I spent years studying and practicing architecture, with the intention of improving the human experience of space. I attempted to draw on my passions for childhood development, trauma recovery, and understanding how we interact and learn with our bodies and minds. I kept one foot firmly in architecture, and the other dipped in and out of Psychology, Sociology, Human Sexuality, Family Dynamics, and Child Development. My mentor awakened my desire to learn more about the human psyche and how our connection with ourselves and each other determines all of our experiences. He introduced me to mindfulness in a way that made me want to know more, learn more, DO MORE. In doing so I wrote and published my Master of Architecture thesis on Fostering Permanence: A Child’s Space.
I was hired at an architecture firm for this exact depth of knowledge and intended on integrating it into children’s environments. What happened instead was that I needed to work 60 hour work weeks recycling drawing sets from old projects to save money. I was bored and frustrated with the disconnect between my vision for my future, and the bureaucracy of practice: the budgetary restraints of working with public school boards and the demand for architects to have things look only one way. I was expected to be devoted to the practice of it all and was alienated for having a spouse, for wanting to start a family, for humanizing my involvement.
Well, I had a child and began to appreciate first hand how babies learn through mirroring, through human connection and through interaction with their environment. It sparked the creative juices and I abandoned the idea of working in a corporate world. I spent some time creating unique spaces that functioned, had aesthetics that were appealing, and that could adapt to their users.
I had another child. All the things that I knew to be true suddenly weren’t – because I was trying to reuse the patterns that I had created. I was expecting neuro-typical development, Step A followed by Step B. I grew bored with wanting to create static spaces for typical functions and grew more emboldened with the idea of doing things differently. I began to draw some clear boundaries with family and friends about expectations of my children, expectations of us, expectations of how we should live. It was NOT well-received. I didn’t know then that not all positive change feels positive in the beginning. I began working with a therapist and dove deep into learning everything that I needed to know about speech development, behaviour, sleep, executive function. However I was stuck –
What did this mean for my dreams of being an architect? The ones that I had imagined for myself since the age of ten. The ones that had defined me for twenty years already.
We took huge leaps of faith and financial risk, with our home and our business dreams, with our living arrangements and with how our family functioned, and I was motivated to get back on the wagon.
That’s right Natalie, go back to the drawing board, follow the path you started on. You spent so long studying for this, training for this, investing in this. You NEED to continue on this path!
All the while though, the same personal and relational challenges that had plagued my life since childhood, that Mark had faced and was now also bringing to our relationship, were all still there. Every step forward was into some new ugly territory for which we were completely unprepared. Each interaction with family and friends also easily fell into familiar patterns and we soon spiraled into survival. I gained weight. I lost weight. I worked on myself. I pushed myself lower on the list. I began triaging the needs of those in my life without caring for my own.
Need to be the liaison between divorcing parents with young siblings. I can manage.
Divide and pack up a lifetime of memories and ten times that of actual belongings and create new homes for them to find there places. What a good daughter would do.
Need to be the Power of Attorney and Surety for my brother? Of course.
Learn everything there is to know about Bipolar Disease? Check.
Learn everything there is to know about the Mental Health System and how it interacts with our legal system? You got it.
Become the carer, the driver, the watcher, the translator, the advocate. Of course!
Learn about substance abuse. Check.
Learn about domestic abuse. Check.
Learn about depression. Check.
Schizophrenia. Check.
Disability rights and tenant rights. Check. Check.
Learn about medical conditions and terminology and how to schedule the right routes to hospitals and coordinate with school and speech therapy, child care, and our business. Yes I can!
Weigh out the importance of saving on hospital parking fees or saving on time. You bet.
Clear out a house and stage it. Sure, I’ll pencil that in.
Answer middle of the night calls to show up at random locations and usher loved ones to crisis units, rehab centres, emergency rooms, or move undetected from one life to another. I’m your woman.
I existed as a survivor for a long time. I was the helper, the volunteer, the carer. I was the yes person.
I had forgotten the mindfulness, the need for connection and the importance of my own sense of self that my mentor had so passionately embodied. Something was missing. This survival mode wasn’t sustainable.
What could we change? How do we alter the financial, emotional and personal downward spiral on which we had set ourselves?
