As I spend time reflecting back on all these past experiences, I find myself sitting with the various aspects of them and pausing to consider, “why was this present? What caused this behavior/pattern/belief? How did this affect me and those around me?”. With that, I am actively applying present-day experiences and insights to the various phases and expressions of my life and my identity. I share this because at the time of writing this entry, I have been exploring the likelihood of an ADHD diagnosis! I would like to note that mental health diagnoses are to be taken with a grain of salt as they are created through a pathologizing framework and are reflective of a white-dominant, patriarchal, and colonialism lens of addressing patterns of behavior. When it comes to all of this, I don’t see it through a lens of deficit. I see the label of ADHD as a unique flavor of the human experience, and one that may often be unsupported in the current framework of society.
It feels important to include this information as I take a look back on past experiences to see what conditions were impactful on my life trajectory. Currently, I don’t yet have an official diagnosis as this requires formalized neuropsych testing, but that in itself is something that I am looking into the possibility of obtaining. With that- see if you can spot the ADHD tendencies throughout my story! Now that I have more information on the ins and outs and the different ways it can express, I can certainly see the trends. Again, sharing this feels important as I aim to bring attention to the importance of addressing our needs as individuals and communities through a holistic lens!
Attending a college preparatory academy from ages 5-17 was a life experience that certainly left its impact. Even from the days of elementary school, I was immersed in a culture that emphasized college attendance as an expectation. I never even knew that not going to college was actually an option. With that, there was always immense pressure from an early stage to work towards the goals of getting good grades and experiences that would help with getting into a reputable college. So much so, that I recall there being an unnecessary level of judgment around those students who chose to attend community college instead of a traditional 4-year university. There was a notion of “being a failure” for those who chose community college, and that part of the failure was from “not having things figured out”. How much of this was my own interpretation of trying to keep up in the system compared to how much it was directly expressed, hard to say. But the feelings and beliefs were there nonetheless.
Within that individual school culture as well as within the larger culture, there was the belief of, “you go to school, then you graduate, and then you get the big successful job that brings you a lot of money that you use to support a family”. I think this is a story that many of us were told. I know that for me, feeling like I fell short of that expectation led to strong feelings of being inadequate and that I was a failure. These feelings combined with a sense of pressure that led to so many challenges of self-worth and self-esteem that would take a number of years to begin to resolve.
After moving back home to get my bearings, I landed my first “big kid” job as a personal trainer for a large-chain workout facility. Switching from sports-performance to personal training, I wanted to help people to heal and grow into an overall healthier version of themselves. In the best way that I knew how to do so at the time, I really wanted to be involved with a person’s healing journey. At the time, I understood that concept primarily through the lens of physical and mental growth and improvement. Working in sports-performance, I saw a direct correlation between the physical and mental aspects of a person’s experience, and wanted to facilitate that for a population outside of athletes.
There was initial excitement in starting this job. I felt hopeful that I would be able to support others and help them to improve their lives. That was a huge motivating factor for me, as I really felt an inner calling to help people within their journey of personal healing and growth. I was also motivated by the part of the interview that spoke to the possibility of earning $100k/year. This was predominantly a reflection of my upbringing and not reflective of my true internal motivations. Due to the circumstances I grew up in- being in a lower-income range compared to my wealthy highschool classmates- I associated financial earning with success and worth. This really impacted my already fragile sense of self and low-self esteem. I took this job title, its compensation, and the company that it was associated with as a measure of my personal value.
Part of my intention was to work at this location and eventually transfer elsewhere, like maybe Austin, TX or somewhere in CA or CO. To do that, I would have to put in my time at that location first. In accepting the job I agreed to a 12-month commitment that I would work at that location, which was a normal part of that company’s expectation for hiring. I felt an internal resistance to being “locked-in”, but I suppressed that feeling and told myself it would be fine. It was only a month before I woke up one morning feeling absolutely depressed and dreaded the thought of continuing to work in the industry for the foreseeable future. The illusion of what I wanted the role to be had fallen and I felt myself deeply disconnected from my place in life.
