Chapter One: Surveying the Soil
So many divine moments of tender care precede this story, stretching much further back than the beginning of this particular account. I can see many of them now, hazy shapes coming into focus as I stroll through scenes of my life, but they belong to another telling for another time. I will start with January 2019. It’s hard to go so far back. I want to get to the exciting moments—when I first saw green coming up through the soil. There are such long stretches of uneventful time between moments of significance, but though it is unseen, there is important work in the quiet darkness of germination.
I say January 2019 because it was then that I experienced my last serious emotional breakdown. There had been a series of them over the first year of the twins’ life (born January 2018). Motherhood of three under three had put me under unbelievable pressure. I suppose the fissures in anything are revealed by applied stress—this is how it happened with me, and cracks in my foundation that were before unnoticed became undeniably in need of attention. We addressed every crisis with new strategies, but nothing was sustainable or effective long term. When in breakdown mode, I would feel completely untethered. Like a caged animal desperate to escape its imprisonment, I would lash out in rage. In order to keep myself from hurting those I loved, I would dig my nails into my palms, bite down on something with all my might, or most often, repeatedly slam my palm into my forehead or my forehead into a wall. I don’t mean to dramatize but to plainly paint reality. That last breakdown in my memory was around the middle of January 2019. I had been sending dire texts to my husband at work about what was happening at home that day. He left work unbeknownst to me and walked into the house during nap time to find me bashing about my own head, agonizing towards some kind of emotional release.
I was overwhelmed and needed help. It seemed clear from that moment that no amount of time or money should keep us from attacking this situation from all angles. So I began three things that I had been ruminating over for some time without commitment: physical therapy, spiritual mentorship, and regular counseling.
The reason I had been so resistant to all of these types of health-care was my fierce need to be self-sufficient. I had framed this modus operandi as respectable. It was of the utmost importance to be strong enough to care for my needs and the needs of those around me so that I would not take from anyone but only give. The year of 2018 had quickly forced me into uncomfortable vulnerability: I had no choice but to ask for help and accept it knowing I couldn’t give anything in return. Other Ennegram 2s out there will understand what a harrowing process this was for me as I began to discover that my core need was to be accepted and loved, my deepest fear to be rejected and abandoned. I was so afraid that my loved ones would decide it wasn’t worth it to love me that I often felt I would literally die from the anxiety.
My family and I experienced such generosity and love from those around us after the twins’ birth—in meals, visits, time reading to or playing with our toddler, hands in dirty dishwater or busy changing diapers. It increased our intimacy with those whose help we accepted, who had a front row seat to our need and weakness. One might think I would come around to the value of increasing the practice of receiving. But as the kids grew older, it became apparent that I was only eagerly awaiting the day that I had enough capacity to return to my old rhythms.
I don’t remember that January breakdown being the worst or most concerning of its kind. Maybe my husband and I were on the brink of making the following choices anyway and The Breakdown wasn’t in fact the catalyst. But I do remember feeling impossibly tired after that event. Tired of the cycle of rising hopefulness and crushing despair. Of being overwhelmed and overworked without end, living in fear that nothing would ever change and I would die that way. Thinking back on it, I realize that I had decided once the twins turned one, things would be more manageable. That I would be more capable and have more capacity. That breakdown was likely the first to happen post-birthday, offering proof that very little had changed and there was no knowable end in sight.
So, I simultaneously engaged those three different processes that all required absolute honesty, openness, messiness and relinquishment of control: PT, mentorship, counseling. It was a crash course in being vulnerable. I figured that if I had to give up security and safety, I might as well do it all at once and get it over with (as I write this, I realize my underlying thought was “I’ll be dependent so that I can become independent again.” The cycle repeats and repeats.) Through the helpful framework of the Ennegram, I had come to understand that my instinct is always to self protect against abandonment. My propensity is to anticipate needs, lavishly love, and generously serve others. The upside of this personality is that it is my genuine joy to do these things. The dark side is that it can lead to manipulating others to assure that I am always lovable and loved. With this powerful self knowledge in hand, I had assumed that the challenges I was experiencing were due to being physically in pain and emotionally overwhelmed while finding it impossible to ask for assistance to alleviate these pressures (read: if I am too needy, I won’t be lovable). This was an accurate clinical description of the situation, and I needed guidance towards healing and growth in vulnerability and trust. What I did not anticipate was the massive spiritual dimension to my situation—the subtle and insidious twisting of reality that had been taking place in my spirit from long ago and left me so crippled in tackling the changing circumstances of my life.
I made appointments and threw myself into new techniques for managing my health. Surveying the soil of my life, there was no hint of what lay beneath the surface. It was easy to believe the field empty of potential growth. I had planted so many things in hope that had been torn up and blown away by the storms of my life.
Still, I rolled up my sleeves, grabbed a shovel, and dug into the work. It was a long while before I started to sense where new life would emerge in my story.