We closed our business. Mark took his expertise somewhere that we hoped would foster it, and we decided to go all in – he would explore the potential of that role and I would steer the ship, and wear all the other hats. We could do that for a while, right? Well along came the positive pregnancy test, of which hope had all but faded. How fitting! I was home full time; it was perfect. We were so excited for what a relaxed experience this would be with two kids in school this time. Except my body and mind were already approaching burnout and were not prepared in the least. I ached from beginning to end. Mark was away on business almost 50% of the time. By my 41st week, I was an abnormally shaped carrier, of what looked like some sort of alien life, attempting to come out of my body, from areas that had no exit. I had braces on my wrists, was girdled with support, legs compressed to keep from ballooning further, had a separated pelvis, no proper bowel and bladder function, had heartburn all the time, waking every 45 minutes like a cruel experiment, and had been effectively in labour for two MONTHS already! Throughout which we were also investigating some bizarre rash condition that had covered our youngest as a result of his immune system not fully functioning.
Once the baby was born all would be different though. Except he had colic, and GERD and seemed to be allergic to all cow’s protein, so I purged it all from my diet and paced and bounced him all hours of the day and night, without attention to recovering my body from the trauma of my pregnancy and the birth itself. I fought everyone in trying to advocate for his needs and my intuition. I lost all of the baby weight and was constantly told how great I was looking, but I never quite heard it over the crying, which was ALL THE TIME, and no one knew that I was becoming the unhealthiest I had ever been. The executive function and social emotional challenges of our now, middle, guy were amplified and I juggled his needs and that of the baby. I remained thankful of how independent, mature and helpful our daughter was, unaware that I was teaching her to hold all the worries and responsibilities that I was dropping.
I’d tell you more about those first two years of our youngest’s life, but I don’t remember a whole lot – I was chronically sleep-deprived, sick or caring for sick children almost all of the time. In and out of hospitals and hemorrhaging friends and family who didn’t want to listen or had trouble looking straight at the situation for fear of truly seeing it. They were all fatigued by our struggle and one dear friend was even offended when I called her from the hospital garden, where I had managed to step away, during our longest stay. I hadn’t called her first, or kept her apprised about the emergency trip that had brought us there, or the ambulance transfer to this new location. I wish I hadn’t used that little break in the sunshine that day to apologize for what a bad friend I had been, or how I had dropped the ball once again, because that same person became frustrated with me for not picking an emotional state to dwell in soon after. How could I have smiled and waved on the street and then shared my exhaustion and despair that same afternoon – could I not pick one because I certainly couldn’t experience BOTH. But don’t pick despair – because “people only have so much capacity for your negativity.”
I had yet to learn that I am not responsible for other people’s opinions of me! I now know that when I cradle a candle in my hands, that the people I surround myself with should be those that help keep the flame going, not blow it out (thanks Brené Brown). I now know that some people aren’t meant to be in my life forever because the lessons that they taught me are meant to be with me instead (Mel Robbins, you rock!). I know that the reason why none of this felt like it fit, or was meant to be, is because I hadn’t been working on myself first. Through any of it: university, architecture, parenthood, our marriage, our business.
That year the company that we had traded it all for and taken that huge leap for . . . they dumped him without a second thought. In retrospect, it was part of the journey to today, so for that, I am grateful.
Less than a year later I was having word recall challenges, the left side of my face had a significant droop, sometimes my words were even slurred. My pelvic floor was seemingly irreparable, and surgery for rectal, uterine and bladder prolapses were in my future – I could barely lift my foot to pull on boots or thread on a pair of underwear without searing pubic pain and loss of strength. I had an abnormal upper abdominal mass that had grown to the size of a clementine, below my right breast. Having had ultrasounds to rule out cancer after finding breast lumps before, this seemed so definite. It was removed and assumed to be a benign lipoma, (the tumor itself was lost in the initial pandemic panic, so we’ll never know). The neurologist reviewed my brain MRI and ruled out anything malicious – but said I should try to get some sleep. Noted. Our then 2.5 year old youngest child still slept erratically and with us, causing both of our circadian rhythms to be in severe distress. Sleep studies mid-pandemic revealed several concerns for which medications, treatments and therapies ensued. He still had gastrointestinal issues that neither a pediatric specialist nor ER doctors could decipher. We were deep into navigating social emotional learning, psycho-educational and psychiatric assessments for our middle child, and now managing the anxiety that had manifested from all the generational cycles we were repeating with our daughter. It was time to put a pause on all of it. The pandemic hit and we were locked down. It was symbolic of the self-destruction we were facing within ourselves, our family, and our relationships with others.
Mark was suddenly housebound – no more travel. Everything came to a halt and we were faced with the decision to take stock, stop blaming, stop chasing and to look inward.
We decided YES. Yes to growth – personal growth, relational growth, emotional growth. We decided we matter. Our family matters. Our marriage matters.
