Walking Home: A Pilgrimage from Humbled to Healed

by Choquette, Sonia

  I retrieved my bag and quickly skirted through customs. Once I walked out from behind the customs hall doors and into the terminal, I saw Patrick standing there waiting for me, his face completely white.

  I walked directly up to him and asked, “What happened?”

  He shook his head and grabbed my hand and said, “I’m sorry, Sonia. Your dad died this morning.”

  2

  Humpty Dumpty

  Shortly after Bruce and my father died, my life started to come apart. Not my professional life. If anything, that was the one area of my life where I found solace, even strength. Whether it was working with clients one-on-one, teaching workshops, or speaking at live events, when I was in the flow of service to others, I was at one with my spirit and a million miles away from my own increasing heartache and emotional unhappiness. When I was working or teaching, I was peaceful. The problem was that I couldn’t work 24/7, although there were days when I almost succeeded.

  As the initial shock and sadness over my losses wore off, I found myself consumed with anger. Top of the list of targets for my ire was Bruce. My brother had introduced so much pain into my family for so many years because of his addictions that his death was just one more bullet in our hearts. I had tried to be kind and loving to him during his life, but his addictions and self-absorption had made it difficult to do.

  Over the years, I ignored most of his obnoxious behavior, telling myself the spiritual thing to do was to love and support him in spite of his actions. After all, he was not physically or emotionally well. I did my best to be a good sister, but he had been so manipulative and self-centered with his drug use that it disgusted me many times over.

  But I never told him. Instead, I just tried to love and accept him as he was. I managed to do that while he was alive. So I was appalled that suddenly I couldn’t do it anymore. I had so much pent-up anger toward him that it took my breath away.

  It also shamed me. I was not supposed to be angry with him. He was dead, for God’s sake! I was supposed to have unconditional love for him and be glad he was at peace.

  But this didn’t deny the chaos, drama, and manipulation that his behavior so often, and for so long, brought to the family—that’s what made me so angry. Why did he get to be such an asshole and not have anyone expect anything of him? Why did he get to live with impunity from all the ways in which he had inflicted pain on the rest of us?

  The unspoken family rule (or maybe my own) was that as the stronger, more fortunate one, I was to be kind, loving, giving, nonjudgmental, and accepting—and not have a single negative reaction to his endlessly crappy behavior. And while he was alive I had more or less managed that. But now, apparently, I was having an intensely delayed negative reaction toward him that I couldn’t shut off.

  I prayed for these feelings to go away, but they didn’t budge, and for that I was also disappointed in myself. Being this angry with my now-dead brother didn’t fit in at all with my self-image as a spiritual teacher and guide, and that left me feeling embarrassed.

  If I let slip to anyone that I did harbor these feelings, especially to any of my spiritual or professional peers, I was immediately chastised. I was told things like: “Forgive him.” “Don’t judge.” “It was your karma to have a brother like this.” “Be grateful it wasn’t you.” “I’m surprised that you feel this way given that you should know better.” Essentially, I heard the same words I had told myself for all the years he was alive. Now those words only made me angrier.

  I slipped away in shame, and seethed all the more in silence when alone.

  I was especially angry with myself for confiding my conflicted feelings to my husband, Patrick.

  His response when I was reacting to Bruce’s past behavior was often to agree with me about how unacceptable his behavior was all those years rather than simply listening to me. All I wanted to hear was, “I’m so sorry, Sonia.” But it never came.

  I was so angry that he failed to comfort me when I was in so much pain. Why couldn’t he just put his arms around me and reassure me that everything was going to be okay? Why couldn’t he see that this much loss all at once was suffocating me with confusion and grief? Instead he withdrew, leaving me to struggle in pain on my own.

  To add to that nightmare of angry emotions, I was also furious with my father. All my life I had been a “good girl” and done everything I could to love and be present with him. But for many years—for reasons I could not for the life of me understand—he seemed to resent me, and he let me know it. When I was a child, he often lost his temper and smacked me around; and when I got older, he told me that I wasn’t wanted because I upset my mother. When I became a published author and began to work in the public sphere, he told me that I was not to speak of my work when I went home to visit them. I wasn’t allowed to talk about my books or my workshops or any of my successes, because he feared it took the spotlight off my mom.

  I never understood these conditions, but agreed to them anyway. Only now they enraged me. What kind of weird control was he exercising over me all those years? It was as if he banished my light, and it hurt me terribly, although I never let him or my mother know. I simply respected his unreasonable and extremely painful request, and tried to be loving toward him anyway.

  Now I was furious with my father for refusing to see and welcome my gifts. But worse, I was angrier with myself for suddenly having these immature feelings toward my father, and so soon after he was gone. I hadn’t felt those feelings for years, and some I had never allowed myself to feel.

