crème brûlée
I don’t know that I knew true love before you. Words like “kindred spirit,” “soulmate,” and “twin flame” are so mainstream nowadays that they almost feel empty in comparison to what I feel for you. Contradictally, you are my soulmate. You are the most profound teacher, friend, lover, healer, visionary, mother, father, and child. Every day you are on my mind, consciously and subconsciously. You always reveal new dimensions of humanity and lead me into a deeper experience of my heart. I love you.
The way I understand “soulmate” is it reflects the infinite-dimensional relationship container we share with the omnipresent, omnipotent, and omniscient force that is the fabric of everything. It’s a highly creative, undefinable, and mysterious entity. I don’t think you need to believe in it in the same way that I do (or at all) to derive value from this essay. I only believe in two things: 1) everything is Nature, and 2) everything in Nature is synchronous. How you describe “Nature” or the fabric of life is up to you. No one can say what happens between death and life; I wouldn’t trust anyone who says they know. This liminal space is the birthplace of our interpretations of The Unknown. All I know is what I believe holds space for everyone’s comprehension. None of our human observations of The Unknown are “right” or “wrong” because they all create one another. One wouldn’t exist without its sacred opposite. That’s why I think it is silly to argue about things like this.
My favorite question is, “What do you think happens between death and life?” Often, I find that how people answer reveals what they need to heal, how they can grow, and thus, what they came here to offer. How we comprehend The Unknown is like the chicken and the egg conundrum. What comes first? Does our relationship with The Unknown inform our relationships? Do our most influential relationships inform our relationship with The Unknown? It could be neither or both. I believe our relationship with The Unknown reflects our relationship with the most influential person in our lives and vice versa. That significant person reflects what we have to heal, where we can grow, and what we have to offer. Subsequently, our relationship with that important person is reflected everywhere else. Those who reflect our relationship with The Unknown and continuously guide us are our soulmates. I refer to that most significant person as the “original soulmate.”
My original soulmate is my mother (1). I think there is something special that we begin our journey on earth in her (2) bodies. As someone who can currently feel a soul floating in my aura, I imagine a time I was hovering in hers. What gifts did I have to bring her? How would I guide her? Why did I choose her? How would she become my most meaningful guide? The Mother has been a powerful archetype and metaphor for understanding The Unknown. Thus, I refer to The Unknown as Mother Earth/The Great Mother/The Cosmic Mother. (There are infinite, equally powerful valid synonyms for this undefinable energy. It holds boundless space for creativity. One of the reasons I like riffing off of The Mother is because we all have one in some form. We all started our lives there, within her; it’s grounding and universal. (A lot of this language can be ornate and inaccessible, which doesn’t help anyone connect.))
I didn’t always know how meaningful my relationship with my mother was. I only suspected I might want to start questioning things when I started having recurring dreams about her. Every full moon, I would dream the same dream. The setting and additional characters in the dream would change, but the feeling was consistent: I was always angry at my mom. It was such a powerful, visceral feeling that I could feel it in my body even after waking up. I even found out that I was grinding my teeth at night intensely during those dreams. I couldn’t explain the anger. On the surface, everything was fine enough. I didn’t think there was anything about our relationship to warrant such a potent and physical response.
I can’t imagine what it was like for my mom to raise two children in a new town that couldn’t be further from how she grew up. My mom was born in Jamaica and moved to Toronto when she was young. I don’t think she had experienced the disproportionate homogeneity of my hometown beforehand. My parents agreed to move there because it is a nice, safe place with a phenomenal education system. My parents may not be together now, but education is one value they have always shared. When my mom reminisces about my grandmother, she always emphasizes how much my grandmother valued education. Education was power and a privilege people like us didn’t always have. My parents are both black but value education for slightly different reasons. My dad is American through and through. He deeply values the privilege of education because he appreciates that there was a time when that was unavailable and illegal. Education quickly became one of the ways for him to even the playing field and create opportunities for generational success. I admire that he respects our family’s history and continues to find ways to move forward. Jamaica is an exceedingly patriarchal society (in a different way than America). My mom did not want to give birth to eight kids with no life or viable future. If she had stayed, one of the best-case scenarios would have been entering the hospitality industry. That wasn’t enough for my grandmother or her. Education was freedom from that cycle. My grandmother did everything she could to ensure my mom and the other young girls she “adopted” had an excellent education. My parents see education as a means for power, freedom, and success. Those are vast oversimplifications, but you get the picture.
