Connecting to My Inner Compass
The slow and winding journey of living from the inside out
What allows you to find your way in your life, relationships, work and personal life?
How do you seek guidance and direction?
What guides you along your path, ensuring you are moving in a direction that is true to your unique purpose and journey?
This is a topic I have thought about and wrestled with for many years. As a seeker I have been looking and searching for a way, “the way” for so long. Sensing that there is more to life than meets the eye, intuiting that going through the motions, and following the narratives of dominant culture wasn’t the end of the road.
Yet, for most of my life, and still now in some ways I continue to seek guidance from outside of myself. Living from the outside in, rather than from the inside out. I found myself seeking refuge and direction from many external sources, in large part because of my conditioning as a woman. Looking outside of myself for validation and approval.
The sources of guidance included religion, specific diets and exercise regimens, gurus and teachers of many sorts, the habits and choice of friends or acquaintances and the societal expectations I had internalized from a young age.
This led me on a path that looked great from the outside, checking all the boxes. Married, two children, working in healthcare as a PA, living in a house in the suburbs-the picture of security and stability. I was following all the rules, checking all the boxes and yet felt so empty inside.
This emptiness left me feeling lost, alone, and kind of numb. Around the age of 30 I began the slow, tumultuous, winding path back home to myself. A journey that began within, spiraling, winding, unwinding, becoming and unbecoming, learning and unlearning. A path I continue to walk and explore every day, with humility, reverence and oftentimes frustration and disorientation.
Does that mean I am doing it wrong? Absolutely not! If I have learned anything along the way it is that life is messy, imperfect, beautiful, sorrowful, challenging and full of surprises.
As I have been shifting and living truer to myself, I orient myself in a different way, turning inwards to connect with my internal navigation system- my Inner Compass. This way of knowing myself, understanding the world and navigating life has taken time, patience and so much gentleness to learn.
My Inner Compass is deeply connected to my sense of embodiment, grounding myself in my body, mind and heart. Living into the moment-to-moment sensations, emotions, and movement of energy within.
For many years, I lived from the neck up, mostly connected to the swirling thoughts, ruminations, stories and beliefs in my head. Disconnected from a vast source of wisdom and intelligence, this bodily knowing that is innate, instinctual, and ever present.
Living disconnected and disembodied is not my fault, it is the context of dominant culture in the West, carrying the legacy and burden of colonialism, white supremacy and patriarchy. Unlearning and remembering what it feels like to be connected and embodied has been the slow unraveling and re-weaving of the tapestry of wholeness and dignity that is my birthright. The journey of connecting more deeply to myself has led me to feeling more connection and kinship with the wider world, into deeper relationship with the human and more than human world.
Sarah and I were inspired to create this newsletter to chronicle our journeys, individually and in our friendship, as we have explored this complex and nuanced experience of showing up differently in the world and charting a path that feels truer and more aligned with what matters most to us. Our journeys have been similar and parallel in many ways, and also unique and utterly personal.
We look forward to getting to know our readers and creating a sense of community as we tell our stories imperfectly, truthfully and in our own individual ways.
As we get to know each other, it feels important to offer you a window into the identities I carry, the roles I inhabit, and career paths I have walked. While also keeping in mind that so much of what makes me who I am can’t be articulated into a nice, neat list of titles, identities, jobs or accomplishments.
I have walked several different paths professionally and continue to weave and pivot my way through this part of my life. I continue to be surprised and delighted about where this journey leads me.
I went to school (undergrad and graduate) and became a Physician Assistant. I practiced in Urgent Care in Iowa City for 1 year then moved to Madison, Wisconsin and worked in Internal Medicine Outpatient Primary Care for 6 years. I loved/hated this job and found so much meaning and purpose in providing care for patients, building relationships, thinking through complex medical problems AND found the systems and structures to be broken and soul sucking.
I resigned from this job after a VERY significant and sudden loss in my life and stayed home with my two kiddos for a few years. I trained to become a yoga teacher, experienced another significant loss, had my third child and lived through a pandemic. (a real easy breezy few years)
I now work part time teaching yoga classes, facilitating a program called Mindful Grieving, co-created and co-facilitate a program for Women in Medicine called the Inner Compass Program (sound familiar?) and spend time writing. This body of work is all about belonging, connection and community.
Outside of my work, I am a mother to three children (ages 11, 9 and 4). I am married to my partner Adam and we live in Madison, Wisconsin with our kids, 2 cats and our ball python snake named Autumn. I love being outside, gardening, trail running and reading anything and everything.
Some of the other identities I carry that affect how I show up in the world, the privileges I carry, and my lived experience are that: I am a cis-gendered, able bodied, heterosexual, educated and financially secure white woman who has always lived in and been a citizen of the United States.
I write to you as someone who carries a lot of privilege and power and also as someone oppressed by the system of patriarchy as a woman. I continue to unlearn and learn ways of being in the world that recognize, respond to and reimagine the systems and structures that continue to cause harm and oppression in our world.
I see this work as deeply personal and also a collective communal process. Reimagining new systems, structures and a generative culture is intimately related to our embodied sense of navigating by our inner compass rather than the conditioning and expectations of dominant culture.
We look forward to sharing our stories, thoughts and musings with you and getting to walk this messy, beautiful, complex and heart achingly difficult human experience with each of you.
Thanks for being here!
Feel free to introduce yourself in the comments~