Trained in Everything - and Became None of Them

Going Sideways - Part II

The identities I thought I was preparing for, until I realised the training had been for me.

“How’s retirement coming along?” my cousin Meetu asked casually as we arranged the Lilies into table centrepieces.

 “Hmm. I’m not sure I like that word,” I said. “It’s more of a transition phase while I figure out what comes next.”

 My friend Surjit looked up from her vase. “I can’t see you doing nothing. You’ll be up and about with something soon, I bet. Didn’t you recently qualify in some kind of therapy or coaching? You’ve done quite a range of courses over the past few years.”

 “Tell me about it.” I rolled my eyes. “Every time, I thought this was my next career. But none of it is calling to me now. I even considered starting a gap-year program for young adults.”

 Meetu adjusted one last stem, turning to me says, “Well, choose the path you enjoyed most and run with it. Isn’t that the way to go?”

 “It’s not quite that simple,” I muttered, finding an excuse to walk away.

 It sounded simple. Sensible, even. Unfortunately, my journey had been neither.

My Expensive, Wandering Curriculum

 I have never been good at dipping a toe into things. I cannonball.

 My self-help journey began decades ago in Kenya. A graduate of Tony Robbins’s program brought the course to Mombasa, and after five intense days, I became one of the few participants willing to walk barefoot over burning coals.

Walking on fire in Mombasa - because apparently beginning with a modest self-help exercise was not an option.

 “ICE COLD! ICE COLD! ICE COLD!” I chanted as I crossed, emerging with a single small blister while others jumped off halfway, screaming in pain. I was in the middle of a troubled marriage, surrounded by family dynamics that seemed designed to make me miserable or so I believed then. Stepping off those embers, I wondered: What other test could life possibly give me that I couldn't face?

 That experience gave me the courage to migrate and begin again.

 Then came Reiki, which I credit with getting me through the endless paperwork of Canadian immigration. Once settled in Canada, I promptly repeated the Reiki I and II attunements.

 But why stop there?

 I immersed myself in EFT tapping, Revelation Breathwork, and Somatic healing. With every new modality came the same thought: Maybe this is my next career. I could be a Reiki practitioner. A breathwork facilitator. A somatic healer.

 Before you could spell hypnotherapy, I trained and certified in that too with Marisa Peer in Los Angeles. For a while, I practised on quiet weekends at my Kumon centre, working with a handful of clients who still thank me today.

 A course in quantum healing introduced me to NLP, which led me straight to Dr. Joe Dispenza. Soon I was doing ten days of intensive sessions with two-hour meditations, sometimes twice a day.

 Then came the small matter of rappelling down a high-rise on Toronto’s waterfront.

The view from nearly forty storeys above Toronto - rappelling in progress

I descended nearly forty storeys Batwoman-style, though what profession I imagined that qualified me for remains entirely unclear.  It helped me confront my fear of heights and provided some genuine breakthroughs. But after a few months, I couldn't sustain those two-hour daily meditations. I began to understand why people attended these retreats repeatedly: the atmosphere, the sudden insights, the sense of transformation. They could become their own high. Who was I to accuse anyone else of addiction when I was chasing my own?

 Next came a year-long program with Dr. Gabor Maté. This time, I told myself, I would become a Compassionate Inquiry practitioner.

 And when I hadn't travelled far enough - geographically or spiritually - I found myself in the Peruvian Amazon, sitting in Ayahuasca ceremonies with shamans who could spot the unhealed places in a person’s soul from a mile away. There were visions, generational trauma, and profound healing. At three in the morning, I even downloaded an entire business plan from the universe. Apparently, my entrepreneurial brain refuses to sleep, even in the jungle.

 For a woman who became none of them, I had trained for an impressive list of professions.

 I do not particularly want to calculate what I spent on all this, partly because I believe in investing in oneself, and partly because I am afraid of what Excel might tell me. Let us simply say it was thousands upon thousands of dollars.

 And almost every time I began something new, the same hopeful thought appeared: Maybe this is it.

What Was I Supposed to Do with It?

 For most of my adult life, doing was my default setting. I raised three children, immigrated, built businesses, and spent twenty years running Kumon centres where there was always another crisis to solve. You produced things. You fixed things. And preferably, you earned money from them.

 So, whenever something fascinated or healed me, my mind instinctively asked: What can I build from this?

 If I invested the money, I should get the qualification. If I got the qualification, I should practise. If I practised, I should turn it into a business. Otherwise, what was the point?

 Ideas bloomed constantly: Neurotree, the gap-year program, support groups for women in transition, writing circles for recovering lost voices. Without realizing it, I had turned personal healing into another form of professional development.

 Then came the part where I kept stopping.  I would absorb the teaching, log the hours, earn the credential, picture the prospective clients and then arrive at the threshold of making it a business and freeze.

 Others trained alongside me, led workshops, built practices, careers and websites. Good for them. I waited for that same certainty to arrive in me, feeling guilty when it didn't.

 Was I afraid? Procrastinating? A serial starter seduced by shiny new possibilities?

 There was some truth in that. Give me the seed of an idea and I can plant the entire forest before lunch. But one fact blew that theory apart: I stayed with Kumon for twenty years. When something truly mattered, I was more than capable of commitment.

 So why couldn't I stay with any of these?

Perhaps I Was the Client

It took an embarrassingly long time and an equally embarrassing amount of money to ask a different question:

 What if I was never supposed to become any of them?

 Maybe I had enrolled believing I was training to become the practitioner, when the person I was truly there to help was me, myself and I.

 Perhaps I was the client.

 That was hard to see because I had attached a commercial outcome to almost everything I did. Much of this searching happened while running a business, raising a family, and carrying the weight of a life that left little room to sit quietly and examine itself. The courses gave me that room.

 Some gave me language for experiences I had never named. Some exposed old patterns. Some helped enormously; about others, I am still not entirely sure.  But they didn't need to lead to a business card.

 Reiki didn't need a commercial practice to have value. Breathwork didn't need to appear on a menu of services. Compassionate Inquiry didn't need a formal title. And ayahuasca certainly didn't need a launch strategy.

 I was allowed to learn simply because I was curious. I was allowed to heal simply because parts of me needed healing. And when an experience had given me what I needed, I was allowed to leave it there.

 Accepting that felt like completing something, not abandoning it.

Not Everything Needs to Become a Business

 I wish I had grasped that rather simple idea several thousand dollars earlier.

 Once I stopped trying so hard to manufacture my next Important title, two familiar companions were still waiting: writing and travel. Neither required a dramatic reinvention. Writing had been waiting in the wings for most of my life, and travel carried me back to my early career in Kenya in safaris and running a tour business.

 I am going to be careful about declaring This is it. I've said that a few times before. But as I approach sixty, I am beginning to understand that I don't need to know where it leads.

 What I do know is that I don't feel called to become a coach, therapist, or breathwork facilitator, and I no longer feel guilty saying so.

 The courses weren't wasted. They changed the woman who now sits down to write. They shaped how I listen, how I ask questions, and how I understand other people’s stories, including my own.

 For a long time, I believed whatever came next had to be worthy of everything that came before it. Useful. Meaningful. Important.

 Maybe it doesn't.

 I want to write. I want to travel. I want to read. I want to continue to stay curious. I’ll always be lifelong learner. And, God forbid, I would quite like to enjoy myself.

 I just want to do some happy stuff.

 After everything, perhaps that isn't such a small ambition. We don't always have to turn everything that transforms us into a business. Sometimes, the life we are so determined to build is quietly building us.