I left then. Somehow I got separated from her and I've been chasing her since. There's something elusive. A kind of knowing I can't quite grasp.
This is the story of Anna.
At ten, her family sent her to boarding school where she stayed until she was eighteen. Although it was hard and a bit of a shock (to say the least), Anna became really good at adapting. When the time came she went to university, completed with a good degree, and landed a good job. She was set.
By any external measure, her story since then would be described as one of accomplishment. She worked hard, earned the respect of her colleagues. She bought a house, gathered a great group of friends and by the time she was approaching her 40’s it looked like she had a life, that from the outside, was exactly as she wanted it.
But Anna doesn't live on the outside.
On the inside, she is unsettled. She knows she is always striving toward something - although she can’t name what. She feels vaguely lonely in rooms full of people who admire her. Quietly afraid that it's all going to unravel — that some inner truth will out, and everyone will finally see what she has always suspected about herself.
She doesn't talk about this. Why would she? What they see is success.
Here's what's actually happening.
When we learn early that belonging requires performance, that love comes with conditions and that safety must be earned rather than assumed, the body learns this too. Not as a thought but as a shape. This shape is unique and individual. In Anna’s case there was a low-level bracing in her body, places that were gripped, and then a vigilance that never fully switched off, along with a striving that can't find its floor.
Still, the mind is clever. It finds ways to compensate. Anna builds the career, produces the results. But some part of her body is still ten years old, still scanning for safety, still not quite sure it's allowed to stop.
This waiting for the other shoe to drop is not a willpower problem and it’s not really a confidence problem although it might look and feel like it. It is not going to be solved with another qualification, another promotion, or another coaching programme focused on skills and strategy. It’s not something that can be wrestled with in a ‘mind over matter way’.
The body has its own timeline. Its own pace. Its own knowing.
The thing Anna discovered, the thing that matters: the fear she had been bracing against wasn't as confronting as the bracing itself. When she turned toward it, gently, with support, with her body included in the room, it began, slowly, to move.
The body is wise. And, given the chance, it is kind.
