Mindfulness: My Wake Up Call

by Hillary Goldthwait-Fowles

Life is filled with moments. There are moments of pure bliss, joy, love, happiness. There are also moments of sadness, despair, anger, resentment, guilt, shame, and blame. Life is very much a yin-yang kind of thing. Sometimes, there is a defining moment in our lives that serves as a wake up call. A call that stops everything in time. A call that literally smacks us upside the head. A call that frees us. A call that can transform our life.

My wake up call came in the middle of the night a little over four years ago. Living what appeared to be a perfect life on the outside, only to be hiding the bitter truth of being completely and utterly miserable. There I was, silently dealing with the insanity of what my life had become in the middle of the night. The universe had slapped me upside the head when I least expected it. In the chaos of this life, it came in the simplest form. One sentence that changed everything.

“I love you, but I don’t want to stay married to you.“

As the enormity of those words hit and began to take form, time stood still. The room slowed down, Everything was in slow-motion and became enormously silent. I was keenly aware of my surroundings. Of my breath. Of the enormity of those words. In this moment, in this real-time pause, a truth emerged:

I could NO LONGER live my life the way that I was living it.

At the time I didn’t realize,it but, in this moment, I had experienced a form of mindfulness. The stillness. The pause. The breath. The truth. Some may call this an epiphany, Others call it blunt force trauma to their life. For me, it was a ginormous wake up call. It was a call to action. A call to wake up, face some hard truths, and a chance to change the way life was currently being lived (which, at the time, was very superfluous).

Having no clue where to start or what that looked like, fear could have taken over, but it didn’t. Sometimes we just have to adjust our bootstraps and get to work. The first task was to find help, which came in the form of an amazing therapist. Our first session consisted of the most honest confession to date: “teach me to love myself so that I do not repeat these mistakes”.

It was through therapy that my love affair with mindfulness began. My therapist introduced me to the work of Tara Brach. Her book, Radical Acceptance, was the exact tool that I needed. Could it be that simply engaging in my breath, in slowing the tempo of my brain down, in inviting my wounded soul to a cup of tea in order to unearth the truth would transform my life? The short answer to this is yes, but this wasn’t an overnight success. I had to stop and ask myself: ‘What did the heart truly yearn for? What was the root cause of the pain and suffering that had become a life that was not being lived with love and authenticity?’ Having time and permission to examine these issues with a “Buddhist curiosity”, as Tara Brach speaks of in Radical Acceptance, allowed the anger and self-loathing to dissolve, only to be replaced by love, acceptance, and forgiveness.

There was a moment in the midst of this transformation that I really was put to the test in my resolve to practice mindfulness in order to heal. I had had a particularly rough day, and could feel this ball in my chest. Everything was tight. Everything was clenched. My normal response would be to overeat, to drink, or to absorb myself in a mindless activity such as social media, TV, or not talking about anything important with friends. Whatever it took to distract me. However, I had this new tool in my toolkit. In Radical Acceptance, Tara Brach talks about “The Sacred Pause”. The pause is the first step in this practice. The pause is “a suspension of activity, a time of temporary disengagement when we are no longer moving toward any goal”. The pause allows us to be “wholeheartedly present, attentive, and physically still”. It is the foundation of everything.

What I first noticed when I practiced the pause was my breath. It was sharp and shallow. It was not deep and full. I slowly began to deepen and slow my breath. My jaw began to loosen. My fists began to unclench. My shoulders began to relax. The heaviness in my chest sat down with my higher self to have a chat about what was happening. Allowing this tightness to have a voice was something I wasn’t used to, but I was reminded of the importance of honoring the feeling, of staying with the breath, of noticing this heaviness, acknowledging it, and allowing the heaviness to speak. It was in this stillness that I learned that this heaviness was despair. Despair over life not quite working out the way I had wanted. Despair over hurting others. Despair over hurting myself. Despair over surrendering my power to someone that did not love or honor me. As soon as I recognized this as what it was, it dissolved. As soon I compassionately and lovingly treated my despair as I would have treated my best friend who was coming to me with this problem did this dissipate. The heaviness in my chest became more expansive. The heart began to feel lighter. The mind began to be at peace. The spirit began to heal itself.

While I continue to practice mindfulness, I admit that I am not perfect in practice. I have to remind myself to come back to the breath. To practice the pause. To take a minute and be still with myself. I remind myself that it’s okay to not fill myself with things, food, and drink, but to fill myself with compassion, kindness, self-respect, and love. I also remind myself that it’s okay if I am not perfect. I remind myself through mindfulness that we all, at our essence, are love.

Despite going through a tumultuous divorce while in the midst of working on a PhD, raising a teenage son, and working a full-time job, what happened during this transition was quite metamorphic. Ultimately, the work of living life on one’s own terms came from the self. It isn’t handed to us on a silver platter. It comes from living with intention, hope, mindset shifts, and re-discovering who we are. The fundamental self that can become lost in dysfunctional relationships, the random opinions of others, hiding the truth that makes us uniquely, beautifully ourselves, and societal conventions. Living life on one’s own terms comes with digging deep in places we don’t know exist – finding strength in destruction, finding hope in new beginnings, finding excitement in fresh starts. Seeing this as a blank canvas to design life the way we want to is not only freeing, but enormously empowering.

The universe has a wonderful way of making our wishes and desires come true. The signs may come in subtle form, or it may come in the form of a wake up call that forces us to deal with our own issues, to love ourselves completely and unapologetically, and to give ourselves permission to live life on our own terms with a loving and compassionate heart. Decades of living in anger, guilt, shame, and blame have been replaced by living with love, peace, joy, and calm.

It has not always been an easy process, but the journey to living a life that is real and one’s own has been the greatest gift since receiving that wake-up call, and has allowed me the opportunity to no longer run from my life, but to run TO my life with open, loving arms.

For more about Hillary and her work: www.hillaryhelpsulearn.com