This feeling was a difficult one to accept as I battled with the internalized fears, doubts, and questioning my self-worth. I felt weak. I felt incapable. I felt ashamed. But deeper than any of these denser feelings, I felt like I was betraying myself from continuing in a direction that was not in alignment with something deeper within myself. In that moment, I felt like I reverted back to what I had stepped away from and that so quickly I found myself in a space of thinking, “I’ll just do this for a little bit, and then I’ll start living my life the way that I want”.
I had to make a change- difficult though it was. I went to talk to my supervisor about how I was feeling and that I wasn’t quite sure if the role was for me. The one thing I remember most from that conversation was when he said, “you gave your word that you would stay for the 12-months. I expect you to step up and be a man”. Oh the irony. The conscious and unconscious wounded parts of me were all hit in that moment. But even so, it wasn’t more powerful than the parts of myself that knew my truth and knew that I needed to change my direction and walk along a different path. So I quit.
Shortly after, I started to spend time reflecting on who I was deep down. What was the most authentic version of myself? How would I find my way there? What was my purpose? What would give my life meaning? I felt inspired to begin this journey, and wanted to share my process with others so that they might find opportunities for growth in their own lives. I thought that it could be something helpful for others, especially young adults who might feel lost after an early life of prioritizing the expectations placed upon them by family or friends.
Without much to go off of other than my own intuition and some concepts pulled from my college education, I started to formulate the areas of life that I would give attention to. The general structure was to spend time with needs related to my mental well-being, my physical well-being, and my spiritual well-being. My idea was that in growing and developing through these avenues, I would come to know my True Self. And through knowing my True Self I would come to find my purpose and a sense of fulfillment with life. I mean, it was a place to start, right?
Regarding mental and physical wellness, I had ideas that really resonated with me and that I was excited to explore. Yoga (in my understanding at the time, it was solely the physical practice), dance, climbing, fitness, learning music, reading books, learning a new language, etc. So many things felt inspiring to explore as a means to learn more about myself and to feel a connection with life. But when I approached spiritual wellness, I hit a wall. I had absolutely no clue how to explore spiritual wellness and growth.
I did not resonate with organized religion due the religious trauma from my background, but I vaguely understood that one could be spiritual without being religious. However, I had no examples to give me insight as to how that could look. Obviously a part of me believed that it held importance in the balance of personal wellness, otherwise I wouldn’t have included it in the framework of this intention. Still, I struggled to conceptualize what a spiritual connection could look like, especially since I likely still felt wounded from my experience with religion while in high school and the cultural presence in East Texas.
After hitting that block, I abandoned my project altogether. I think part of this was due to a lack of discipline/fortitude in overcoming challenges when I felt stuck or uncertain. However, I believe part of this was due to an inner knowing that I would be better off throwing some degree of caution to the wind and being less structured with it all. You learn about life by living life. I do recognize the importance of intention in order to stay focused on our processes. And there’s a fine-tuned balance between going with the flow of life and “trying to push the river”. For me at that point in life, I needed to spend time letting go of the reins a bit and to release some control over my life.
After leaving the job as a personal trainer, I took a job working at the local climbing gym, filling a number of roles within the company: desk attendant, fitness instructor, kids camp counselor, teaching climbing 101, etc. This role felt like such a joy to spend time doing as I had wanted to get involved with rock climbing for a few years prior. It gave me the opportunity to connect with a group of friends that were vastly different from the circles I had been part of before. It provided the space to explore my relationship with my body and mind, as climbing involves growing the mind just as much as the body.
The climbing gym also gave me an opportunity to get involved with yoga through the classes that were offered as part of the gym membership. Prior to that, I took a yoga class as an elective in college, and found myself deeply enjoying the experience. However, I did not keep up with the practice afterwards and it wasn’t until the climbing gym that I re-engaged with it. Through both yoga and climbing I had consistent time with my body in a way that felt relieving, expansive, fun, and nurturing.