Despite the benefits of the distinctive educational system, it must have been hard for my mom to adjust to living there. Things got better when she made some close, genuine friends who weren’t like the other typical women she would run into. It wasn’t uncommon for the mothers who chose to stay at home to look down upon mothers that needed or decided to work. After all, if their husbands made enough money for the family, why work? I don’t think there is a right or a wrong choice; however, we must respect one another’s choices. My mom’s friends are incredibly hard-working, independent, and inspiring. They all value having something for themselves that they created and continue to add value to the world. More importantly, they have always been nonjudgemental and supportive throughout all of the phases of my mom’s time there. Still, her open-minded friends were not the majority. How do you survive in a town like that? You blend in.
I don’t know the details of my mother’s early days in my hometown, but my mom and I share something in common: we care about how people perceive us. Who doesn’t? Presently and collectively, we have come a long way in embracing diversity and individuality. There is still room for growth, but I can only imagine what it was like in the nineties. Blending in doesn’t matter as much when you’re in elementary school. Kids are cruel at any age, but they don’t directly determine your future. Around the time I was maturing into a young woman was when adjustments needed to be made.
I remember when my mom took me to straighten my hair for the first time; it was so painful I cried. The pain seemed worth it because I finally had straight hair like my mom and counterparts. I was smiling beside my sister in my mom’s photo of us at the apple orchard. I wasn’t aware that straightening my hair was only the beginning of blending in. Much more work was needed, and my mom was there to ensure it was done correctly. My mom would constantly criticize me for how I presented myself. It wasn’t personal; she did it to my sister, too. She would comment on my hair, clothes, and lack of makeup. I am a pretty laid-back person. I like to feel good about myself but prefer to leave the house without a stitch of makeup and with minimal effort. I didn’t want to put more than fifteen minutes into my hair every morning. My mom gave up on the whole makeup thing because I advantageously inherited her nice skin and wasn’t into it. Besides, many people have occasional bouts of “bad skin”; that was more permissible. What was more important to her were my hair and my clothes. The whole black hair journey is such a mystical experience. It takes either time, money, or both to make it look “acceptable.” I was willing to spend the money to straighten my hair every couple of months but couldn’t get myself to invest the time. I didn’t want to wait for leave-in conditioners to do their job, put in curlers, or sit under hair dryers which would take hours of my time. I did not want to venture to the salon to pay someone for these services. I would wash and blow dry my hair every week (bad idea) to keep it looking “acceptable.” It wasn’t enough. “Why don’t you add some curl to it? It would look so much nicer.” I could deal with the minor criticisms here and there because I had grown numb to them. I knew they weren’t personal, so I tried to shrug it off. However, those minor criticisms would sometimes escalate into huge fights where I would think to myself, “Didn’t this start as a comment about my hair?” The small comments about my hair were easier to ignore; these arguments were another animal. “Why don’t you add some curl to your hair?” morphed into “You’re so lazy and lack initiative.” or “You’ve never had to work hard for anything in your life. You’re not going to accomplish anything if you keep this up.” Sometimes it would be, “You’re so selfish and self-centered. Why don’t you spend all of the extra time you have doing something for someone besides yourself? Because you don’t care.” or “I am disgusted by you. You’re delusional, fake, and disappointing. I can see right through you and whatever you present to everyone else; I know who you are at the core. I could say much more, but that would be too cruel.” It was always something along these lines. As a child, it isn’t easy not to take these words personally, especially from someone you expect to love you unconditionally.
I had that dream for years. Every full moon, like clockwork, it recurred. At some point, the feeling transformed from this intense, raw anger to an immense sadness. Every dream ended with me sobbing uncontrollably. I could always feel the intensity when I woke up. I have heard that anger is a secondary emotion, i.e., sadness is at the root of anger. Those dreams were always eerie. I increasingly began understanding why I harbored so much resentment toward my mother. We didn’t have those extensive arguments all the time, but the tiny criticisms had pilled up. Because I refused to acknowledge how much those comments hurt, they overflowed and spilled into my dream space.
