“I’m sorry you have to see me in this way”

Opposite from me was a woman that I thought powerful and successful. She was also a few weeks pregnant. Throughout our session, she had to throw up multiple times. She also had the flu, was sick and tired. Yet, she still showed up for this session, which already tells you a lot about strength and vulnerability I thought. At one point, she looked at me, half ashamed, half embarrassed and said: “I’m sorry you have to see me in this way…”. I understood what she was saying and how she was feeling. Yet, I looked at her and I answered back “Truthfully, this is my favorite way to meet with you and I’m grateful you’re showing up the way you are right now. When the guard is down, when the masks come off, that is where I feel I’m connecting to the real human. I think myself one of the most privileged people on the planet to have a chance to meet you in the very state you are in.” 

I didn’t say that to make her feel better, that’s not my job. I said that because I truly mean it. The stuff that people bring to my sessions is the stuff they don’t feel safe enough to bring anywhere else. Sometimes they think that what they are bringing me is their garbage, the worst parts of themselves, their fears, their despair, their depression, their sadness. They sometimes apologize for the state that they are in. What I do my best to help them see, that genuinely, they are not bringing me the worst. I think it’s quite the opposite. They are bringing me their most tender and most vulnerable parts of their selves. And that is the biggest gift I could ask any human to give me. I leave most of my sessions with so much gratitude and awe for how people dared to show up that sometimes I cry and sometimes I dance. 

What my clients don’t know is that inside I often feel just like them. That when I bring my darkness to my own coach or to friends that I trust, I’m also often ashamed and scared. Worried that I’m a burden. I wonder if many of us share that sentiment deep down as an unconscious belief we all ingested at some point, often early in our lives. What I’m most grateful is that at this point, the people closest to me reassure me and encourage me in the same way I was able to show up for the woman above. 

Most recently I left someone I love dearly a 14-minute long voice message. And it scared me. “Oh god, why do you have to unload your shit on her!” a voice inside of me raged and pleaded. “Just keep it to yourself!”. She replied back that every single minute was a gift to her. I was floored. What a literal breakthrough out of an old pattern, one that I had thought I’d left behind a long time ago. I feel tender, warm and open inside just thinking about that moment.

I can also smile to myself and acknowledge that these moments are what makes us human. When we take the leap when we bring our darkness and attempt one more time to let it see the light, despite it not having been welcomed in the past. And then, sometimes, magic happens and the light illuminates and welcomes back that which once was abandoned. That’s when we grow, when we expand our humanity back to its pureness and aliveness, the way it once was. It’s rarely new and often a re-membering of something that deep down, we always knew was there. I always trust shifts and insight born from this place.