I’ve just finished 3 days with a new client. Eve is in month 7 of her 9 months of maternity leave, having given birth to her second child – her first son - at the beginning of the year. The four of them, the 2 little ones and her husband live 45 minutes outside of Edinburgh, her hometown. Her husband is from the Basque country of Northern Spain.
Those are the basics, and what I learnt when she first reached out to me via LinkedIn 4 weeks ago. She heard of me via her company’s distant learning service last year while she was going for a promotion during pregnancy. My on-demand video teachings on overwhelm, clarity, presence and stress that I’d created for her company had been a big help to her. I’d also been recommended by her manager from a number of live sessions I’d done for senior managers over the past 5-6 years.
Eve explained in our first ‘discovery’ call that we’d set up that she needed to re-set the model of her life. I noticed she talked fast. Everything seemed important and urgent to her. The house (too small). The location (too cold). The job (too much to do). The husband (lovely, but too laid back). The kids (two is more than one plus one). The salary (too little). The life she was living (too far below her potential).
When she slowed down, Eve asked me if I could help, I knew I could. The fact that she started out by saying that what she thought she needed was a re-set of her model of life let me know she was on to something, but I didn’t know what that meant. So, I asked her. She came back with this:
“With all that’s going on, I should feel happy. But I don’t. I can’t even blame the kids. The baby sleeps, well, like a baby!” she said.
She went on to say that she thought there was something wrong with her that she felt unhappy. I carried on listening. She asked me about depression, having told me that she’d read my chapter in Chana Studley’s book that came out recently called ‘Beyond Diagnosis.’
“I don’t understand what you wrote, but I felt a lot of hope in your story and it was then that I messaged you,” she said.
We chatted and discussed some options for us to spend time in me coaching her, agreeing on a 3-day immersion at the start then one session every 2 weeks for the following 5 months to the end of the year – well into the time Eve would return to work. The logistics of taking care of the baby and her 3-year-old daughter were managed by her husband’s flexible working hours and her sister being able to stay for the week.
Done, sorted.
So we met.
Day one.
We talked. Sometimes she was back to the full-on speed train from our first call. Sometimes less fast. Sometimes she was light while speaking. More times she seemed tense and intense. The first two-hour session went by as quickly as she flitted from topic to topic, story to story. I listened. Not in judgment – in noticing. And noticed at least as much about the feeling she was in and her relationship with her stories as the content of the stories themselves.
There were clues in her inconsistencies. She put a lot of value in her ability to think, then said that her thinking takes her nowhere useful. She shared stories of overcoming challenges. Having ideas that came out of the blue. Needing to think of every potential outcome to every potential situation before taking any action. Being happy with her lot in life. Not being content with what she’s achieved. Laughing one moment, close to tears of despair the next. That everything in her past had worked out great. And that everything in the future looked fraught with danger at every turn. That her ‘ok-ness’ was a given, but her children’s ok-ness wasn’t.
“Do I seem crazy to you?” she said after almost 2 hours of talking.
“No,” I said. “Not crazy at all…. You’re sane. And everything you’ve said has been so helpful for me.”
“So, you think I’m not a lost cause?” she said at the slowest speed of speaking I’d heard from her until then.
I smiled. “Far from it. What’s going on in you is so, so simple and I’m looking forward to you seeing it for yourself.”
“What do you mean?” Eve said.
“First of all, it might take a little patience for what we’ll talk about to make any sense. That’s why I suggested 3 days to get us started. It’s a chance to slow down, Eve. To take a fresh look. To notice what you notice, that kind of thing” I said.
“That kind of thing?” She said. “Seems a bit loose to me!”
“I know!” I said, “Loose can be awesome!”
She laughed. Deep. Not a giggle. The kind of laugh that jiggles the entire body. And mind.
“Point taken. If that’s what you meant. I need to loosen up” she said.
“Maybe, but you said that not me. But… maybe you’re on to something” I said. We both giggled then Eve sighed.
“Ok mister, it’s feeding time at the zoo. See you this afternoon. Any homework?” she said, looking at her watch.
“Nope. See you at 1.30”
She left the meeting and I closed the Zoom room and we went our separate ways for 1½ hours.
Eve came back on screen bang on 1.30. As punctual as ever. Her shoulders looked lower. Her jawline looked unzipped. The space between her brows looked wider. She looked younger. I’m not kidding!
“How you doing?” I said.
“Good… I think. My sister Suze has taken my daughter to the park in the stroller. My husband is having a nap with our son. And I had this amazing cheese in my sandwich just now…” Eve said and carried on. Slower than she spoke in the morning. A lot. She mentioned feeling a bit ‘zen-like’ and attributed it to feeling tired. I suspected her ‘zen-like’ state had another cause. A suspicion that I’d have put money on. That thought I kept to myself and kept listening.
“So what are we going to talk about now?” Eve said,
“I was going to ask you the same question,” I said back in a muffled giggle. We both smiled.
