Part of me feels like I should come clean about something. All this soap box espousing about raising our consciousness and waking up and becoming more self aware sounds inspiring, doesn’t it? Did I forget to mention that it makes life harder? Yes, that’s right. Not easier. Harder.

When you are committed to personal growth, or perhaps you naively just want to live a more creative life, things are gonna get rough. You’re a boat rocker. You want more than the other people around you want for you, or believe you are capable of. Those people you lived with growing up are not going to like this. The people you work with are not going to like this. The friends you know you can count on aren’t going to like it. They have an agenda, consciously or not, and it is not your agenda. 99.9% of the time it will not leave any space for you to stretch your wings – it will be all about slowing and deferring any change. To the best of their ability.

In an interview years ago, I remember Oprah talking about her friendship to Gayle, saying that she stayed “after the leap,” and that the majority of people will not. But she didn’t know that would be the case when she decided to up her game and strive for success. None of us realized what it would mean to develop healthy boundaries, to speak up when we became aware of dysfunction around us. We didn’t know that it would be so challenging for those around us. We didn’t know.

Heads up: your relationships are going to fall apart. There is a popular tarot deck called This Might Hurt. Haha! While I am not a fan of the artwork and don’t use this deck, I sure love the name of it. Yes. The tarot is a brilliantly designed tool for self development. Practicing with it will open you up and make you more self aware and much more intuitive. And it will hurt; that’s a guarantee. That genie ain’t goin’ back in that bottle.

I remember at one point in my 20’s thinking all my families’ troubles were caused by my father’s alcoholism…and then a decade or two later realizing that some of us are autistic or had ADHD. And then learning about narcissism. And it goes on and on. You see it and you can’t unsee it.

The truth will out. What you think today is the cause of your frustration, or your unhappiness, or your illness will open a can of worms. Today is the tip of the iceberg and it is melting faster than you can imagine. And you are going to have to take responsibility for having started the fire underneath. Oh, and learn to swim…

I was in my sixties when my father died and my four siblings stopped speaking to me. I was recently divorced, grieving and more isolated than I ever could have imagined. My son wanted little to do with me. When I lost my elderly dog I grieved like never before; I suspect it was a cumulative grief. I could justify all of this discord; I had learned through hardship how to set boundaries and they did not like the new me – the person they could no longer gaslight and manipulate. I had been told one too many times that I would never be able to take care of myself. I had better stay. I had better be quiet. I had better be nice.

My darling Mother used to say to me, “It must be lonely at the top, Susan…” It was leveled as an accusation. She didn’t understand why I was so different, so confrontative. Obviously I thought I was better than the rest of them. But that wasn’t true. I saw them as remarkable, brilliant, so very full of potential and settling for so little. I wanted them to join me on this journey. I didn’t want to be lonely; I still don’t. Please don’t leave me…yet in truth, I was leaving them. I had seen through the superficiality of their choices and I wanted deeper connection. I wanted to matter. I wanted them to know that they mattered. Really, really mattered. But they didn’t see what I saw.

Almost every person I have ever loved has struggled with addiction. Eventually I have lost most of them, either to death, or by extricating myself from their insatiable neediness in order to have some semblance of peace. I stopped housing them. I stopped driving them. I stopped working for them for almost nothing. I stopped giving them money. I stopped defending them. I stopped allowing them to use me.

Codependency is my addiction. It is theirs, also, masked by alcohol or drugs or gambling. By the grace of God I have not had those to overcome. But once I realized this and stopped tolerating bad behaviors, I woke up and saw the part I played in the destruction. And I can’t do it anymore. I’ve had to re-evaluate my values, my priorities, my own behavior. And yes, it is lonely at the top. But something deep inside me knows that this is the only dance in town, this seeking for the truth, this prioritizing mental health, this commitment to growing up.

Decades ago in meditation I heard “do not squander your father’s inheritance.” I dismissed that as I knew my father had no money to leave his children. What the heck did that mean? Now I wish I could remember when I heard that, but it still applies today. Today I would write that sentence differently: Do not squander your Father’s inheritance.