I was rock bottom and had hit complete burnout. Overwhelmed with the idea of even getting up and facing the day. Overwhelmed with what new challenge we would have to juggle, what new stressor would come hurling at us and feeling unequivocally unprepared. Physically I ached – every extremity had searing pain and the bones within felt like they had been crushed and stuffed back into the spaces, now insufficient to hold them. I raged. I cried. I overthought everything. My therapist expressed that she no longer felt that I was sufficiently bolstered by my means of self-care, and recommended that I begin medication to help reset my cortisol levels and rebuild. These helped tremendously and I’ve spoken often about accepting the chemical role that medication can play in settling our nervous system!
In the thick of diagnoses with our middle child, and at the lowest of the low for his and our experience of his conditions, I realized that I couldn’t help him without helping myself and modeling the necessity to do so. Not well anyway. We’ve all heard the metaphor of placing the oxygen mask on ourselves to be able to help others, but what we are all hesitant to understand is that we shouldn’t put it on first, SOLELY to help others. We matter. I matter.
I had been watching the physical and emotional transformation of a friend of mine, through her instagram stories, and she asked if I could join her group workout program. I have to admit, the helper in me agreed. The people pleaser said yes. I didn’t truly think it would make that much of a difference, except maybe physically. I was the heaviest I’d ever been, the medication playing an integral role slowing me down both in movement, and metabolism. Sure, I could use accountability. But how did she expect me to add something to my day when I was burning the candle at both ends?
There was nothing left of me to give.
Least of all, to myself. Or so I thought. What I didn’t expect was the personal development and the alignment with all of the professional voices I had shelved in different corners of my mind: the therapists, the personal trainers, the yoga instructor, the physiotherapist, the massage therapist, the child and youth worker, the teachers, the social workers. . . .I could go on. The biggest one that began to echo loudly was that of mindfulness, of connecting to my psyche, of understanding myself. Maybe these vastly differing paths were beginning to merge?
I opened my facebook feed in December to read a memorial written about my mentor, Andrew Levitt, and my world stopped momentarily. In that instance I was grief-stricken and overcome with emotion. It was his voice that had begun to echo so clearly these past few months. It was his leading by example and true empathy that had changed the trajectory of my career – of my mind, really. He had been the person that gave me permission to respect my intuition and truly value the connection between mind and body and the space around us. It was Andrew who had opened my eyes to the architecture of the mind. It was also Andrew that I had ignored. I had shelved those teachings along with all those other professional voices; unsure of their relevance in my life, in our financial solvency, or frankly, of me growing. Until that moment. Losing such a powerful voice and brilliant mind was devastating to many, most of all surely, his partner, Wendy, who I immediately called, despite the early weekday hour. I didn’t overthink it. I didn’t wonder about what I should do or what was appropriate to do, I just DID. The emotional connection of that phone call was all I needed to realize that all of the missed opportunities and delayed experiences, the canceled plans and denied wishes, the rejections and failed friendships, all of the obstacles that I had faced, that we, as a family, had faced, had redirected me to the path that is meant for me.
I’m learning to enjoy a life with boundaries and to be a student of my own patterns. I’m learning to reject narratives that aren’t my truth. I’m learning to BELONG to MYSELF, and am uncovering and healing my triggers, facing them and owning them. I am learning to live by MY values and not society’s. I’m learning to articulate the ways in which I’m raising myself alongside my children with the support of my partner, my therapist, my community, my close circle of friends, trusted professionals and in listening to my own intuition – a voice that is getting louder the more I create stillness for it to be heard.
“A bird sitting in a tree is never afraid of the branch breaking, because its trust is not on the branch but on its own wings.” – Charlie Wardle.
As I explore the role of Wellness Coach by sharing my own journey, mapping out where I’ve been and where I’m going, I want it to be clear that I don’t have the answers, but do know that if I’m vulnerable and welcome vulnerability, then the possibilities are limitless! If I expect my children to be kind, gentle, compassionate and respectful, I must lead by example. I must trust myself and demonstrate that confidence, and self-compassion. Brené Brown writes, in her book Atlas of the Heart,
“If we want to find that way back to ourselves and each other, we need language and the grounded confidence to both tell our stories, and to be stewards of the stories that we hear. This is the framework for meaningful connection.”
So today I choose to let go of what no longer serves me, forgive myself for the mistakes I’ve made, and vow to honour my truth along the way.
I will try to allow the people who are no longer in my life or have chosen to be absent for my journey, to leave peacefully, and will embrace new connections.
I will take ownership of my role as a parent, and know that is is not my job to make other people comfortable with how we raise our kids. Our job is to make sure our kids grow up comfortable being exactly who they are.
This year I will strive to find and keep BALANCE, and allow space in my heart only for what ALIGNS with these values.