  Come on, Sonia. Really? Haven’t you worked out your childhood wounding yet? I admonished myself. How pathetic of you.

  My father loved my mother so much that he completely doted on her and thought she was the center of the Universe. He did not want anything, including me, to outshine her. I thought I had come to peace with, and even achieved sympathetic appreciation for, his devotion to her. After all, how many great loves does one witness such as his for my mother?

  My father met my Romanian mother in the small town of Dingolfing, Germany, toward the end of World War II. She was a newly released prisoner of war, and my father was an American officer stationed there. Soon after they married. He was 20, and she was 16.

  He brought his pregnant bride to America, and they proceeded to have seven children. He felt responsible for her in so many ways, and circled her with dedication and loyalty that was near heroic. He was a true knight in shining armor. But as a knight, he often considered anything that took attention off of her as the enemy.

  I was named after my mom—and I was most like her. I was convinced that my father didn’t like this about me. There was to be only one of her. Somehow I accepted that while he was alive, and even took no offense. So why now, as soon as he passed, did my feelings of anger toward him erupt?

  It was not as though he was never there for me. When Patrick and I bought our first house, a dilapidated two-flat in Chicago, just after I became pregnant with our first daughter, he spent over a month with us, tirelessly helping us renovate the house before the baby was born. At that time I felt he truly loved me and wanted to show me in the best way he could.

  So it’s not as if I hadn’t tried to move beyond and heal my childhood wounds before this. I thought I had. I went to healing workshops, saw a therapist, read a ton of books on the matter, and studied with master teachers explaining that all that transpired in one’s life was part of one’s karma and life lessons, and that no one was ever a victim.

  And I absolutely accepted and believed all that to be true. I lived by those principles, and for the most part was at peace with this understanding of life and my difficult relationship with my father.

  He was devoted to my mom, and she was his great love. If the power of that love blinded him to the hurt he caused me by pushing me to the side, I accepted and understood that, and even thought it sweet. I had a nice relationship with him in the last years of his life and knew him to be a patient and loving man, clear to his last breath.


  Yet the minute my father died, right on Bruce’s heels, all sorts of ancient, denied, or ignored feelings erupted inside of me like a volcano I couldn’t contain. I was blowing up inside, and I was horrified that this was happening. I remembered the father I was frightened of, the one who would lose his patience and beat me for the slightest infraction. The one who was depressed and angry and felt threatened by me. Why on earth were these feelings poisoning my life all of a sudden?

  Now, of all times, I needed to be mature and compassionate and helpful to my mom, and instead all I wanted to do was take someone down because I was so outraged. Although I tried to hide how I felt, I was less and less successful by the day.

  Perhaps inevitably, my anger at Bruce and my father infected my already frustrated feelings toward Patrick.

  In a book called The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work by John Gottman, I once read about the four apocalyptic horsemen that kill a marriage: criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling. We were embroiled in all four, and it was getting worse by the day. While these problems were not new, after my dad and brother died, I found I no longer cared about working to solve them.

  So the battles raged on between us—over what I felt was his defended stance and lack of sympathy for my losses and pain, and his anger toward me for running away to work even more than ever. For neither of us being what the other wanted.

  He called me crazy. I called him cruel.

  He told me I was a fraud. I told him it was his projection and that he was a child.

  He iced me. I fried him.

  It got to the point where the air he breathed infuriated me, and I told him so.

  I had to get away.

  Consequently, I accepted every single invitation to teach or speak that came my way, even though I was exhausting myself. At least when I was traveling and teaching, I didn’t have to be around him.

  Truthfully, in my own sneaky way, I had been using this ploy to run away from him for years. When we were first married, I invited him to join me in teaching my students in small groups, but not long into our arrangement we found ourselves fighting on the way to and from workshops. It broke my heart. I loved my work, and he was stealing away my joy. So one day, after yet another argument, I simply told him I couldn’t work with him anymore. He was shocked and furious. I was relieved.

  Once I stopped working with Patrick, I started to hire other people to take his place and help me at the workshops. Only that just brought into my life a series of others who, while I appreciated their efforts and talents, also let me down and left me feeling as disappointed and unsupported as Patrick had in the end. What I didn’t see then but was beginning to see now was that I didn’t need support at work. I needed support in my life. I needed love. I needed witnessing and kindness. I needed care and reassurance, and I paid these people to offer it to me.

  Looking back, I blamed myself for these failed relationships. What was wrong with me? Why were the people I attracted to me so wrong?