In addition to the climbing gym, I applied for a number of other positions in the area as I needed a second job. I tried to get into places that would help me connect with emerging interests that I had, but for most of these positions, I never heard anything back. Through my own naivety and believing all the things that were told to me about employment after college, I thought that landing any job would be easy because of my college education and a bit of work experience. But the reality of things finally hit me when I couldn’t find work, even at entry-level jobs that didn’t require any college education. This was all very defeating, and I often thought, “I did what I was supposed to- why is this so hard?!”
Finally, I found a second job that was made available largely through unintentional networking. I started working at a Starbucks that a high school classmate’s ex-brother-in-law managed. It was that small connection that would get my foot in the door and get me an opportunity to work there. Other than the climbing gym, this was the only other job that gave me an offer of employment. I made do as best as I could, but I can’t deny the bitter parts of me that often said, “I’m better than this- I shouldn’t be working someplace like this”. This was very reflective of a duality that has existed within me: low self-esteem masked by an inflated sense of self-importance. Through the latter, I have at times tended towards bitterness and resentment when facing life circumstances where I feel that I’ve fallen short, failed, or have been in a role that was in my skewed perspective, “beneath me”. But over time, I embraced this particular job as best as I could and found myself eventually enjoying some aspects of the opportunity.
During all this, I lived with one of my childhood best friends and his family, and near their house was a sizable nature center with an expansiveness of trails that included a few miles of Grapevine Lake shoreline. That span of nature came to be a sacred space for me, and was a source of relief and respite from the busyness of the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex hustle and bustle. Beyond just a place to escape to, it felt like returning to something that felt akin to being at home. While walking or running the trails, I came to feel a renewed sense of connection to something within myself that felt long-since buried. Perhaps, this was the reawakening of my spiritual connection to Nature that had become dormant over time.
Growing up, my family and I spent most every spring break camping at state parks in the Texas/Oklahoma area, with one of the staple locations being Possum Kingdom (yes, just like the Toadies song, if you’re familiar. Also, “Tyler”, as in Tyler, Texas, is another one of their hits). I have a number of fond childhood memories of my time spent there, and those camping trips with family instilled a love for being in Nature in a way that I seldom got to experience outside of that setting.
At times it saddens me to say that something started to shift as I got older, most notably in middle school. Going on camping trips, I started to feel less connection to being in nature. I believe that it was because I started to feel less connected to myself. I started to bring technology with me, like my Gameboy or CD player, and spent substantial time with those when camping. I believe there were a number of reasons for that, one of them being that I used technology to hide and to pass the time as a way of “getting through it”. And by “it”, I mean life itself. There was something going on within me that brought about this desire to just get through whatever stage of life I was in, thinking that I would be happier and feel better in the next stage. Using technology then became a persistent behavior that I couldn’t separate from, even when in the outdoors.
As I’ve said previously, there’s still a lot that I’m uncovering about pieces of my childhood, but around middle school- the time that I started feeling this disconnect- is when I started feeling depressed, anxious, and a variety of other challenging experiences. But I didn’t know about what, where it came from, or how to explain it. I attribute part of it to a deep fear of my sexuality that started to present itself in a variety of ways. It wasn’t until being an adult and starting my transition that I believe that part of it was the introduction of hormones that didn’t sync up with the rest of my body. I’ll touch more on this at a later date.
I share all this because at one point in time, I had a deep connection with Nature that I then became distant from during very formative years. As a young adult trying to find my way through the world and to learn about who I was, Nature- and that specific nature center- became a space and presence that provided connection to myself and to life around me. In fact, one particular morning spent hiking those trails served as the catalyst for a major step forward in my life and would truly be a life-changing morning. Although I didn’t realize it at the time, it was a major step in my shamanic path. I had a moment of listening to the intuition of the Self that arises through relationships with nature-beings and the signs that they sometimes share…
© Kalina Crafton- A Shamanic Trans-formation and shamanicallytransformed.com, 2024. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Kalina Crafton and shamanicallytransformed.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.