We grazed over various things. Our preferences in coffee. Our takes on the political situation in the UK. Our ideas on the best sports people our respective countries of Wales and Scotland had produced. The cheese that was so amazing in her sandwich.
Eve was in a lighter mood. I asked her if she’d noticed it.
“Yes – it happens when the babies are taken care of and I know they are safe,” she said.
“Weren’t they safe and taken care of this morning when we met?” I said.
“Not in the same way as n…” Eve stopped. Abrupt. Mid-sentence. Mid-word. Her head tilted back and the space between her eyebrows shrank back to the way they’d looked so often that morning. After the longest pause we’d ever had in our conversations until then, her head tilted forward again, in perfect synchronicity with the space between her brows widening.
“Nope. I take that back. They’ve always been ok. Even when they’re screaming, I’ve figured out what they needed. I do wish we had a bigger house, with at least 2 more bedrooms – one each for them and one for guests, so my sister Suze doesn’t have to sleep on the futon in the living room when she comes. Or our parents. Or anyone else. But we are ok.” Eve said with quiet conviction. And paused. Eve looked down, her head bobbled up and down. A subtle nod. Quiet.
“This might sound weird,” she said “but you did say you wouldn’t judge me, so here goes. I have cue cards. They appear. They tell me what to do. Every time I need them they appear. Before I met my husband, I’d go out with the girls for G&Ts and cocktails, some of the cue cards were bad advice in disguise. But I knew. I knew which ones were leading me down the impulsive path of regret and which ones were there to take care of me” she said, paused, furrowed up and looked at me through our computer screens and cameras.
“Am I mad? Don’t tell anyone, please!” she said.
“I won’t tell anyone, of course not! Well, I might write about it, but not in a way that anyone will know it’s about you” I said, and Eve smiled, mouthing the word ‘OK.’
“And you’re not mad either!” I said. “What I think you’re describing is something I hadn’t realised I’d had, and I think it’s something we all have, from birth. Some people call it an inner knowing. Some people call it wisdom. Some people call it the voice of God”
“I’m not religious, but God makes sense to me. God’s cue cards” Eve said and laughed.
We’d been talking for an hour and it made sense to take a 5-minute natural. When we came back, Eve was the first one to speak.
“You know Wyn, sometimes I think I’m in a self-driving car,” she said
“What do you mean?” I said.
“Well, I don’t think I’m in control. Not really. I pretend I am. I hold on tight, but the wheel turns without me” Eve said, then went to share examples of when this had happened. In school. In breaking off her engagement to her then-boyfriend when she was 19. In going against the advice of everyone apart from her husband 7 years earlier at a crossroads in her career. In going for promotion while being pregnant with her second child (which she got, despite her doubts).
Eve’s metaphor of a self-driving car made absolute sense to me. I know I’m not the one steering my kidneys to clean my blood. I’m not the one steering my pupils to dilate in lower light. I’m not the one turning the protein in the lentils from my lunchtime Dhal into the keratin that becomes my hair and nails. And those things are more miraculous than what my egoic, thinking, computer brain could ever do.
We talked more about cue cards and self-driving cars for the rest of our time together that afternoon. And for most of day 2. How grateful we both were to see what’s going on that the human ego might not want us to see. How we are more wise than we give ourselves credit for. And how simple life can be when we don’t overthink. Don’t worry. And don’t make up imaginary futures that we have no idea whether they will play out like that. And even if we do take a ‘wrong’ turn, we have cue cards that nudge us back.
That we can relax mentally. Have more ease. A lighter feeling. And that can take us further than we could foresee, having a great time in our lives time along the way.
Today, when we finished our third day on Zoom together, Eve realised something else that sets us free. That what we feel has nothing to do with the ‘stuff’ in our lives. I referred back to the list of things she felt was wrong in her life. The list of the house, the location, the kids, the job… all of it. How she felt OK one minute and dissatisfied the next – yet nothing about those things had changed.
We shared examples of people we knew who had ‘material success’ but were unhappy. And examples of people who had next to nothing and were happy and content. Eve saw that these examples pointed to the outside not causing the inside. Ever. No exceptions.
“Thought is a powerful force” I said, “It can make what’s outside of us look like it’s the cause of what’s happening inside of us, our feelings, our moods, our emotions. But it’s all happening inside us, both the cause and the effect.”
“So I’m just imagining it all? I mean, everything?” she said.
“What do you think?” I said.
“Well, it’s pretty mind-blowing, but yes. I think that’s true. Knowing that along with the cue cards and the fact that I’m in a self-driving car is beyond what I’d hoped to see” Eve said.
We smiled at each other. Eve gave an almighty sigh.
“I want to go and see my family now, is that ok?” she said, and looked at her watch and went on to say “Even though it’s an hour early?”
“Of course. I’ll see you in 2 weeks” I said.
She gave a silent ‘thank you’, and I replied with a silent ‘you’re welcome.’
And went back to our separate, self-driving car lives.
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