My mother’s love wasn’t conditional, but that is how it felt. If I could find a way to look presentable, e.g., find a way to make my hair look good, wear nicer clothes, etc., then she wouldn’t yell at me, and subsequently, I wouldn’t feel like she hated me. I subconsciously found ways to avoid those arguments. I did everything I could to avoid these criticisms. I took it too far when I assumed looking “presentable” meant being thin. I wanted, no… needed to be perfect. I had received enough criticism from my mom; I didn’t need it from strangers. My mom had her way of getting by; this was mine.
When I was younger, I didn’t understand that it was never about my hair or clothes; it was about survival. For example, white girls can wear messy buns, and people think it’s cute. If my hair were messy, people would think I was simply a mess that didn’t care about her outward appearance. I was thrilled when I went to college because it meant I would wear whatever I wanted without my mom having something to say about it. I was in a space where my survival tactics were seemingly not needed (even though some of them subconsciously followed me there). When I wore those same too-short shorts or tops sans bra at home, my mom had something to say about it. I liked my shorts and braless look (#freethenipple was popular back then). She said I looked like a streetwalker. (I looked like an average college student in 2016.) That was another thing I learned: white people can openly talk about sex and express their natural sexuality wherever or whenever they want. If I did it, people would judge me, I would never get a job, and my life would be over. This went for all expressions of sexuality, no matter how subtle they were, including my clothing choices. Furthermore, I needed to watch what I wrote in an age where it is more normal to be open in online spaces (such as this one). I love writing and storytelling more than anything else. I began journaling at five and blogging when I was in middle school. I have always been a writer. I’m not claiming that my journal entries always made sense (I’m pretty sure some letters are backward in my first diary) or that anyone would want to read whatever nonsense I wrote in middle school. I shared my first “real” writing with my mom and was so proud of myself for finally publishing it. She said it was stupid and that I needed a reality check.
I had a dream once featuring my mom having a full-on meltdown. She was shouting about how she didn’t feel loved when she was younger. No one listened to her and her emotions, leaving her feeling unseen and unheard. I yelled back at her, saying that my sister and I presumably had issues because her unhealed traumas were passed down to us like venom. My whole family was there, yelling and screaming at one another. It was so chaotic.
At one point, my mom ran away. Unexpectedly, she transformed into a baby. I picked her up and held her. My sister offered to hold her, but I insisted I do it.
All in all, my mom just wanted to protect me. People, especially people on the internet, aren’t kind. We like to think we know people on the internet because we have become accustomed to liberally sharing so much, but we don’t know one another. She didn’t want all of these people that don’t even know me to make assumptions about me. After all, the world is often crueler and more presumptuous regarding black women. My mom protected her vulnerability. A friend once compared her to crème brûlée: a shiny and polished thin layer of sugar protects a much softer, sweet substance underneath. That’s how we are. I have always wanted people to see the thin layer of curated perfection. I rarely reveal the smooth, sweet layer underneath.
What I initially seemed to take away from my mom (whether she intended to convey this) was that it was essential to do everything in your power to control how people perceive you. I wanted to avoid judgment and criticism at every cost. Does this work? Yes and no. Sure, you can curate the dimensions of self you allow people to see. How they perceive you is a combination of conscious and subconscious biases that other people themselves don’t even have control over. Nevertheless, I tried. I tried with my hair. I tried with my clothes. I tried with my body. I tried with what I revealed to certain people at certain times. I tried with what I kept hidden. It half worked in that I always felt close to belonging, but “close” was never enough.
Thank you for continually guiding me toward the most profound vision I hold within my heart.
