When my 59 year old physician father was given three months to live four months after he’d already been cured from an altogether different cancer, I asked myself “If I found out I had only three months to live, would I be living the life I’m living right now?”
The answer from a deeply intuitive part of my belly was “HELL NO.”
My father died right on schedule three months after he was “medically hexed” by doctors who never realized that giving someone a death sentence and removing all hope is a kind of nocebo effect (nocebo meaning “I shall harm,” the opposite of the placebo effect, “I shall heal.”) I registered what happened to him as one of the saddest moments of my life, not only because he died too young, but because he had sacrificed so much to become a doctor and then worked tirelessly, got disabled from early multiple sclerosis, and then died before he even got to live very much.
I was an ambitious young woman with a baby on the way and a lot of big dreams. But I did not want to become a repeat of my father.
Many ambitious young people live for the future. That’s normal and healthy. We delay gratification in the present with the hopes to enjoy a return on that investment later on. If we’re not willing to do some hard things or sacrifice some short term hedonistic pleasure in our younger years, we’re likely to pay for it in our elder years.
But I had taken delayed gratification to masochistic extremes. I hadn’t enjoyed myself since before college at a prestigious university, where I toiled well into the midnight oil hours for four years and woke up a few hours later for early labs- so I could get into medical school and then land the residency of my dreams.
I was so unhappy and physically and emotionally unwell that I almost quit in my third year of residency, but a part of me doubled down to complete what I’d started, negotiating with miserable parts and promising that, if I was still this unhappy two years into my medical practice, I would cut my losses and quit.
Four years later, two years into my practice, I was happier than I’d been when I made that promise. I wasn’t happy, per se, but I was significantly less miserable, and the financial rewards were starting to pay dividends, so I decided to stay.
Until I was pregnant with my daughter and my father was given three months to live, when my soul said “HELL NO” to the dangerous question his diagnosis had caused me to ask.
From that moment on, a spontaneous process that most people don’t go through until they get a scary diagnosis or face their own mortality began.
I began to review my life- the good, the bad, the ugly, the triumphs, the achievements, the regrets, the mistakes, the pride, the disappointment, the delightful memories, the terrifying ones, the priorities I’d gotten right and the ones I’d failed to set straight.
That spontaneous process caused me to reorganize my entire life at the ripe old age of 36.
I wound up leaving my medical practice forever, even though I was the only income-generating partner in my 13 year marriage and had no family money to rely on.
I sold both of the homes I owned so I could afford to pay off my “malpractice tail” in order to free myself from indentured servitude. I’ve been renting ever since because I could never again qualify for a home loan.
I liquidated the retirement account I had been maxing out every year during my medical career.
I decided city life wasn’t good for my soul, so moved from my childhood home of San Diego, which blew up during the housing boom and turned into LA South, to a small town in Northern California with a population of 400 people, which is surrounded by the ocean, redwoods, mountains, and unpopulated national forest land, where I’ve been for 16 years.
I chose to sacrifice the stability, security, and status of an ambitious and prestigious medical life in order to be a full time creative- a writer, artist, entrepreneur, and stay home mother.
Now, I work about 10-15 hours per week and spend the majority of the rest of my days devoted to the relationships I sorely neglected in my earlier life and pursuing creative projects and activist causes that don’t necessarily earn me income but bring me great purpose and a sense of fulfilling my calling.
I shop at thrift stores and consignment shops instead of shopping malls and boutiques, I harvest vegetables in the garden outside and shop at Costco to save money on groceries, I cook almost all of my family’s meals, even when I’m traveling and staying in Airbnb’s, I don’t spend money on vacation except when I’m paid to teach and my travel is covered, and I rent instead of buying because homes are so expensive where I live- in order to save money.
I don’t have a lot of money in the bank or a plan for securing my future because entrepreneurial life is so unpredictable, especially after the pandemic upended my business life. And I’m not willing to do work that requires me to sell out or compromise my values. And yes- I know what a privilege it is to get to do that- and I know how many people don’t have that luxury- and I know it’s not fair.
All of those changes came from my spontaneous life review, tipped off by my father’s untimely death.
Most people don’t go through the process of an intentional life review unless they get cancer, have a heart attack, experience a stroke, get a long prison sentence, or wind up in a twelve step program that requires 12-steppers to examine the life they’ve lived so far and how their addictions have harmed themselves and those they love.
I think we should ALL review our lives long before we get old, at least once per year, to make sure we’re somewhere close to living in alignment with our truth, keeping our priorities straight, reevaluating and reexamining our values and integrity as we mature, heal, age, and gain wisdom, and continuing to dream, change, and learn as we grow.
So…I’ve created a new offering for you all- regardless of your age, your health status, your ambition levels, your financial security, your trauma burden, or the unearned privileges you were or were not born with.
It’s called YOUR IMPACT & YOUR LEGACY: Review Your Past To Reprioritize Your Future. It’s a Zoom weekend workshop November 23-24 that I’m co-teaching with Harvard psychiatrist and author of CURED Jeffrey Rediger, MD, MDiv after I get back from the 7 week work trip in Europe and Asia that we’re currently journeying on.
It’s for anyone who cares about living a full, rich, purposeful, meaningful, relationship-rich, legacy-building life you’ll feel proud and grateful to have lived. It’s for anyone of any age who is ready to muster up the moxie to look back at how you feel about your life so far, so you can be intentional about co-creating the life still ahead, with as much Self as you can free up to lead the rest of your “parts” towards a life you’ll hopefully feel sincerely grateful to have lived when you finally reach the end.
Learn more and register before here.
We recommend signing up for this workshop with a friend, family member, or growth buddy, because the workshop will light a spark for a process that might be completed in a weekend but is much more likely to be an ongoing, maybe even life long process. But of course, you’re welcome to sign up alone and find a partner in the class if you don’t have anyone else interested in witnessing your life with you- and vice versa- and you engage in a deeply meaningful, enriching life review and future-visioning.
Sure, I have some regrets, and maybe as I continue to review my life, I’ll have more. But I can honestly say that if I were to die now, I died spent. Had I continued the path I was on, I might have a dream house, a fat retirement account, and a lot more financial security. But I might have lived far less of a rich, meaningful, fulfilling, creative life in exchange for that golden handcuff bargain.
My priorities will not be the same as yours, and that’s what’s wonderful about engaging with an intentional life review process. You will discover what is YOURS- by doing some Internal Family Systems work, listening to all of your parts, and Self-leading them as you examine how you’ve made decisions in the past and consider all your parts needs moving forward into a future that is still unwritten.
Jeff and I are very excited to be offering this workshop at this time in human history and at this time in our home country’s own growth process.
We invite you, with whole hearts, to join us in looking back so we can look forward intentionally, so we can create the lives our bodies will love.
Join us for YOUR IMPACT & YOUR LEGACY here.
With love from the Maldives via England and Scotland,
Lissa & Jeff
If you’re tired of Zoom and feel like splurging on an island writing retreat, I’m teaching my next in person workshop on the island of Gozo in Malta- Internal Family Systems & Memoir Writing. Learn more and apply here.