work.
Seven months into my job I reached a breaking point. After an overwhelmingly stressful morning shift, I walked up to my manager and quit on the spot and left during my lunch break.
If anyone reading this knows me personally, you would know (I hope) that this was extremely out of character for me. I have never quit anything in my life; at least, not so abruptly. Like everyone else on the planet, I’ve stayed in relationships well past their expiration date and held on. I could still see the light, or the purpose, within my counterpart – whether it was a relationship with another or something deeper within myself.
I was proud of myself for quitting. (Still am, btw). I was shakin’ in my damn boots the entire day following, but I knew in my heart & my soul that I had made the right decision.
. . .
Now some of you might be thinking, well, wasn’t this all an effort to get accepted to medical school? What about that? What happens now?
Well, I quit that too.
Say whaaaaaaaaaaat?
Yes, it’s true. I have relinquished my dreams and aspirations of becoming a medical doctor. Completely and totally. It’s been about a two, maybe three, year process of coming to this realization, and now, I finally have the courage to act on it.
I always had reservations about going to medical school. I never really wanted to go into “medicine”-medicine. I’ve always been about health, wellness, and within the last few years, spirituality – which is where the name of this blog came from. Hello! Nice to meet you all.
My raison d’être is to facilitate healing from the inside out. Whether that’s through a change in diet, learning to fall in love with the body and movement, diving deep into personal development, or helping people understand themselves more fully through a number of integrated practices & methodologies.
For clarification, I say that I am facilitating the healing process because I am, in fact, not healing the individual myself. The only person that can heal you is yourself.
It’s a hard pill to swallow, so I will say it again.
The only person that can heal you is yourself.
I cannot heal anyone other than myself. However, I can provide different tools, ideas, and my energy to others. Through these resources I can help you see, and therefore heal, more of yourself. I can help you see the most beautiful, unique, awe-inspiring aspects of yourself that help you learn – or rather, remember – how to love yourself. I can also help you see your shadow, the deepest darkest parts of your soul that you don’t want to show to anyone, not even yourself. I can show you how making peace with ALL aspects of your self unlocks your ability to fall in love with life more fully.
Oneness, within the body, and throughout the planet. That is what I am here to create.
And so to circle back, I ultimately realized I did not want to be a medical doctor anymore. I love studying science, and I wanted to help people heal themselves. Yet for a number of years, I thought that the only way I could help people on a global scale was to put myself through a decade of studying, hundreds of thousands of dollars into debt, and spending so much time & energy perfecting a craft that I didn’t completely believe in, that ONE day, maybe, I could eventually end up doing what it was I truly wanted to do.
On October 15th, in the year 2020, I said Fuck. That.
. . .
Yesterday I recognized a thought-pattern that had been holding me back for the last few years, and honestly, probably the majority of my life. I didn’t have the language for it up until now.
I don’t view myself as a courageous person.
I struggled with depression and anxiety throughout my childhood. It still ebbs and flows throughout my young adult life. For those of you who have faced these issues yourself, you know this never really goes away. It just become easier to lift yourself up, like training a muscle.
As such, it felt so hard for me to do anything in life. It was hard to get out of bed in the mornings. To go to school. To get “out there” and make friends. To go to social events or extra-curriculars, even if I genuinely loved what I was doing. Why? Because I was so fucking afraid of failing… at anything!!!
And maybe that’s why it’s been hard to get myself out of bed for the last two years. I’ve been given the opportunity to write my own path, seek out my adventure, actualize my Personal Legend. Yet I have been so afraid of failure that I’ve paralyzed myself.
But here’s the thing…I AM courageous. It takes courage to get out of bed in the morning. It takes courage to quit your job. Or have a hard, honest conversation with someone. Or let go of an identity, a relationship, a limiting belief you have held for years… maybe your entire life. Or look yourself in the mirror and realize, not only do need to change to become a better person, but that change is absolutely imperative for your survival. And your joy.
This morning, I woke up at 7:30 am. I had some support from my lovely boyfriend, who I asked to give me a little extra encouragement to go out and make my dreams come true. And I did it.
This is one step forward. There is a long way to go, with twists and turns to be expected and unexpected… but it is a step. And I am proud of that. I am learning to cherish my failures just as much as my successes.
I am coming home to myself again.
All my love,
Sheridan