I spent my sophomore summer in Northern California for an internship. I was lucky to stay with some family friends while learning the area. It was my first time there, and I had the best time exploring the mountains, forests, hills, beaches, etc. A couple of hours before dinner, I decided to go to a beach close to the house to enjoy the sunset. I took a book I had purchased earlier from a small, independent bookstore and began reading. As I thumbed through the pages, I stumbled across a passage that genuinely changed how I saw people from that point forward. Essentially, the passage communicated that whenever we are triggered by another person, e.g., upset, angered, jealous, saddened, etc., it is never about them. That person is always our teacher; they are there to reflect how we are meant to heal and grow. If you refuse to learn from them and continue to blame anyone outside of yourself, you will only be met with more people who reflect the same lesson. I have said something along these lines several times throughout each essay (my apologies for the repetition). It is woven into my consciousness because I have made it a practice to focus on myself. Focusing on ourselves and how we carry ourselves in relationships doesn’t have to be egocentric in a “negative” way. Instead, concentrating on ourselves allows us to see where and how to grow to become more loving, gracious, compassionate, patient, and accepting. If we are open to the invitation, other people are our guides to that place. Those people are our soulmates.
In the first dream, my mom was cooking a pan full of bacon. I could see how much grease she put in the pan and got the impression that she would hurt herself. Before I could decide whether to say something, the oil got all over her and burned her. She cried out loud in a way that was painful to hear. I felt sadness, perhaps guilt, a sense of protectiveness, and love when I saw and heard my mother in pain. I knew I should have warned her to be careful, but I didn’t speak up for some reason. I cried out to her. I rushed to her, wondering if she was okay. She insisted she was fine and continued cooking.
In the second dream, I felt uncontrollable sadness that overwhelmed my entire face. I saw my mother for who she was. I saw a resounding piece of myself in her. I could feel it in my heart. The music was astounding and from another realm; it perfectly matched the scenes running in parallel. I wanted to hug her and tell her I finally understood. I felt a deep sense of understanding and perhaps forgiveness.
I felt at peace.
Reflecting on our relationship, I find similarities between my mom and me. Last year my mom and I visited my sister in Canada. It is always interesting to return to Canada because even though I haven’t lived there, it is where my mom grew up and where most of my maternal family lives. My mom, sister and I have few opportunities to spend extended periods together. My mom and I live close to one another in the States, but my sister wanted to experience living abroad for university and grad school. (I always thought it was interesting that she moved to a place with so much history for my mom.) Every time I am with them, I notice things about myself and them that I have never seen before. It is like looking into a three-way mirror. Being with my sister will highlight specific attributes from our parents versus things that are more personal to me. If we share them, they come from somewhere, right?
One day when we were returning from a place across the water that held so many childhood memories for my mom, we were all particularly exhausted. My mom and I had begun traveling early; it was oppressively hot out, and we were hungry... it was great to be with everyone, but the smallest thing could have set anyone off. My sister had lived independently for over a year and developed her routine. You know how it is when your parents visit your apartment; they begin inserting themselves to ensure you are okay. My mom was trying to help my sister with something regarding her space, and my sister was not having it. (The washing machine was broken. Could my sister have handled it on her own? Probably and she might have. My mom just wanted to make sure it was handled correctly.) They got into a huge argument that rippled throughout the rest of our time together. My sister was frustrated with my mom for the way she was trying to handle everything (better words could have been chosen). My mom was upset with my sister for her response when trying to help (better words could have been chosen). I wasn’t surprised. There was usually one disagreement every time we visited, at minimum. My mom couldn’t help but try to make things better for my sister, and my sister was seemingly unappreciative. I don’t know what it is about that moment in the sun’s heat, but I just knew that this whole time, even though I thought my mom and I were so different, we were exactly the same.
