Dread, Fully Alive, and the Dinner Party

Useful tools for exploring your values

I find myself caught in a tug of war between a hippie in a long, colorful flowing skirt, with flowers in her hair and a woman in a tight bun and navy blue power suit, who expresses her individuality by choosing a pump in a “fun” color. The hippie says, “Rest, surrender, something amazing will come your way.” The businesswoman says, “You have no plan. You need a plan. It’s time to effing figure it out.” Amazingly, all of the cartwheels, dancing, and gardening have served the hippie well and she is holding her own against the business woman’s CrossFit arms in the tug of war. At least for now, she may even hold the advantage 

One month ago today, I started my leave of absence from work. A viral illness that has been slowly progressing through our household has prevented it from being the idyllic frolic with the plants and soil that I had imagined. That said, I have been able to complete a couple rituals to mark this time that likely marks a big change in my identity. One of the rituals I performed was guided by a divination session. I went for a long hike to listen to my ancestors. When I returned, I listened to them and myself to create a “graduation speech” so to speak. A couple weekends ago, I buried my feet in the ground near our most vigorous elderberry bush who is an ally of mine in this season. I read this speech to myself: 

Congratulations, kid! You made it. You accomplished what you set out to do. Six-year-old Amy and fifteen-year-old Amy and twenty-two year old Amy are so proud of what you’ve done and so pleased with the adventures you’ve had along the way. You’ve traveled to Tanzania, Israel, Haiti, Vietnam, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Uganda for medical work. You’ve been changed by those lands and the relationships you formed. You saved lives, set broken bones, reset irregular heart rhythms, helped people get sober, helped people believe that they could make the changes needed to heal. 

Leaving now isn’t a failure. You are acknowledging that you have wounds that need healed before you can be an effective healer. You are acknowledging that the work you are doing right now feels very disconnected from healing and disconnected from your gifts. Right now, you might feel weak for not being able to endure, but it takes a lot of courage to step-off the well-trod path and let yourself be guided by something more true. 

You have proved to yourself that you are brave enough to doctor through a pandemic. You have shared your struggles in medicine so others might feel less alone. However, your misery does not liberate anyone else and you are called to step into something powerful. You are the flood bringer. It is time to listen and learn what that means. You are here to recover the old medicine of your mother’s father’s people. You are to let your jungle find you, live the old ways, and learn the songs of the grandmothers. It is time to let go of being worried about getting in trouble. It is time to be a tall poppy. It is time to sparkle. 

Your mind and body are ready to soak up the sun, immerse in wild waters, submerge into the earth. You have gifts for others to bring back from the wilds. The work you have done has blown you around profoundly. From that, you have built a strong root system that will allow you to grow tall and bloom proudly. The traits that made you a doctor are still there. Intelligence, hard work, discipline, and a deep desire to help, and to be of use. The journey you have been on has helped you to learn surrender, to let go of certainty, to give yourself and others grace, to listen to the said and unsaid, the seen and unseen. Now is the time to plant yourself in holy ground and soak in the reality that that which you seek is also seeking you. 

Now that I have officially crossed the threshold into this in between time, I find myself really curious about the values that should guide my next moves. I think many of us, but perhaps women particularly, are taught the importance of being “good”, a good daughter, spouse, employee, mother, etc. As you may know, I think the ways we are connected to each other are profoundly important. However, when you are focused on what others want from you, it makes it more difficult to boil down to what you want. 

I find myself grappling with that dreaded word should. I don’t think I am as swayed by it as many, but it still has its pull. I was talking to my oldest daughter about this idea, which does, in fact, look like this chart in my mind. 

She pretty much lives in the top left and bottom right corners. I definitely have a lot of things that I am bad at that I think are pretty fun. For example, I love playing sports, but I am the worst badminton player in the world. That knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail who has had all of his limbs chopped off would be favored in the match-up. Where things get tricky is those things that we are good at, but don’t enjoy. I don’t know about you, but I am not sure I realized this was a category until fairly recently. I assumed that if I was good at it, I must enjoy it. 

So in this in-between time, I am trying to get really clear on what my values are, what I want more of in my life, what I want to create more of in my life. Fortunately, I have been stumbling on some simple guide posts that I have been finding helpful. I hope you will find them helpful too. In a recent interview with Devon Price, author of The Laziness Lie, he noted that there are three main pillars of “The Laziness Lie”. 

1. My worth is tied to my productivity

2. I cannot trust the signals my body is sending me

3. I can always be doing more 

I definitely find that I believe those three statements more often than not. 

He notes that when you are in those times in life where you want to be doing something, but “just can’t”. It’s valuable to get curious about why rather than powering through or being hard on yourself. However, once you get past burnout, you can’t just return to doing things as you did before. In order to find the way forward, he suggests two fairly straightforward things. First, pay attention to what you dread, then stop doing those things. Second, when you find yourself resenting someone, it is usually because you are doing too much. For example, if you are resenting a colleague for leaving on time, the problem isn’t really that person. Rather, the problem is your boss who is expecting you to stay and do uncompensated work. If you refuse to do uncompensated extra work, you will likely not resent your co-worker. How much risk you can take in refusing this extra work depends on a wide variety of life circumstances.

These first two, dread and resentment, help signal to you what you’d like less of in your life. To find what you’d like more of, try to think of five times in your life that you’ve felt the most joyously alive. For me, one of them was a barn dance with my family. It was full of community, laughter, playfulness, music. 

Another tool for finding your values might be even easier.

Pooja Lakshmin MD

shared a really fun way to explore your values. Imagine someone gave you some money to use to host a dinner party. Where would it be? Who would be there? What would you eat? What would you do? I love this one, because it can easily evolve as our values evolve. The dinner party you plan at 55 is probably pretty different than the one you planned at 27. However, if you are looking at a time you felt really alive when you were 8, the values that were fulfilled at that time might have shifted substantially by the time you’re 68.

Right now, the values that are most alive to me are connection (to both human and non-human persons), the wild, playfulness, laughter, movement, emotional openness, and perhaps a dash of fairy dust. How about you? 

• What do you dread these days? 

• What is causing resentment in your life?

• What would your dinner party look like? 

• What values stand out for you as you explore these ideas? 

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Stay tuned, I have some fun in the works. This month, the plant of the month is Plantain. We’ll look at mound-planting and how all of life can be a prayer. I’m also thinking about interviewing my kids for their advice on healthcare policy. Expect zingers like, “Wait, why isn’t dental insurance part of medical insurance?”