Upright and Ready to Fly

Originally posted on Medium in response to an article on neurodivergence.

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This explains my relationship with my heart coach. Why my work with her was so refreshing… endearing. And why it became a pain-fest when I decided it was time for me to move on.

I once needed her eagerness to listen. I had not had that before. I kept it all bottled inside. Ashamed. My need to discuss deep analysis, deep patterns, and deep wonderings had never been received. But she did. She encouraged them to come out of hiding. I felt so seen.

But as I grew and matured, I needed more than her validation. I needed her to join me. Because once you find your voice, the need to go even deeper prevails. She simply didn’t have the capacity. So I finally announced that I needed more. I was ready to graduate into the world with the gift that she had given me … of being seen as an upright individual and find others who could go into the deep sea with me.

And that’s when things got ugly. It’s where she tried to break me. Telling me all the reasons why I was not ready to leave her. Out of all the years of her listening and me begging her to substantively join the conversation… to meet me in my world of deep sea patterns and insights… she could only scratch the surface. She doesn’t have the gene.

Call it autism. Call it giftedness…a deep intellectual appetite. Call it whatever that speaks to a capacity to know a lot to only want to know more. She just doesn’t have it. And in her not having it, she wanted to reduce me to her toolbox. Where everything is a nail. But I’m not just a nail. I’m also a screw and a bolt. A range of fasteners wanting to be both upright and expansive (forgive me if my mix metaphors are working against me). And now in her gift of giving me wings, she doesn’t want me to fly.

So either she flies away with me or she lets me fly alone because I have more of the world to see… now that I can clearly see myself.

In closing, I understand. When I read your words… I understood. Because when the outer world doesn’t match your inner, you learn to repress it, to fake it and to sometimes try and forget it.

One day I will be able to tell this story without all the analogous fumblings but for now I want to acknowledge her gift to me. The gift you speak of when you speak of this boyfriend… the one, who for the first time, wanted to know more about the deepest part of you.

Thank God for your boyfriend and my heart coach. Thank God that we were gifted with the opportunity to come out of hiding… to stand upright and boldly in the world with all the depth and richness that we have to offer!!

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