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The third anniversary of my mother’s death was only weeks away, and I still hadn’t found time to clear out her house, feel my emotions, or get in touch with my humanity. Fortunately, I had scheduled some time away from work, yet it was many months out, and I could tell that my body and mind couldn’t wait that long.
I pled with my friend, Melinda, “I cannot possibly leave now. I cannot let my colleagues down. I just have to push a little longer.”
She nodded with understanding, then softly asked, “Do you know who Naomi Osaka is?”
Of course, I knew who she was. But I weakly eked out, “I am not that brave.”
Melinda laughed and nodded, and said, “I think you could be”.
For me, Osaka’s model became like a prayer, or maybe meditation, on how I might be able to love myself beyond my fears. Inspired in part by Osaka’s bold choice to immediately withdraw from the French Open I decided to take my leave immediately rather than wait until fall as originally planned.
The Pressure to Perform
As my leave started, I began to follow the Olympics, which put a spotlight on mental health like never before, demonstrating the tangible connection between mental and physical well-being.
I am not an elite athlete, but I am a person. Like athletes, many of us silently measure our worth with wins big and small. And that feeling of not measuring up, the pressure to deliver, and to persevere regardless of the cost, can affect us all.
Naomi Osaka, Michael Phelps, Simone Biles – the actions of these world-class athletes gave me words for what I had no way to describe. They’ve given me a model to explain my own inner longings and the decision to take the path that I recently began to walk down.
Simone Biles – a four-time Olympic gold medal gymnast whose abrupt decision to withdraw from most of her Olympic events brought new attention to the issue of mental health — said that four or five years ago, she would’ve likely pushed through anyway, risking her mental and physical health.
This idea was true for me as well. Although my performance was of more mundane proportions, it parallels in many ways.
I am a vice president at a global architecture firm. In 2018, my mother died suddenly one Saturday night from complications of her year’s long battle with cancer. By the following Monday morning, I was back home in Dallas, leading a week’s long design workshop. I was pregnant, working full-time, studying for licensing exams, and finishing publishing research I had worked almost a decade to make possible.
What I wasn’t doing was taking time for myself.
I have spent my career pushing myself to excellence and I couldn’t let go. My life was to a point where letting go felt like accepting defeat and letting my colleagues down, and I couldn’t do that. So, I kept pushing my emotions further and further within me, forcing myself on.
In Osaka’s recent documentary, we see her deeply saddened after the death of her friend and mentor, Kobe Bryant, and we see how she continues showing up at matches, competing at world-class levels all while fighting back tears. While my pains and pressures are no doubt different than hers, seeing her reminded me of the long, tear-filled commutes to the site where I was working after my mother’s death. Often, my tears were so thick I had to pull over for fear of causing an accident. But when I would get to work, I would be on. I would smile and deliver. I would compartmentalize.
For Biles, who had also watched Osaka‘s documentary, she said her decision to withdraw during the Olympics was simply a matter of finding the resolve to save herself.
For me, that resolve was hard to find. Years after my mother’s death, I realized that something was wrong. At first, I thought I needed to switch careers, maybe find a new job. Yet after months of deep reflection, I realized that I am one of the lucky ones – someone who loves my job, loves my clients, and loves my colleagues. But that didn’t change how much I yearned for a pause.
“It’s Ok Not to Be Ok”
Biles’ put it this way in a tweet during the Olympics, “I’m more than my accomplishments … which I never truly believed before.”
I had forgotten this truth, as many of us do.
When I finally made the call to take a pause of my own, many colleagues, several national and global business leaders, told me that this is something that they wish that they could do. People shared with me their stories of struggle, and of suppressing their emotions, and how that grief leaked out of them for decades, harming relationships, marriages — but never their work. Is all we are for work? Isn’t that what we are raised to believe as productivity is the ultimate purpose.
Phelps, who publicly voiced support for Biles, Osaka, and other athletes, said “we’re supposed to be this big macho physically strong human beings, but this is not a weakness. We are seeking and reaching for help.”
Since his victory in the 2016 Olympics, sealing his 28-time Olympic medalist swimming career, Phelps has opened up about his own struggles, and he and his wife have started the IM Healthy program with eight mental health lessons for kids, developed by experts at NemoursKids Health. These professional athletes are examples of living into the power and truth of “It’s ok not to be ok.”
I kept telling myself this even though the voices in my head told me otherwise. Those voices told me no one would understand. They said I was being selfish. But the small voice of knowing within me kept telling me the truth.
Since I started my sabbatical, I have finally started listening to that knowing. I have cried with gratitude this time, remembering for the first time in almost a decade what it was I wanted to do with my day, or my life, and touching the tenderness within me from years of unacknowledged grief and pain.
While I know not everyone can take time away from work, I want everyone to experience the freedom to follow your knowing and your heart in big ways and small — whether through journaling for a few minutes each day, taking quiet time in nature, going on walks with friends … or even if you find that freedom in your job.
I am writing this, because I want you to know that your life is about more than your productivity and achievements. I want you to know that there are other options even when they seem impossible. And I want us all to have a revolution of emotion, one where we allow ourselves to feel the pain that we have been slowly suppressing, instead of swallowing the poison of unacknowledged trauma, to process our emotions and our grief and our longings and to listen to the small voice within us.
You deserve it.
