The Best Gift
I Am My Best Gift
The last time I traveled alone, and not for work, I jumped out of bed and flew to Cancun to honor my marriage anniversary shared with my late husband and late grandparents. I figured I could spend it bawling (with bourbon) at home or next to an ocean, and them flight privileges my mom blessed me with weren’t going to use themselves. So I spent one day and one night crying in all the places where we had spent our Decembers since 2009. It had been the annual reset to reconnect with each other, shed the last year, and prep for next one.
Five years later, I am on my first solo trip since my twenties (nearly 2 decades ago), and it is only by the grace of therapy, nearly 2 years of COVID quarantine living, great colleagues, and a loving partner and family that I can indulge in such a luxurious gift. It took nearly four years of therapy to even consider a trip just for me without feeling shame for abandoning my parenting responsibilities, especially when I used to travel non-stop and was barely home enough to parent well. Therapy, plus a few sessions of (Black) CODA, let me know that the idea of needing to fix everything, or be available to fix everything, for everyone before attending to me is just that—an idea. Recently, with much coaching, I am thinking differently and starting to release myself from such an unreasonable assignment.
I also realized that part of my challenge with taking time alone was literally not knowing what to do with myself. When not working, parenting, or “on-call” (by my own assignment), I have been known to sit stuck in front of a television until I pass out. Reading and writing deeply are both intimate and quiet so I have been struggling with that part of myself for awhile. And being an extrovert, COVID hit hard, because connection, talk, touch and energy (dancing) are my lifeblood or so I thought. Turns out, I had structured my identity around attending to the needs of others or being seen as the person that could be called upon, no matter what, since I was young. What I called outgoing, I have since learned may be a form of dependency (addiction); needing to be needed and do for others constantly even when I didn’t have anything to give makes me a co-dependent. Part of this dependency is also the performance of not needing anything for myself from me or from others—strong Black woman bs. In 2021, I’m trying to let that shit go.
Having to sit still and not travel for these last months meant having time to actually unpack my bags and put them away. It also meant I had time to unpack the trauma stacked and stored in my body over decades—so I did. I had been a blur for so long, either on the way to or on the way back from wherever the hell, that the blurriness got normalized. That all stopped in 2020; being still and being present, with support, allowed forced me to go deep and surface childhood traumas and recent loss in ways that I had been running from/distracted from/avoiding for years. But this time around, I was prepared with a container to hold past harms and hurts in my consciousness without being knocked over by a wave of grief and shame. I began and sustained a process of releasing at a pace that I could manage, most of the time, but not all of the time.
There’s a lot of I’s here but the reality is I am being held in a loving relationship, with a great therapist, and deeply committed friends/crews that make me feel safe enough to do my work without drowning. It got messy, actually it’s still messy, but folks who struggle with similar issues have been holding intentional space for collectively processing and practicing ways to surface our needs/wants and to center ourselves without guilt. It has taken many years of intentional work to pull down my protective walls and reassess my coping mechanisms; to get out of my thinking head and into my feeling body (and feel my feelings); to breathe like I deserve to; to truthfully say “Yes” and more importantly “No” and mean it; and to finally be courageous enough to ask for what I need and receive it.
The gift: I am sitting alone with myself, in a cottage, on a beach, for a week of forced isolation. I requested time to be on leave/vacation/alone with myself and my colleagues and lover agreed to cover for me. While they have given me the gift of time and space, I now know that the best possible gift I have to give me in this moment is ME. I am my best gift!
