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Here, you’ll find tools to facilitate change – perspectives from the frontlines of resilience, mindfulness, psychedelics, and neuroscience – with a sprinkling of pop culture. All from an integrative medicine psychologist/coach/prof who’s right by your side in this journey of growth and renewal.
🗂 This Week in Work in Progress
Status Update: Are definitions of “freedom” unique identifiers that symbolize where we’ve been as well as the path forward?
Inspiration: Guidelines on freedom from the greats.
Lighter Note: Freedom can be found in the body. Let’s dance it out.
🔔 Status Update
We’re now a couple of weeks past the US’s July 4th Independence Day celebrations, but the topic of freedom is still on my mind.
What is it exactly? What does it mean to me? To you?
Is “freedom” defined differently for each individual – a unique thumbprint that reveals our life experiences and showcases where we’ve been caught behind bars?
My father was a WWII fighter pilot – a POW, shot down in Nazi Germany. With a combo of German fluency and charisma, this Jewish American negotiated his way out of captivity.
I, on the other hand, have been blessed with a life free of the direct impact of war.
Dad and I argued a lot about freedom when I was young and ignorant of the impacts of combat. He was a hawk. I was a dove. At the ridiculously young age of 10, I was drawing political cartoons (very badly) for the elementary school newspaper I founded, advocating for peace.
In my father’s perspective, the only way to protect our freedom was to build and maintain an unrivaled military, chock full of killing machines. Of course that was his view, given the horrors he witnessed and personally experienced.
For him, freedom was an external thing. It was about fighting the enemies “out there.”
As an American, I was protected in my younger life from the ravages of war. But living in the shadow of holocaust survivors and embedded with a POW who was never internally released from captivity, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) was the brew that built me. Ancestral and intergenerational trauma entrenched me in a different kind of prison.
Physically escaping that environment in my teens didn’t free me at all. For me, freedom is an internal thing. My demons dwell within.
This says a lot about privilege. I have the luxury of a relatively safe external environment when many worldwide do not. But that doesn’t make me free. My internal world is still rife with battles. The gift is that I’m able to intervene.
Even our professions bear the imprint of our beliefs about freedom.
After the war, my father returned to his career designing military aircraft. He built war machines to defeat external foes. He also lived out his sci-fi fantasies of a peaceful future by helping NASA build the original lunar landing module.
My mission – as a therapist, coach, meditation teacher, and professor – has always been to help others (and myself) break free of internal constraints. I live out my sci-fi fantasy of a peaceful future by nurturing the ability to live and love freely, with an open, compassionate heart.
Over the course of my life, I only saw my Dad cry twice. Once was after the 9/11 al–Qaeda attacks on the Pentagon (his work home) and the World Trade Center (the gleaming symbol of our personal home, Manhattan). He tearfully told me he’d devoted his life and work to preventing this. He’d fought and then toiled to protect me from this type of senseless tragedy.
And I am grateful for that. I’m grateful for his service and the mission that guided his work life ever since.
At the same time, that tireless focus on external danger blocked awareness of his own, individual behavior as well as his own internal suffering. We only hurt others when we’re suffering ourselves. When he died at 94, he was still bound in chains.
So, yes, we all define freedom differently and the journey from confinement toward release is unique and personal.
Luckily, there are ways to throw off the shackles internally, which is often the only area of life where we actually have a choice.
In the next issue of WiP, we’ll look at tools to increase personal freedom. For now, I’d ask you to consider where you’re imprisoned and where a bit more freedom could yield outsized results. You can meditate or journal on this with a simple question (e.g., “Where am I stuck right now?”) or intention (e.g., “For me, freedom means…”). Or prime your mind with a similar question before bed and note how that manifests in dreams.
Till we meet again, become an internal explorer and honor the stories your psyche has to tell.
Where in your life do you feel constrained? What small step can you take to begin to break free? Please share. I’d love to know!!!
💡 Inspiration
“The truth is, no one of us can be free until everybody is free.”
― Maya Angelou
“May we think of freedom, not as the right to do as we please, but as the opportunity to do what is right.”
― Peter Marshall
This week, two quotes to consider.
The first strips bear the individualistic, me-first (or me-only) societal drive toward “happiness” with which many of us – especially in the Western world – are indoctrinated.
If current events have taught us anything, it’s that war and disparity don’t stay put at borders. That’s the external reality.
And living in a world where many succeed but many suffer needlessly affects all of us – our mental health and well-being. That’s the internal reality.
But I will say that Maya Angelou’s quote feels oppressive to me. While I’ll stand by the truth of it, I feel helpless to the task. How can I impact a problem so monumental?
This is where Marshall’s quote comes in. Every one of us can strive every day – every moment – to question what is right and to follow that path. We will fail repeatedly. But then comes the next moment…and the next. Always a chance to do better.
That’s what this quote triggers in me. What does it say to you?
🤡 On a Lighter Note
Heavy stuff today. Let’s feel freedom. Dance it out with …
Time travel back to 1990. Throw on something plaid and a bright orange puffer jacket, and groove on Freedom with George Michael.
The queen, Beyonce (with Kendrick Lamar), as she blares “I’mma keep runnin’ cause a winner don’t quit on themselves!”
Lin-Manuel Miranda, rapping out My Shot from Hamilton, demanding freedom for himself and his fledgling country.
Even if you can’t find it anywhere else, you can find freedom somewhere in your body. So dance it out, IRL or in spirit.
Want more ways to find freedom? Quit what no longer serves you. Marie Kondo can serve as your guide.
🎀 It’s a Wrap
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Until next week, take care of yourself and someone else if you’re able.
"I live out my sci-fi fantasy of a peaceful future by nurturing the ability to live and love freely, with an open, compassionate heart." That's a pretty good sci-fi vision. If there is anywhere I feel constrained its in my inability to fully give myself to that same vision.
*adds songs to playlist* - S Factor would call these “champion” energy songs - thanks for the recs!