Like most 24-year-olds, I had no clue what I was doing with my life, so I took that job because I didn’t have many other options or clarity. 

Plus, I needed and wanted health care benefits to get myself into therapy.

It was my first “grownup job,” and every day, I wore compact heels and dark pantsuits, sat under fluorescent lights in my cubicle, drank coffee out of styrofoam cups with Splenda, and joined throngs of people (also in black suits and compact heels) on the Metro every morning and night, commuting to and from my home, a dark basement apartment on Capitol Hill. 

I was miserable. 

It was the start of my relational trauma recovery journey. Which a confluence of events had triggered during my time as a Peace Corps volunteer in Uzbekistan. So the misery was, in part, due to a decompensation I was having due to memories coming back and my defenses no longer working to keep the intolerable feelings at bay. 

But that time was also a chapter in my journey where I, quite frankly, felt like a Stranger in a Strange Land. 

DC didn’t fit me. 

And I didn’t fit DC. 

I was out of place, and my soul knew it, but my brain couldn’t articulate it. 

What do I mean?

When the Life You’re Living Doesn’t Fit: A Turning Point in Trauma Recovery

Well, what I know now is that I’m a jeans and nice blouse, ballet flats kind of woman. 

A clinician and entrepreneur who detests commutes and gets instant headaches under fluorescent lights and is utterly drained and irritated by “open office spaces.” 

I’m immune to small talk and surface-level corporate niceties, and I think styrofoam is horrid. 

I’d rather discuss trauma, grief, anger, abuse, resilience, recovery, and thriving with frank, real talk about the messiness of life. 

And I’d rather drink my coffee from a Mason jar or my cherished Peloton coffee mug.

So I was doing good work in therapy in 2006 – my first real stint of it. I did it to stabilize my trauma symptoms, but no matter how much work I did in there, I was soul sick. No, this isn’t a clinical term, but it is an appropriate term for when we feel hopeless, helpless, and dejected.

Something felt very wrong (and it wasn’t just the unprocessed trauma flooding back).

I was a round peg in a square hole back in DC.

The literal environment didn’t suit who I was at my core. And DC isn’t to blame – DC is great in its own way! – it just wasn’t my place.

After a series of magical and synchronistic events, I got introduced to and visited Esalen. I then made the massive decision to quit my corporate job, let go of my apartment and sell most of my possessions, and move out West to Big Sur, California with a one-way plane ticket, $16,000 in savings and no plan.