In River to Ocean: Living in the Flow of Wakefulness,
you will find “Stories from the field…” that tell real-life experiences that reflect the topics of each of the
9 Aspects of Wakefulness. The stories are popular and inspiring lessons of change and growth.
Now, Harbor Glow Holistic invites you to share your
“Story from the field…” to inspire and help others.
Use the form below to submit an experience where you had a wake-up call moment that inspired you or a story of living wakefully. By submitting your story, you give Harbor Glow Holistic permission to publish your story on our website, blog, and in future publications.
We need your contact information to get in touch but if you would like to have your story published anonymously, please inform us of that choice in the form.
Stories from the field…
The following Story from the field is about finding your true self…
A few weeks before my 51st birthday, with very few previous thoughts about my being transgender, I realized with a profound simplicity that I am. As that fascinating comprehension dawned on me with astonishing clarity, a butterfly careened past me on the path I was hiking. It turned as if to get my attention, then continued on its way, leading me for several minutes down the trail. I watched in amazement as it fluttered by, its synchronistic appearance reflecting my sense of release from the perplexing chrysalis of my life to that point. Struggling to be a woman when I felt like a man, I had unconsciously wrapped myself in a cocoon of conflicted and confusing emotions, beliefs, and choices. At that moment, the mystery that was me began to unfold.
So much about my life – the choices I had made, the response to me from others, the feeling of never quite fitting in anywhere, the sense of being incomplete, of questioning my purpose and my belief in God – unexpectedly became clear.
Before that moment, I had been looking for something to define my life, a search I had often blindly followed in hopes of feeling whole – a search filled with internal frustration, turmoil, and discontent, with starts and stops too many to recount. Along the way, I learned how to appear on the surface as a grounded, joyful, and authentic person, a facade to show to the world that I had it all figured out. But appearances can often be deceiving; no more so than when trying to be something you aren’t to fit into the expectations of gender, and more important, society’s insistence that you do.
Searching for my elusive true self shaped my life in crucial ways, leading me on a path of destiny and fate, full of mystery and beauty, and at the same time tremendous uncertainty, pain, and loss. In the process, I followed a road less traveled that took me to places beyond imagination, unknowingly preparing me for the ultimate unfolding of my life’s purpose.
Life for most people is a perplexing romp filled with passages, crucibles, and turning points as we travel our map of destiny. Whether it’s a hero’s journey or a spiritual quest, or both; whether we know it or not; whether it is self-validation, the meaning of life, or the existence of God we search for – we are all on a seeker’s path looking for our own holy grail.
My journey just happens to have a significant twist, a seemingly cosmic joke sprinkled with dollops of irony, contradiction, and quirks of fate, all verging on the absurd and sometimes hard-to-believe; and yet, very real.
After years on a winding and obstacle-filled path looking for answers to my confusing life, when I finally figured out who I am at my core, I quickly realized that as straightforward as my realization was to me, living that truth would be anything but simple.
Although everything suddenly made more sense, the male essence within me had been concealed for so long it was as foreign to me as the alien who bursts from the stomach of a movie character. After a lifetime of seeking, I had finally found myself. But who was the self I had found?
Shortly after my butterfly moment that day on the trail, as I was dressing to meet friends for my birthday dinner, I glanced in the full-length mirror in my bedroom. I froze for a moment, jolted by the awareness that for my entire life when I looked in a mirror, I never really saw my “self.” What I saw instead were two of me. First, I would see how I looked to others as a woman; and then in my mind’s eye, I would imagine if they saw me as a man. And always – always – deep, deep in my being, I held a hope that everyone would see me as the latter, even when I knew I needed to appear as a woman.
That night, for the first time, I saw only the man. I saw the true me; the me who had hidden behind a mask for nearly 50 years, who had avoided looking at my reflection, not wanting to see what I did not want to be. And I realized to my core that everything that I had built my life on was a lie. All the incongruencies, the misalignment, the denial of who I am, the stories that kept me awake at night – and those I told myself so I could sleep – were all based on a deceit that I had innocently, but effectively perpetuated. Trying to fit the picture expected of me, I became very good at living a lie I didn’t even know I was telling.
I had spent most of my life seeking understanding. Looking at the man in the mirror reflecting my true self, I finally began to understand my seeking.
The following Story from the field is about family relationships…
I have worked on and off with Katherine over the years, and I find her insight invaluable. I come from generations of severe trauma. We are the product of our environment, and I understand that everyone does the best that they can, given their circumstances.
Blame has diminished, and greater empathy has come through my personal investigation of my genealogy. I see patterns going back four generations of poor immigrants coming to a new country from Germany, England, and Ireland, working hard on farms in the Midwest to make a place for themselves. Amid their toils, there was happiness, I’m certain, but there was also alcoholism, addiction, physical, mental and sexual abuse, and isolation. Sudden deaths in car accidents, death of children, extramarital affairs, suicides; these are things that have always been, and I am not alone in this heavy heritage.
Being that there has been a lot of pain, many of my family have become workaholics, partly out of necessity, and out of a need to escape. There is pride in going through hardship and becoming as tough as nails. Feelings and emotions are not something that is talked about comfortably. Being sensitive is seen as a hindrance, weak, and a luxury.
My mother has always told me I think too much, but I have a curious mind, and I have always been fascinated by putting together the puzzle of the mysteries of my family.
There are many fractured relationships within my family. My father does not have a relationship with his mother because he blames her for the death of his sister in a car accident. He dropped out of school at 14, so he could go to work and get money to bring his siblings to live with their dad and step-mom. My step-grandfather, who raised me, was disowned by his mother and was only forgiven on her death-bed. Her parents raised my maternal grandmother as a farm slave, and they never told her that they loved her. My maternal grandfather was a pedophile that raped my mother from infancy until the point that she became pregnant with me at 15 to get out of the house. These are just a few of the more recent traumas.
