My body dances without thought or instruction. As I twist and let myself be moved by my loving spirit, she speaks to me. She asks me to stop ignoring her, to allow myself to feel beautiful, to stop calling myself broken. I speak so often about self-love, but the things I tell myself aren’t loving: No man will be able to handle your pain, you’ll be alone forever. The beliefs are so limiting, and I finally begin to see that as she extends an invitation not to dance anything away, but to dance through what I feel. I cry full, earnest tears as I sway and embrace what I normally push down: rage, frustration, grief, and sadness. By the end, the dirty room is a holy place. I’m feeling love and compassion for myself. I’m feeling beautiful and worthy. Soaking wet and sobbing as I walk back down the empty hallway, I know I want to feel those things as much as possible.
When I get home to Nashville, the pain is worse than I knew it could be, but there’s the promise of true and deep love inside myself. I lay my weapons down. I decide I want to make peace with pain, and I begin a healing journey.
21 Journeying
“This is my best friend Ruthie Ru. She’s so courageous, so loving. She’s such a loyal and true friend. I’m in awe of her perseverance and determination.”
There are nine other people in the room and I can feel my pulse up the side of my neck. It’s early spring. The air is sweet, not too humid yet, and everything’s about to start blooming. I look out at the group, all different ages and stages of life, all here for different reasons. Our counselor, Barbara, whom we lovingly call “Babs,” is standing beside me smiling warmly. We just met, but I feel like she’s known me for years. She feels safe and wise and I trust her immediately.
It’s our first group session. To start, Babs takes us through a meditation to help us identify one of the people in our lives we feel loves us the deepest. Then she asks us to introduce ourselves through that person’s eyes. I choose Katie—she’s always seemed to see me better than I could see myself. She’s loved me for twenty years, through my marriage, through my pain, through all of it. She laid next to me in my bed when I had C. diff and couldn’t stop shitting my pants.
The group smiles and says hello to me and I sit back down in the circle as a sweet man in his late seventies introduces himself through the eyes of his seven-year-old granddaughter and we all fall apart.
Onsite is a giant green expanse filled with the best-looking horses eating the best-looking grass you’ve ever seen. It isn’t a treatment center, it’s an emotional wellness center that offers therapeutic and personal growth workshops. They have experiential therapy programs for all kinds of things. Mine is called Living Centered and it’s designed to help participants bring their lives back to center and to enhance emotional health. Mostly, Onsite is a safe place to take off your mask. I’ve been wearing mine for a very long time.
I came here to confront my pain and unlearn the story I’ve been telling myself: You’ll never get better, you are your pain, pain is your purpose. Beyond the character in that story, the girl who can smile through agony and writes on the internet, I don’t know who I am. All I get are glimpses.
The main dining hall is a Victorian mansion that looks like it was plucked straight from an Anne of Green Gables book. It has twinkle lights strung up along the eaves and rocking chairs. I keep expecting to see pies appear cooling on the window ledges but I’m pretty sure the chef is cooking gluten-free. I’m staying in a cabin a few steps away with two other women, one short and one tall. We’re friendly, but we don’t say much to each other. When you spend all day acting out your deepest traumas, there isn’t much left to say. Onsite is exhausting, it’s painful, and it’s enlightening.
On the first day of treatment, they take our phones. My phone has been my lifeline. It was the first tool I had through which to start talking about pain. It was what I used to launch my career as a designer, the window I peeked through to see the world when I lived in my bed. It’s the place I go to feel loved and affirmed. When I take it out of my bag and hand it over to the nice man with the safe-deposit box, I panic a little. I’m sad that I’ll miss the premiere of Kendrick Lamar’s new video. I don’t know what I’ll do without podcasts or shows to watch when pain keeps me up at night. My phone helps me escape and I’m nervous not to have it. I feel like I’m giving away a limb to somebody I don’t even know.
We also aren’t allowed to talk about what we do for a living. Babs doesn’t care if you’re a CEO or an Uber driver or an elephant, she cares about how connected you are to your soul, that you know your inherent worth to the world that you live in. Here, they say people tend to live like “human doings” instead of human beings, that we attach too much worth to our careers and the careers of others. Those things don’t have anything to do with who we are on the inside, and Onsite is all about who you are inside. They put us through meditation exercises and acting exercises and exercises where you can beat the shit out of a giant foam square to get your anger and rage out in a safe space; they say our hysterical reactions are always historical, from pain and loss that have never been worked through or processed. I’ve been through a lot. I don’t think focusing on who I am for a week will be difficult, but it is.
I knew that I found identity in my pain story when I lived in my bed. I liked the sympathy I got and the attention. I didn’t know that it was still so deeply ingrained. I’m used to introducing myself as a speaker and I’m used to being asked what it is that I speak about. Typically, I give a compelling, five-minute overview of my life story: accident, pain, a mountain of medications, divorce, and typically I’m applauded for my bravery, for “overcoming” such intense pain. With no career to talk about at Onsite, all I have left is pain. It feels like the most important thing about me and I don’t know who I am outside of it. I wonder if it’s a crutch, if I’d have a career at all without it, if people would like me without it. The thoughts scare me. Through every exercise, every meal, every conversation, I try to connect without pain, I try to keep it at a distance and focus on who I am, but I don’t know who that is. I talk about my pain to anyone who’ll listen, and even after days of intense emotional work, the first thing I do when I wake up in the morning is ask myself how I can use pain to reach people, as though it’s the only way I can. Our teacher encourages us to be the love inside us, to feel it from inside ourselves instead of looking outward. I wonder if without pain, that love exists for me.
Over the next year, I continue my deep dive into healing work. I look to every resource, therapy, and treatment to help keep pain standing beside me and point me in the direction of my new story. A glutton through and through, I try everything. I do neurofeedback and Reiki. I read Eckhart Tolle and Richard Rohr. I buy the purple amethyst crystal to feel clarity, the rose quartz to feel love, the black tourmaline to feel safe. I also get laser hair removal, which is totally unrelated but feels healing at the time. I get new tattoos and talk to mediums on the phone. I stay open and I welcome change. I do the work and wait for the sky to open and drop my intention at my feet. When that doesn’t happen, I work harder, dive deeper. I try to make healing busy and loud because it’s what I know to do. I consume more and more, look further and further for the answers—yoga videos, retreats, a sound bath, a dance class. I move wildly through all of it. My physical pain continues to intensify. The glimpses of my true self become more distant. Still, I keep moving, keep working, speaking at events and traveling for brands. Until I collapse.