what if there’s nothing wrong with you?
Three weeks after Moxy’s heart stopped, I returned to work. My then-manager, Alice*, was incredibly supportive and understanding, but her hands were tied: if I failed to start work on the imposed date, I’d lose my job.
Frankly, a big part of me didn’t care—I’d already lost what mattered most. And I doubted I’d be able to work at all when I was barely functioning.
But I decided to try, mostly because Alice had been so kind; I felt I owed her time to at least find a replacement. I told myself if things got too hard, I could always quit. And since my position was remote, it meant I could continue existing—for the time being—on my parents’ couch, in my unwashed pajamas, surrounded by stacks of books on death and grief, and heaping mounds of Kleenex.
Alice and I agreed I could take baby steps and ease my way back into the swing of things. At a fraction of my usual pace, I found I could continue writing about satellites and their capabilities. I could still use these things called words and arrange them in a way that looked purposeful, even though I barely knew what I was typing through my tears and brain fog. I could still (apparently) pull off being a passable human.
What I could no longer manage was leading group calls, the kind where I’d have to guide the discussion and formulate meticulous, multi-layered strategies. The people I worked with were literally ex-NASA rocket scientists—industry-leading, overachieving geniuses who demanded nothing short of excellence. There was no way I could bullshit my way through a meeting—and heaven forbid I start weeping on Zoom.
As if the many tentacles of grief weren’t hard enough—the abject despair, the intrusive thoughts, the insomnia, and the whole no-will-to-live thing—I was now starting to have panic attacks. My hands would go clammy, my body would shake, I’d lose my vision and breath, and nearly pass out.
This is when the chorus of my thoughts spiraled ever deeper into shame, the litany of my failures as a “working professional” and as a human in general streaming through my head like ticker tape. What the hell was wrong with me? How could something like giving a presentation—something I’d done many times before—undo me like this? After the trauma of Japan, it would be freakin’ PowerPoint that broke my mind? PowerPoint?!?
My mum wanted me to quit my job. She had an up close and personal view of what I was going through and was already spinning her wheels trying to keep me tethered to life. “They’ll find someone else,” she told me. “This isn’t worth it.”
It was right around this time I’d started reading Tara Brach’s book, Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha, and actually doing her guided meditations. At first, body scanning made me feel worse—instead of numbing or feeling disassociated from my body, now every sensation was heightened, pulled into sharp focus. It’s how I learned to sit on the ground before passing out because I could feel it coming on—the dizziness, the sudden weakness, and the loss of feeling in my hands and feet.
“The trance of unworthiness intensifies when our lives feel painful and out of control. We may assume that our physical sickness or emotional depression is our own fault—the result of our bad genes or our lack of discipline and willpower. We may feel that the loss of a job or painful divorce is a reflection of our personal flaws. If we had only done better, if we were somehow different, things would have gone right.”
I don’t remember now why I didn’t submit my resignation at that point—if it was because I was dreading breaking the news to Alice, or trying to hold on until the holiday break, or adjusting to the truth that the self I’d been was well and truly gone, and never coming back.
What I do remember is coming out of one of Tara’s meditations when a brand new thought—a thought that had never, ever entered my brain before—occurred to me: What if there’s nothing wrong with me? What if every single adverse bodily reaction, every fear-based thought, every confusing behavior I’d ever had could be traced back to a logical beginning? One that would adversely affect anyone who’d experienced the exact same thing, not just me?
It was like I could feel tiny bursts in my brain—all these resurfaced, negative memories linked to this one gigantic, false story (there’s something inherently wrong with me) popping like soap bubbles and dissipating into the ether.
What if these responses actually pointed to what was right with me? In truth, I didn’t feel connected to my job at all, even before losing Mox. It was highly technical, cerebral work (a good chunk of which I didn’t fully understand), where money and status were used as incentives (this being Silicon Valley, after all), and the majority of folks I interacted with were aggressively Type A personalities with prized intellects, but low emotional/relational intelligence. And here I was—a highly sensitive, empathetic liberal arts major who had never been a top science (or math) student—speaking a different language, working (essentially) invisibly, in an environment with no heart. No soul. (At least, not mine.)
My body was screaming for attention after a lifetime of being ignored, neglected, abused, and dismissed. It was signaling to me, in every way it could, I was in the wrong place. What I was doing was not aligned with who I was and where I was at. And I was finally listening—actually listening, and not judging.
I could no longer pretend. I could no longer be a good little worker who could contort myself to fit any person, any job, any situation and call it “being flexible” like it was a good thing. I could no longer not be myself—and I was finally, finally starting to get a sense of who that was, what that meant.
Then I realized I was crying. But in this instance, it wasn’t from grief. It was the recognition this was the first time in my life I’d offered myself sincere and heartfelt self-compassion. I’d witnessed myself and my experiences through a wider lens.
I’d just been through something terrible. Life-shattering. I was still coming around to the idea that I’d have to continue without Moxy, the one who’d loved me most, that all the minutes without him by my side would continue compiling, taking me farther and farther away from him. I was doing my best to cope. I had no guide, no frame of reference. Why wouldn’t this experience be worthy of compassion? Why wouldn’t I treat myself as a friend who was going through a hard time?
“The way out of our cage begins with accepting absolutely everything about ourselves and our lives, by embracing with wakefulness and care our moment-to-moment experience….Clearly recognizing what is happening inside us, and regarding what we see with an open, kind and loving heart, is what I call Radical Acceptance. If we are holding back any part of our experience, if our heart shuts out any part of who we are and what we feel, we are fueling the fears and feelings of separation that sustain the trance of unworthiness.”
This new thought pattern was curious, gentle. It opened me up instead of shutting me down. It felt soft, and yes—loving. And it was a turning point.
No, I didn’t start magically loving leading meetings or returning to my old levels of productivity and perfectionism. I didn’t immediately stop having panic attacks or disassociating. I also didn’t end up quitting—not for another six months. Enough time to train two new colleagues, enough time for Alice to quit (!), enough time to find my feet and map a way forward, one more aligned with my spirit.
Because what did start changing was my internal landscape, tiny invisible ripples underneath the surface—how I related to myself, my experiences, and the world around me. The inner grip that had me by the throat ever-so-slowly released, and my landscape took on a different hue: so much more light, so much more space. My grief was far less exacerbated by the heaviness of unworthiness.
And as my heart opened up more, and my connection with myself grew, I started noticing the miracles—all the signs of connection with Mox, with Spirit, with this inner pulse of aliveness too vast to belong to just me. The Río Abajo Río, the river beneath the river, which had been waiting for me all along.
Now it’s your turn to ask: What if there’s nothing wrong with you?
“You, yourself, as much as anyone in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.”
What does your inner landscape feel like? Come share yourself with us.