I can’t quite explain exactly how I came to this conclusion at that exact moment. I felt this incredible rush of knowing; everything seemed to connect. Before this trip, I spent over a year living with just my mom (which is a totally different dynamic than living with her and my sister). It had never been just the two of us. My mom was one of the first to show me everything is Nature. She challenged me to wonder what would happen if I put the love I know within everyone within my center focus. What love was beneath her words? It wasn’t easy at first, but I practiced it every day. I practiced it when things were calm and less calm (there were plenty of opportunities). I was committed to change because I didn’t want our relationship to suffer indefinitely. Seeing how her actions came from a place of love helped me understand her at that moment. I began to see my mother for her empathy, compassion, and patience. (This was during COVID, so I had plenty of time to reflect.) It could be that the more I accessed my empathy and sensitivity, the more I could see it within her. Without spending all that time with just her, I don’t think I would have seen her side. Mind you, I understood why my sister reacted the way she did. My mom’s words, tone, and overall delivery on the surface did not imply that she was trying to be helpful. Years ago, I reacted like my sister did when I didn’t know my mom either. When we were all there under the stifling heat of the sun, I got it. I would have been so frustrated if I was trying to do something nice for someone, and they showed me anything but gratitude. How interesting is it to ponder that we look at one another and think we are so different, and the more we get to know ourselves, we realize we are all the same?
That’s always how it works, isn’t it? The people that frustrate us the most are the ones we have the most in common. That is because they are our most powerful mirrors, our soulmates. Our soulmates are meant to challenge us and help us grow. My mom, sister and I have different personalities, of course. Still, the core parts of us are more similar than not. We all love making things easier and nicer for the people we care about; we also get frustrated when they don’t listen to us. Everything has a light and a shadow. The Shadow allowed me to find what was beautiful about my mom and myself. My mother has been a mirror of my most significant power this whole time. How we perceive the opportunities for love and growth is all around us. I see everything as a portal for love and growth. Others may see everyone as an opportunity to heal their shadows (I am also a fan of this one) and transform their darkness into something that will help humanity. Some see life as an opportunity to return to oneness, echoing unity consciousness rhetoric. It doesn’t matter which lens you choose. Learning to see, love, and appreciate my mother was a lesson in seeing, loving, and appreciating myself. I am in awe of how we are all connected.
In a dream, my mom and I were arguing in what seemed like a parking garage by my old neighbor’s house. She was yelling all of the usual obscenities at me with some unrealistic comments sprinkled in. At one point, I said, “Why would you say those things to me? Why? I am your daughter. I would think from these things that you do not love or respect me. Or do you not love and respect yourself?” I wasn’t angry, but I was firm. The dream didn’t feel emotionally overwhelming. It was the first time I ever confronted my mother in a dream. So I moved from the familiar feeling of frustration that trademarked my other dreams to something more open.
My mom may rebuke me, but it isn’t because she doesn’t love me. She says all of these things because she does care about me. She loves me so much more than I could envision. How she conveys that love may seem questionable at times, but she does protect everyone she cares about. It took me a long time to see past her apparent brutal words. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the tools or compassion to understand their history and intention. However, that doesn’t take away from how much her words hurt.
My mom and I revisited my sister in Canada about a year later. She wanted to be around family for her sixtieth birthday, and I hadn’t seen my sister in a couple of months. After the fiasco that was the previous visit, my sister asked us never to surprise her again. The washing machine incident from a year prior was only the beginning. My mom is immaculate; my sister could be tidier. Her apartment is hers, so if she wants to clean it, she will; if not, that’s her choice, too. However, my mom always has something to say regarding the cleanliness of a space. My sister wanted to know in advance if we were coming so she would have time to clean up and avoid the criticisms. We surprised her; thus, she didn’t have time to clean and could sense what would come next. My sister preemptively told my mom that if she were to go inside, she wasn’t allowed to say anything concerning the state of her apartment. She didn’t say this in the warmest tone. Additionally, since her statement was more of a reaction to what happened a year ago, it presumably came out of nowhere. My mom seemed genuinely confused as to why she was being spoken to that way after our nine-hour drive for her birthday weekend. When we were alone in the parking garage, she was upset. She didn’t know what she did to warrant such a venomous response. No one deserves to be spoken to with anything less than the utmost respect, especially if it is a loved one. I felt terrible because it was the first time I saw that my mom had no idea why my sister seemed to harbor some underlying resentment toward her. From her perspective, she was only ever trying to help, and I saw that. The miscommunication was hurting their relationship in the same way it damaged ours.
