How did I get here? Magic carpets and gut wisdom

I had dreamed about being a therapist and coach for so long, yet somehow, I hadn’t dared to make it happen. Until this time last year, I was knee-deep in my legal career working with refugees and other vulnerable people with insecure immigration status. I had not yet decided to leave. I mean, my body had, but I had not. 

The first lockdown in 2020 held an element of repose for me as it did for so many others. The courts were closed, there were no hearings to prepare for, no written arguments to write, I had no deadlines. I will say that again; I had no deadlines! I began to feel the shift in my nervous system, slowly at first: I was feeling more present, less fragmented. I already understood the consequences of adrenal fatigue, and I knew that I lived off my adrenaline sometimes. But, this felt different, not just the feeling of rest or a physiological rebalance. I could feel my body being restored.  

I have a heritable connective tissue disorder, which means that collagen – the most abundant protein in our bodies doesn’t work as it should. This causes a host of symptoms, including chronic pain and fatigue. When the symptoms flare, the way that they make me feel is as though they are shouting at me, vibrating through me, a cacophony of distress. I find it helpful to use metaphors to explain the overwhelming sense of ‘noise’ in my body, as the noise can be loud or quiet. When life stopped and was less stressful during the first lockdown, the noise died down, and my symptoms became much quieter, more often. 

To understand more about my health, why my body was ‘quieter’ during this time, I began researching the effects of adrenaline and stress on collagen, and there in the research, I found it! The lawyer in me now had the evidence I needed to support my seemingly, incredibly rash actions: when cortisol is released in the body, collagen is degraded. This means that my body is twice impacted by stress. First, in my nervous system and all that means for us as humans. Then again, due to the inherent weakness in my collagen. No wonder I felt chronically shit. 

If getting my diagnosis was being given a missing key, then understanding this and implementing it in my life would be turning it. How could I knowingly re-lock that door? 

I believe that we don’t know what we don’t know. When we do know, we can try to do better. Locking the door on my inner wisdom and my healing would have had untold ramifications in my life. The courts were opened, decisions starting to come in that needed challenging, stress levels were about to peak. I had to decide. I really sat with it. I pictured, and I felt in my body, how my life would be if I didn’t leave now. If I didn’t use my agency to support my intuition. Even with all the adjustments my firm offered me to help me stay, that life felt bleak, like heading into a tunnel of no return, heading into depression. Perhaps we only have a window of time where our bodies can speak to us, I thought. My body had been trying to tell me for long enough, this window was going to close. I chose to leap. There is so much more to say about how society is set up. For example, how the fear of scarcity and poverty is woven into our lives. For now, I will simply acknowledge, with gratitude, the privilege that I did have to make these choices, as scary as they were. 

The moral of this story is not to encourage anyone to quit their job or profess medical advice. No, definitely not. It’s just the tale of how I got here. Not, letting the days go by, but listening, feeling, and paying attention as best as I could to what my next right steps were. To continue with my leap of faith and trust my magic carpet (the wisdom in my gut) was taking me somewhere wonderful. 

I still feel like I am in mid-flight. Maybe, that is just part of the excitement of being alive.