The Shallow & Deep End

Asking for a sign and finding it in the sacred absurd.

In my work as a therapist and in all the coaching I’ve done over the years, there is a common theme or message: pick a niche! While I understand this and have even been grateful for this advice, as it brought me into the realm of sexual health, the truth of it is that this way doesn’t fit my soul.

This morning I was writing a prayer, which started, “Mother God, just writing your name, a swirl in my chest and tears rising, prickling my eyes. You are with me in my fear and worry. Help me not furl inward in the opposite direction of light and openness.”

This week, I’ve noticed riding the roller coater of my open and closed heart. I just returned from an amazing time in one of my life homes, Seattle, where there is so much love for the people and the place that have shaped me in profound ways. My husband Ben’s book launched last week and it’s been such a fun time of celebrations and events. Being alongside this journey and the themes of leaving and returning this week, have awakened so many sleeping giants of questions, like what is mine to do? am I doing that? what am I creating and what is yet to be created? I clench in the fears that can arise about money and wondering am I/are we on the “right” path? And then the releasing when I am brought back to the deep steady stream within that reminds me I have always chosen a path whose mile markers are not just of this world.

I often say to my clients there is no one right path and I believe that, yet I catch myself flailing for A path, THE path (hello Christian upbringing!).

But today, as my heart was opening, I wrote: “bring an interruption, a kind awakening, that I can’t not see”. And remembered Kesha was in my dream.

So naturally, I went to Spotify. Maybe there would be a message in a song. I played the first song Tik Tok that was under the popular section. The first line is “wake up in the morning feel’n like P.Diddy”. And like a gift I didn’t even know I needed, I was dying laughing, crying laughing. Looking for a sign, a meaningful interruption to tell me about life, and I got feel’n like P.Diddy…

I saw a post earlier about how Adam Sandler buys Jennifer Aniston flowers every Mothers Day because of pregnancy difficulties she experienced over the years. And I thought how much I love that—here’s a guy who one second can be doing a comedy bit about sex in space and the next go into a heartfelt tear jerker tribute to his friend Chris Farley, who brings attention to the hilarious absurd and also doesn’t forget pain.

I was having a somewhat serious conversation with someone, when they brought up how one of their favorite jobs was working at a retail store in high school. They loved the frivolity, the shallow conversations with people about jeans and style…

So today, I am sitting with the part of my soul that can’t escape the shallow and can’t escape the deep. The part of me that can’t be defined solely by one or by the other. While I may want things to fit in one nice neat category or niche, the truth is I am, and we are, more like pools that hold the shallow end and the deep end at once. I am looking for a sign and I get Kesha. I’m in deep conversation and I am drawn to the delight of clothing, my heart is moved and inspired by the sacrilegious saintliness of comedian that seems to to defy any one category.

Perhaps I got the the kind awakening I now can’t not see.