"If you think you are enlightened, spend a week with your family."
Ram Dass said that, and honestly? He wasn’t wrong.
I just spent three weeks with my mom… and surprisingly, it went well.
I’ve changed. She probably has, too. But what I’ve come to realize—especially now that I’m over 40 and I have the advantage of hindsight —is that if I want to see change, I have to be the change. I know, I know. You’ve probably heard that a million times. So had I. But it took me hearing it a million more before it actually clicked.
For the longest time, I believed that my circumstances could only improve if everything around me shifted. If they changed, if my location changed, if my clothes changed, if my skin changed. But here’s the truth: I was fighting reality. I now know, that the way I learn is through trial and error, through missteps and lessons that repeat themselves until I finally get it. I’ve misstepped enough to see that I have to change.
Turns out, that’s literally how I’m wired. My Human Design profile is a 3/5—Martyr/Heretic. (If you haven’t checked yours yet, do it here. It’s like an instruction manual for your personality.) The "3" means I learn through mistakes. The "5" means I challenge norms and share insights. And honestly? That tracks. For years, I was way too hard on myself for every little mistake, but now I see them for what they are—gold. Lessons. Growth.
A lot of my perspective shift comes from the personal work I’ve done, especially EMDR (life-changing, by the way). But studying Kabbalah this past year really hit me with something profound pertaining to the family we choose: We don’t have issues because of what’s happened to us—we come into this life already carrying them, and our experiences serve as opportunities to overcome them. We choose the precise family we need to overcome our issues.
That concept was a major reframe for me. Of course, it’s not to dismiss real trauma—some experiences are devastating. But for me, it changed the way I saw my own story. I had small ‘t’ childhood traumas that I carried like proof of my victimhood. But then I started to ask: What if this is happening for me, not to me?
That’s where the power is. In how we respond. Kabbalah teaches that the one true choice we have in life is how we react to our circumstances. Every moment is an opportunity to grow. This simple mantra is so powerful:
Or lately: Pause. What an opportunity.
Because in that brief pause—the space between reaction and response—there’s a chance to do things differently. And that’s where the magic happens.
I've been trying this out with my family and even shared it with my mom, who actually liked the idea! We're all growing together—it’s a bit messy at times, but it’s definitely getting better as time goes by. I now see how I can transform the challenges I've faced, including those within my family, into gold.