Understanding the intense weight that all this grief had on my family, and understanding how much of that I too carry has caused me to focus on living my life as awake and aware as possible. I am forever analyzing my actions and working hard to show up how I can to help those I love. I have a family of friends that I have made in the last 20 years, and I feel an abundance of love and support from them. I am rich in friendship. That said, I live thousands of miles from my hometown and have an alien lifestyle compared to my family. I love my family, but we don’t speak frequently.
In reading “Aspect Seven, Conscious Relationships,” I started thinking about one of my half-brothers. We have never really had a relationship. We have gone years without speaking. In that branch of the family, humor and pain are intertwined. Once, when I was 15, I was having a sleepover with this brother, who is seven years younger than me, my half-sister, who is five years younger than me, and my best friend. We were hopped up on sugary soda and thought it would be hilarious to put my brother in a fancy gown, wig, and lipstick. We took a picture and watched a meteor shower. Years later, at my brother’s graduation, my family got that picture and displayed it because they thought it was hilarious to embarrass him. That made me feel guilty by association, and I was sad for him. Of course, he laughed it off.
To change these old dynamics, I was moved to reach out to him an apologize for that incident, and to let him know if he ever wanted to talk, that I am here. He barely remembered the cross-dressing photo and said it was no big deal, but he appreciated my sentiments and invited me to visit him and his family the next time I am back in town. So, now I am free of that needless guilt, and hopefully on track for working to establish a relationship with my brother, as well as doing the repair work with other members of my family.
The following Story from the field is about death and forgiveness…
True Freedom
The death of my father has been one of the most confusing times in my life. It has had me questioning what I’m even doing or why.
In the moment of his death, I sat next to him with my hand on his knee listening as his breath slowed, doing my best to push as much love and forgiveness and you-are-not-alone-ness to him. As I heard his last exhale followed by silence, I had one of the most profound experiences of my life. It was as if every wall between us disappeared. Every unspoken word was spoken. Every ounce of hidden love from one another came flooding into the open. There was no past. There was no expectation. There was nothing but one of the purest moments of “now” I have ever experienced.
I tell this story as if someone leaned over to me and whispered the meaning of life into my ear but was speaking in a foreign language. How do I not take this important lesson shown to me for granted, not even being sure what that lesson is? I was shown something that was so incredibly special but I couldn’t wrap my head around it.
Over the past year and a half I have been trying to sort this out because I want that feeling every day and in every moment of my life. I have slowly come to realize that that moment was based on true vulnerability, transparency, and forgiveness. I want to carry this on to every relationship I have in my life, no matter how small.
My father and I did not have the best relationship. When I was about two years old, he left my mother and my two brothers and me. He was an alcoholic. I grew up with a mother who worked long hours, raised by babysitters and my brothers. My mother always did an amazing job making sure we felt loved and we had full bellies. We spent a lot of time outside camping or at the beach. I fell like she really instilled gratitude into me.
We would go visit my father every other weekend. After his death, I remember more of the good times that we used to share. I don’t know why more of them didn’t stick in my memory. He had a boat, so we spent a lot of time out on the river in the summertime. Lots of pizza. Scary movies. Snow skiing. I also remember not so good times. Being left in the car outside of a bar. My dad coming home too drunk to stand up.
One of the most vivid moments is an evening when I was eleven or twelve. At my dad’s house there were two bedrooms, so one of my brothers or I would sleep on the couch. That evening it was my turn.
My stepmother and he went out drinking that evening. About 3 am they burst through the door arguing, my dad too drunk to stand.
She went to the refrigerator, grabbed all the beer and started dumping it down the sink. I remember her asking him, “Is this beer more important than me? Than your boys?”
His answer was, “Yes, God Dammit!” I laid there pretending to be asleep. Afraid.
I learned to take everything personally and knew for sure everything was my fault. My father’s unhappiness, his drinking, my mother’s unhappiness, our broken family… “I just need to stay quiet, not ask for anything, stay out of the way, and I am not important.” I have spent the majority of my life with that as an internal mantra.
Having a relationship with him was always hard. He figured if I really wanted to be a part of his life, I would come to him. I always thought he wasn’t that interested in having any sort of relationship with me because if I didn’t initiate it we would sometimes go years without talking to one another. There might be a call on birthdays, and we would go through periods of time where we would try to mend things, but as my wife describes it, our inability to talk to one another was painful to watch.
A week before he passed, he called me to say he was placed in hospice. He was going into heart failure. He wanted me to know that leaving my mom and us kids was his biggest regret in life. Something he always wished he could take back. He wanted me to know he was sorry and asked for forgiveness. My initial reaction was, no, it is my fault. I haven’t been a good son; I should have tried harder.
After a busy work week, I flew down to spend some time with him only to find that both my brothers had the same thought. By the time I arrived he had deteriorated quickly. He knew I was there but didn’t have the physical or mental ability to truly be present in a normal way. There were a couple of days that the four of us helped him navigate his letting go, both physically and mentally. My brothers had to leave for work, so when the time came, it was just my stepmother and me.
I tell you all this to explain the gravity of the moment. As my father faced his death, he wanted to make sure he asked for forgiveness. I came to know through those final moments that despite his mistakes and absence, he loved me more than anything, and that my brothers and I were his greatest source of pride. My thought that there is always tomorrow to mend relationships or to say what needs to be said was at an end.
I am grateful for this final lesson my father left me. I am eternally grateful that I was able to open my eyes to see it and truly be present to receive it. The new mantra that I will carry into every day life will be, “In the moment of forgiveness, in that moment of true vulnerability, in that moment of true transparency, in that moment of pure love…there is true freedom.”