"The Heartbeat: This is how you figure out who you really are."

Recently, my therapist said that I need to separate my public and my private life – for the time being — because of something big that’s currently happening that I need to process fully before I’m ready to share.

I’ve told a few friends about it. My partner knows about it.

In fact, last week, this Big Thing caused me to cry so hard (I’m not a crier at all) for two hours that by the time I got onto the video call with my therapist, a migraine started to appear.

“That’s acute stress,” she said.

I told her how now in my mid-40s, I’m finally coming to understand that you always get what you want — except most often, not in the way you expect.

I’ve always wanted to have a close relationship with my daughter because my relationship with my mother was not close. Turns out, that’s precisely what I’m being offered. One opportunity after another to choose right over easy, good in the long-term over satisfaction in the short-term.

The thing is…

What’s going on now? It’s likely going to go on for a long time, maybe even a lifetime.

How do you find solace when you know you’re facing a grueling challenge beyond your control?

Here’s how:

My therapist says that historically, I’ve been in denial or downplayed how difficult things are. My closest friend would agree. It’s what “survivors of trauma” (a term I still have a hard time reckoning with, which probably tells you how deeply my childhood has imprinted on my mind and my heart) do.

When I finally and only recently faced the grief of understanding I have lost my daughter half the time of her young existence — and a new grappling of grief based on the latest events — I was greeted with an interesting response by people close to me.

“You are so calm about what’s happening right now. You are showing up with such grace”

This time, it isn’t about me being in denial.

This time, it’s a demonstration of growth. Of how hard I have worked on my inner and outer worlds to create the life I have.

That’s when my lead writer recommended I listen to a podcast episode of “We Can Do Hard Things” featuring Glennon Doyle and Oprah Winfrey, which turned out to be a divinely guided message my soul needed to remember.

To overcome difficult circumstances in your life, especially those caused by others who see you completely differently than you know yourself to be, here’s the question you need to ask:

What is my learning in this?

My learning in this is to finally surrender control. To understand that I will never be able to control anything other than me.

My learning in this is to stand up for myself. To know who I am regardless of what anyone else thinks or says or does.

My learning in this is to love. To love like only a mother could love.

In the podcast interview, Oprah was faced with a substantial challenge decades prior and it became her epiphany, because here is what the experience taught her:

“You’re going to get to figure out who you really are.”…I say that was a big test to come to that realization, but I came away from that with a knowingness about myself that I did not have before the trial. That’s what the trial taught me, “This is who you are.”

Now, I know who I am.

In fact, I know who I am more deeply every single day I am faced with this adversity.

I am also letting in love like never before because in letting healthy love in and expressing respectful love out, I find peace.

I highly recommend you listen to the episode, too.

And, if you don’t have time, then please read the email below that Glennon sent to Oprah when she learned that Oprah’s mother had passed.

Oprah didn’t have a great relationship with her mother, but the email Glennon sent — and every sentiment within it — is resonant with how I am able to keep on keepin’ on right now, head held high, heart held open.

May you learn who you are.

May you be free in your heart and in your life.

May you know this kind of deep, deep love.

Love, Judy

An email from Glennon Doyle to Oprah Winfrey.

Written on 11-26-18

“Hello my friend, my sister, my example,

I’m sitting on a balcony on Cayman Island and right at this moment writing an essay about the word ‘mother,’ what that word really means, how it’s less to me a fixed identity we can be or not be and more an energy we can offer or not offer.

The essay is about how some of us who can check the box mother never really learn how to offer mothering love and how others of us who don’t check the box, harness it and offer it widely and wildly.

The essay is about how much better off the world would be if we gathered up mothering love and used it like a floodlight instead of a pointed laser aimed only at the few we’ve been assigned.

As I’m writing this essay on the balcony, my sister just sent me a text that says, ‘G, Oprah’s mother died. She was 83. I wanted you to know.’ I just got that text a minute ago. I would never presume to guess what your relationship was like, how complex it was and is to be your mother’s daughter, what your feelings are this week, what your feelings have been or will be.

I just wanted to say that you are my example of how to gather up mothering love and use it as a floodlight to illuminate and warm the world.

You are my and the world’s best example of grace, which means that we can somehow give what we’ve never even received.

I don’t know much, but from everything you bravely say and kindly don’t say, I’ve gathered that you didn’t get the mothering love you deserved and needed as a little girl and a grown girl.

To me, that is what makes you a miracle.

It is a miracle that somehow you took the broken pieces that she put in your hands, all of them, and you spun them into gold and opened your hands wide and offered that gold back to the world. Which is not just a gift to the world, it is a gift directly back to your mother, because you worked with what she gave you, ensured that her legacy through you is gold.

With your help, your mother’s legacy is gold. What a gift. If there is a Heaven, she can see that now. She can see that her miraculous daughter somehow, somehow turned her offerings to gold. God, bet she’s amazed and grateful.

Well done, good faithful, miraculous, badass servant.

In your corner forever.”

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