Escape from the Briar Patch

A brief recap of my prayer fast and some reflections on being "not good enough" at work

I’m back from my prayer fast in Wales and back to work as of yesterday. I’m sure many of you are eagerly awaiting an update about the fast. I’ll share a bit about the nuts and bolts of the fast today and I plan to wait a few months to share the full story about the more spiritual aspects of the fast. My return to work also brought some revelations and big feelings, so I thought I’d share about that as well. Today’s newsletter was actually written right before it was published, so it will be more stream of consciousness and less polished than I usually am with the excellent editorial skills of

Karla Walsh

, who is also off on an adventure.

Trust was one of the big lessons from this fast, and it started well before I left home. When I found out about this fast, I didn’t have a valid passport and was scheduled to work four shifts during the time of the fast. That was seven weeks before I was scheduled to travel. Many of you probably know that getting a passport quickly has required miracles for many people and even the expedited passports have been taking 7-9 weeks from when they receive them. I got my miracle, and my passport actually arrived two weeks before my departure date.

A swollen waterfall after the heavy rains on my fast

When I arrived at the airport, everything went smoothly, bags checked, at the gate with time to spare, and then onto the plane. We sat on the plane for about half an hour before they announced that the flight had been delayed three hours and would not arrive in New York until after my New York to Manchester flight had already departed. I started working the phones with Delta, and miraculously, they got me on a flight from Minneapolis to Paris, then Paris to Manchester, which was leaving about thirty minutes after I got off the phone. With that really quick switch of flights, I knew it would be a miracle if my bags arrived with me.

Unfortunately, my bags making it was not one of the miracles of the trip. However, they found my bag quickly, then the challenge was how to get the bag to us at our remote location at Spirit Horse in Wales. Luckily, DHL was able to deliver my bag to the local post office and thankfully, it arrived the day before we went out on our fast. That bag included all of my camping gear (tarp, sleeping bag, wool blanket, heavy coat) and my ritual offerings, so it’s arrival was key to being able to safely participate in the fast, especially given how much it rained during the fast.

In the three days before we fasted, we discussed a lot of the emotional and spiritual things we were each taking with us to grapple with on the fast (more on this in the in depth update to come). We had some wander time and sit in nature time. My favorite activities were bathing in the beautiful waterfalls and relaxing in the sauna.

The Women’s Lodge at Spirit Horse, where I stayed before and after my fast

The wildest part of the fast was the last day, when we were to head back to our group. At daybreak, a huge storm rolled through. Here, in the midwestern US, storms typically blow over in about an hour, so my mind sort of assumed that would happen in Wales too. The storm went on for at least 6-8 hours and caused floods and an amazing swell of the waterfalls in the area. More to come on floods, Oshun, Persephone, pomegranates, caves, dragonflies, and prayer in the in-depth story to come.

I left the fast feeling patient, radiant, and really connected to what I want. When I got home, I had received a letter that a formal complaint had been filed against me, that threw all of that goodness off kilter, and I felt nauseous and a little panicked over the weekend. Now that I have a better memory about that case and a better understanding about the process for dealing with the complaint and the support I have in facing the complaint, I’m feeling much more settled and secure again.

Yesterday at work was a very busy day, not necessarily extraordinary, but really busy for pretty much the whole day. As I was running around, trying to care for everyone and keep things moving, it hit me, “I will never be good enough here.” There will always be someone expecting me to see people faster and someone else expecting me to spend more time with them. There will always be someone expecting me to know everything. There will always be someone expecting me to never make a mistake. There will always be someone expecting me to have a home for the homeless and a safe place for someone who is agitated and violent and compassion for those who disrespect me and, and, and… I realized that this was what was so overwhelming about the pandemic for me, was that it felt that I was getting farther and farther from “good enough” and most of the things pushing me farther from it were beyond my control.

Now, some of you might say that defining “good enough” is an inside job. That would be so delightful if my natural inclination were rooted enough to know I did my best and feel satisfied with that regardless of what others thought of my actions. It’s definitely something I’m working toward. In fact, it’s something I feel like I’m making legitimate progress toward, but it’s not where I am now. Even very confident and/or self-compassionate people are likely to be swayed by the continuous message or the self-knowledge that the help you have to offer is not good enough, and healthcare is definitely an industry where even when I wield all of the tools at my disposal to the best of my ability, the help I have to offer is often not the help people actually need.

Is “not good enough” a message that people receive in most industries? Are there other insecurities that other industries fall into more (fear of abandonment, lack of control, etc.")? Brene Brown once told her therapist, “I feel like a turtle without a shell in a briar patch.” Her therapist responded with something along the lines of, “The solution isn’t to put the shell back on, it’s to get out of the briar patch.” Where are the briar patches in your life? How did you get out of them or how will you get out of them?