Seeing my mom and sister interact during both stints in Canada cemented my beliefs regarding how vital delivery is. Is it constructive if you want to support someone but can’t communicate effectively? My sister is also incredibly empathetic, kind, and sensitive. She has taught me how much delivery matters. My mom has a habit of saying something that most people would consider rude and saying, “Well, it’s just the truth. You’re the one that can’t handle hearing it.” When I suggest to my mom that she is a bit softer with her words when she speaks to my sister, she claims that she already is and she shouldn’t have to tiptoe around her. To some extent, I agree. I don’t think we should sugarcoat everything, but conscious communication is essential. There is a fine line between watching and curating what you say. I am more susceptible to the latter.
In truth, my mom, sister, and I are all sensitive and don’t admit it very often when someone does something that hurts us. That is why sometimes the way my mom says things is even more perplexing to me. I could see how hurt she was in the parking garage by my sister’s words, and all I could think was, “Where do you think she got this from?”. We are sensitive in different ways, but anyone can tap into times when they were hurt to empathize with someone else. This goes for my sister as well. I am not a confrontational person. (That’s one of the reasons this dream was so surprising to me.) My sister, however, has less of an issue confronting my mother. Her confrontation is more reactionary and tends to provoke the situation rather than resolve it. (Her delivery could use some work, too.) My gut reaction is to keep my responses to myself and bottle them up for later. I wouldn’t say it is healthier; I am always working on it. I wanted to shake them both so that they realized they were essentially the same person, so the arguing wasn’t necessary. During our first visit to Canada, my sister told me how upset she was (regarding the argument over the washing machine) when we went to brunch later that morning. My mom expressed how hurt she was when we were in Jamaica, days after everything happened. I don’t know that either one of them communicated that clearly to one another.
This dream reflected a lot about me concerning external and internal confrontation. Examining the interpersonal dynamics between family members is incredibly helpful. You also don’t want to be that person in their twenties running around blaming their parents for everything. Our parents, like us, do their best with the tools they are given. I don’t know that we are meant to try and change our parents to conform to the ideal parent-child relationship we create in our heads. My mom is the way she is. My sister’s preemptive reaction was her erroneous attempt to communicate a boundary. Boundaries are important. I wouldn’t advise anyone to let people talk to them in a less-than-kind manner. Still, you can’t control people. However, it is always within your power to heal your relationship to your relationship with that person. What hurt the most for years was feeling so unseen by my mother. She didn’t see how much her criticism hurt, and I wanted her to know. Every time I tried to make her understand, I felt more heartbreak. Grasping her perspective helped me release that need; how could she ever see my pain if she didn’t see her actions through my lens? Changing my relationship to our relationship via empathy and compassion helped me to let it go.
Furthermore, the criticism may have started with my mother, but I internalized it and took it to another level. How I speak to myself is horrific; I would never talk to anyone this way. Blaming my mom for the origins of my inner critic doesn’t create any change. Taking responsibility, however, puts the power back in my hands and allows me to create something new. Confronting myself and initiating an internal dialogue when I say these things to myself could be more beneficial than just staying silent.
I am sorry for ever blaming you for any part of our relationship. I now know that everything you have ever done is because you love me unconditionally.
Everything is Nature, and Nature is synchronous.
I began that practice with my mother and let it expand to everyone else. I don’t believe anything is an accident. Every single person in your life plays a critical role in your development, as do you in theirs. It’s easier to see how the people closest to us are guiding us versus someone we pass on the street, but I am sure they have something to offer too. There are no coincidences.
My mom taught me to “get curious” about everything. What is this person doing here? Why are they here at this time? What are we doing together in this setting? What about the people around them? What do they all have to add to the conversation? What am I doing in their life? Getting curious allows me to connect all the dots and see the world in its auspicious beauty.
