As much as I share as a blogger and podcaster, I am always amazed at how much is still held back from being shared with readers and listeners.  Perhaps it is my generation but every once in a while I come out of my shell and share more of myself and my backstory.  Which is what I decided to do with this short story I’be been working on as part of my upcoming book about being nonjudgemental.  

A Life Filled with Judgment

17 years ago I came home from work one day to find my mom and grandmother waiting for me.  I took one look at them and knew something was very wrong.  They asked me to sit down and proceeded to tell me that my father had been killed.  They didn’t know all of the details but they did know he had been murdered.

As I tried to get my head around what they were explaining to me I was swimming in a huge pool of emotions.  I could actually feel myself breaking apart from the inside out.  I had been estranged from my father for about 10 years and had only recently accepted his request to connect.  To appease his request I had written him a short letter to update him about where I was living and that I had married my college boyfriend whom he had met once before.  I left off the fact that I had a baby daughter and that he was a grandfather as I hadn’t been ready to share that piece of information.  When my brother went to collect my father’s things he found the letter on my dad’s desk and it looked as if it had been read many times over.  

Since my father and I had not spoken in all those years I could only imagine how terrible things had been for him leading up to his death.  His entire family had disowned him and no matter what he had done, it was not worthy of this sort of ending.  I couldn’t believe that I had let this happen to my father who, in hindsight, had always done the best he could to care for me and my family.  The guilt and sadness I felt about what had happened to him were worse than anything I had ever felt before.  I found myself sobbing for hours as I couldn’t believe this had happened.

The events surrounding my father’s death were so shocking that they caused my already intense fears to skyrocket to the point where I broke down at the innermost level.  My fears about not being safe were being confirmed by what had happened to him and it was at that point I found myself with no choice but to let go of all that I had ever been afraid of without restraint.  It was just too much to handle any other way.

Growing up in a home where I never felt safe meant that I was someone who was always on guard and and easily suggestible to anything that brought my fears to the surface.   This translated into my having lived a life where I had married the man I thought would help keep me safe, I took the career path that would bring me to stable jobs, and I choose my friends according to whether or not they were reliable.  I had even kicked my dad out of my life because of how reckless he had been known to be.  

We later found out that my dad had been killed by his ex-girlfriend and her boyfriend after they had felt like they were being threatened by my father.  In court it would come out that there had been several hate-filled letters back and forth between my father and his ex-girlfriend.  Both of them were found guilty of premeditated manslaughter and I can’t help but think about how much the judgment of one another played into my father’s death.

In the days that followed the news I was so traumatized that I found myself not just being triggered about my fears about death, but also my fears about living a life filled with regret.

By all appearances I had everything I had ever wanted. I had my MBA, was a mother of a 2 year old daughter, married to my college sweetheart and was quickly climbing up the corporate ladder in my dream job in San Francisco.  My husband and I had also started our home flipping business and our future was looking bright. 

On the other hand, I was a mess inside.  I would go through periods of intense sadness and disappointment that would wear down even my closest friends who tried to help.  I would find myself in disagreements with my family, co-workers and even with my employees which often led to feeling like people were out to get me.  Overall I did a fairly good job of hiding this from the world but inside I would spend hours in judgment towards myself.  When I wasn’t beating myself up then I was feeling defensive, reactive and easily hurt by anything the I perceived as being derogatory behavior towards me.  It breaks my heart to remember how much I suffered during these times and yet I did not know how to change the situation for the better. 

After my father’s death I wasn’t in a position of being able to leave my job but I did start over when it came to learning how to cope through life better.  I think I was drawn to meditation because all of the sudden I could see how I did not have the tools I needed to live the life I wanted to be living.  And other than trying to control everything in my life I didn’t have a clue about what it meant to become more resilient.   

It didn’t take long for all of this understanding to lead me to Stacy’s bookstore in downtown San Francisco on my lunch break to see what books I could find that could possibly help me.  I had always had a fascination with Buddhism after taking a class about it in college which led me to purchased several books on the topic that day.  For the next several months I devoured everything I had purchased and more.  The books were filled with revelations and I was excited beyond belief to learn more about the magical powers of having greater self-understanding and peace of mind.

As a result of these studies, I began meditating and looking to discover the reasons I had been going through such intense feelings of highs and lows for most of my life.  I could see how I had accumulated many limiting beliefs that were causing me a great deal of pain. The roots were so deep and frightening to me that I had to tell myself it would be okay if it took me many years to understand it all and be able to put it into practice. This new found ability to take my foot off the gas pedal and be patient with the process was proving that things were already starting to shift for the better.

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