Holding the unfolding in a crisis of identity. Daily.

The work never ends and sometimes, somedays, that's brutal. But then there's a shift, ever so slightly, and you begin to realize, it's actually incredible.

I am a couples therapist.

“You’re a couples therapist?” This was it, this was the moment I knew had been coming since September when I’d asked my husband for a divorce. It was the reason I’d stayed quiet, not gone to a lot of places where I didn’t know people. It was the reason I was questioning my identity as a therapist, all of the work I’d done with clients, the material I created, the content I’d spent years writing. The place I had been when I finally got there was the height of a career I’d spent nearly twenty years creating. It was the height of a practice I’d spent ten years building. It was the height of a marriage I’d spent 22 years in. I asked my husband for a divorce, not at the lowest point in our time together, but the highest. Which is how I knew it was time to go.

I’d changed my world, all of it, in a span of three months. Personally and professionally, I moved from a space that had felt really open and inviting prior to this point, posting and commenting on social media, taking readers through my own process of becoming more aware of a self and of building a partnership, sending out blog articles, networking and meeting people, connecting with friends. I’d gone from that space, to one that became much, much quieter, much less public, much, much smaller. I pulled in. I pulled everything in. I needed to.

And here we were, in March. I’d asked for the divorce. I’d moved, twice by then, the second time out on my own. The divorce had been finalized in February and I was ready to start poking my head out of the cavern I’d laid waiting for comfort in. The questions I’d asked myself in that time became the company I kept. Internally, and seemingly never ceasing, they just kept coming, and without answer. What I was both looking for in myself, and hiding from, I was going to have to face.

So as I stepped out, into the world, it wasn’t that I hadn’t already asked myself, who I was as a couples therapist now that I was divorced. It wasn’t as though I was unfamiliar with the thoughts about what people, other professionals, or my clients would think, or what I could possibly have to offer the world from here. No, it was the realization that those questions existed at all and the fears of those perceptions that were, and still sometimes are, an absolute reality at a time when my sense of self had been so shaken.

So I stepped out, knowing it was coming, just not quite how. And here I was in the moment it hit. I braced, hard, the second the question came flying out of her mouth. I knew the follow-up.

“You’re a couples therapist?”
“I am,” I responded. “Here we fucking go…,” I thought.
“And you’re divorced?”
Deep breath. There’s no getting out of this, Lis, just stay steady.
“I am.”
I stood, my gaze soft, but my eyes firmly connected with hers.
“God, just fucking go for it already…,” I thought.
“Do your clients know?” And…there it is.
“Most do,” I replied.
“You see the irony in that, right?”
“Oh wow, fuck. We’re still doing this. We’re still here. Okay,” ran through my head. Big smile, super big. “Absolutely.”

I’m ten months out from that moment. Every day, one day further out from that first and really, really grateful to have been able to hold on some days to sometimes nothing other than time itself, knowing it doesn’t stop, a warm bath, and flannel sheets to soothe the nervous system.

This is an unfolding, this life.

All to get closer and closer to where nothing sits between the self and the soul, except presence. To feel it, to get to it and untold love, you have to hold it. I’ll be writing about this and the places the unfolding takes me. Maybe it’ll take you to a new place too.

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