Our third-dimensional practices hold a certain consciousness. Namely, they are teaching us something on both physical and nonphysical levels. One of my favorite practices has been analyzing my dreams. Tracking my dreams has taught me about the moon cycle, storytelling, nonlinear stories, waves of interpretation, timing, patterns, and how to view life through an objective/symbolic/archetypal lens. When looking at dreams, I pay attention to the third-dimensional story (no matter how discombobulated that may seem) and the emotional data underneath. Ultimately, dreams have taught me how to be my healer via perceiving synchronicity and beauty in everything. Dream analysis has required me to step back and view the seemingly disjointed aspects of my life from a wider lens. How I interact with my dreams influences how I interpret circumstances, people, etc., in my waking life. The aura allows me to look at the multidimensional relationship story underneath the third-dimensional story. Synchronicity and beauty are my antidotes to feeling the need to control everything around me. Viewing people and experiences objectively as lessons, gifts, and portals for love and beauty has radically shifted my perspective. With time and patience, I can quickly see how everything is connected. Everything happens the way it is meant to.
Since this perspective is derived from my dream analysis practice, I call it “dream consciousness.” Dream consciousness goes hand in hand with unity consciousness. Unity consciousness is the understanding that when we find unity and harmony within ourselves, i.e., accept every dimension of our quantum being, we can find peace within the collective. Namely, when we accept every part of ourselves, we can accept all parts of everyone within our universal family. When we reject aspects of ourselves, we reject aspects of the collective. We can genuinely accept all other beings when we meet all layers of The Self with Unconditional Love. Perception of synchronicity and beauty is the pathway to unity and acceptance on all levels.
Here’s a different type of example: I work at a private equity firm (3). Private equity itself is traditionally a white and male-dominated industry. This wasn’t a problem for me as I grew up in a small, white, affluent town. What stood out to me about this particular firm after I started working there was that most people belong to a specific church (4). (When I say majority, it’s around eighty percent if I had to guesstimate (let me emphasize that that is not an accurate statistic).) No, it’s not an exceedingly widespread religion like Protestantism or Catholicism (which may be more believable). Every owner and employee knows that this religion dominates the company. I don’t have much in common with everyone since I am not white, a man, and don’t belong to that church. Yet, everyone there is so nice and supportive, making it an incredible workplace— I have no complaints.
I am used to being a minority race-wise. I am used to being a minority gender-wise. I have never been a minority in a religious capacity. (I’m not religious anyway.) It’s new, and it’s not. Sure, there are times when I wish I could easily bond with my peers in the way they all bond with one another. I don’t, and I’m not meant to. When I think about my deepest wound, “belonging,” I don’t think I am meant to fit in anywhere. There is nothing wrong with feeling like you don’t belong somewhere. What was “wrong” was my attitude towards it; I was always fighting against it. My workplace, including my co-workers and the web of interpersonal dynamics, continues to reveal its medicine, and I still have much to learn from it. Seriously, what are the odds of me winding up at such a specific company? What are the odds of someone who has been a minority in such an obvious way working in a place where I would be the minority again in such an unexpected way? And it continues to run deeper, and I name the dimensions of my story. Getting curious has taken me out of my head and made me more observant and open to what opportunities for learning and healing are present in all situations. So many core parts of my life, including relationships, places, situations, etc., reflect that core wound. Anything and everything can reflect our core wounds, clues as to what we are here to offer. Soulmates are everywhere; soulmates reflect synchronicity.
There is synchronicity everywhere. I don’t think synchronicity is when things just so happen to work out in the way that you wish them to. Synchronicity is another way of finding love and beauty everywhere. Everything from where I grew up, how I grew up, my friends, their friends, my partners, their parents, their partners, my work, my place of work, my parents, their work, the butterfly I saw last week, my family, and back to my mother is synchronous. Synchronicity is what makes life meaningful and beautiful.
I love you endlessly.
(1) Disclaimer: Anything I write about anyone in my essays results from my subjective, human, and imperfect perspective. None of my essays aim to portray anyone negatively; that would be unfair, as this is my side of the story. I do not claim 100% accuracy of anything but my perspective, mainly because I have not had contact with some mentioned people in several years. We all grow and change.
(2) Not everyone with a womb necessarily uses she/her/hers pronouns. The Mother archetype is available to everyone of all gender identifies. If it weren’t universal, it wouldn’t be an archetype. My mother uses these pronouns, and since this story is about her, those are the pronouns I use throughout this essay.
(3) I am keeping the details vague on purpose.
(4) See the above footnote.