  Finally, I reached my limit. I was nearing a nervous breakdown. I could not keep up with my work demands while my emotional life was so turbulent and unhappy, and my wounded self was bleeding to death. I was sad. I was hurt. I was lonely. I was ashamed. I was angry and tired. All the dark feelings and unfulfilled emotional needs that I had danced around or spiritualized away over a lifetime came back with a vengeance and demanded attention.

  One day, Patrick started yet another petty argument with one of our daughters—over something that I thought was silly. I felt he was being controlling and mean-spirited, and I just hit the wall.

  I told him enough was enough and that I couldn’t live with him anymore.

  He couldn’t believe it. I was the kind of person who always bounced back, stayed in the game, and kept on trying. Quitting wasn’t like me.

  I couldn’t believe it either.

  Like Humpty Dumpty, however, I felt as though my life had been slowly cracking and crumbling apart, and on that day, what remained just shattered. I had felt it coming but didn’t realize it was so close. I could not put it back together again. I didn’t want to.

  I didn’t like Patrick. I didn’t like my unhappiness. I didn’t like my unbridled anger and resentment. But most important, I didn’t like me. And I didn’t want to continue being the unhappy person I had become.

  As much as it scared me to do so, as loyal and devoted to my family as I was, I needed to stop. I was no longer living by my own values, and I needed to admit it.

  Patrick moved out two months later and went to Breckenridge, Colorado.

  I moved inward.

  3

  Spiraling Downward

  After Patrick moved out, I went into mourning and shame.

  I was embarrassed to be in this situation, knowing that if my clients and readers knew the painful circumstances of my life, they would no doubt accusingly ask, “If you are so intuitive and spiritual, why didn’t you see this coming? Why didn’t you stop it?”

  I did see it coming. I just didn’t want to believe it. I felt like a failure in so many ways.

  Looking back over the past 30 years of my marriage, I had honestly tried to get along with Patrick. When on adventures together, we had a lot of fun and our relationship worked. But at home, we mostly just fought. It often felt as though we weren’t an adult married couple at all, but rather were two combative, angry siblings battling each other for control. While that didn’t surprise me, as we were both from big, dysfunctional families and had to battle to get our needs met while growing up, to continue as we had for all these years was ridiculous and exhausting.

  I felt demoralized, disappointed in myself, and ashamed that I had ended up in this place. I, who espoused unconditional love, forgiveness, and understanding, working with spirit guides for help and trusting intuition for guidance, had found none of these tools and beliefs helped me one bit in healing my broken relationship and finding some peace with Patrick. We had some kind of intense karma between us, and we had failed to work it out.

  I vacillated between feeling indignation, rage, sorrow, and fear as I considered what had happened between us and to our family and what lay ahead. I was alternately furious and devastated. And deeply sick at heart.

  I was done with my frustrating, unhappy marriage. What I didn’t realize was that I was also done with my life as I knew it.

  I began to pray in earnest. I needed a divine intervention to help release me from the old, miserable patterns of relationship I had long held on to and which had had such a debilitating stranglehold on my life.

  I also wanted the noble crusader in me to die, the one who fearlessly rushed in to defend a cause no matter the personal cost. I was depleted as a result of all these battles, and the only aspect of my feminine nature left over had been funneled into endless caretaking and rescuing at the expense of all other more refined and receptive—and genuinely joyful aspects—of my femininity.

  It was time to put the inner fighter in me—this dominant male energy that was constantly guarding, watching, saving, and working—to rest, and allow my quiet feminine self—the side that could receive, allow, and relax—to emerge. I knew this self to be my authentic spirit, and I wanted God to help me bring her home.

  I knew in my heart that this was the reason why my soul was facing this crisis. It was time to reach deep inside and allow myself to surrender to what was happening in my life.

  One day I just fell to my knees and prayed. I asked the Holy Mother God and all my invisible divine helpers to release me from these negative patterns that I had carried, and remained so attached to, and was now so ready to surrender. I could feel an intense energy burrowing into the back of my head and into the very center of my heart as I voiced my request, as if she were questioning my sincerity and resolve. Did I know what I was asking? Was I certain that this was what I wanted?

  I took a breath and knew it was.

  “Please, Holy Mother God,” I whispered in prayer, “help me cut the invisible cor
ds that bind me, and set me free. Give me the inner strength to let go of all that I have created up until now, on every level, and which no longer reflects the highest path for me, and for those I love and serve. Help calm my more masculine energies so I can settle into my own divine feminine nature and cool the angry fires of hurt and fear that have burned in my heart for so long.”

  After making my prayerful request, I got up and lit a candle to the Divine Mother, to say “thank you” for hearing me. I was ready to surrender. I knew it was time to release control over my life and let God take over.

  I spoke my intention aloud: “This life of mine is now finished. My present way is no longer serving me or allowing my greater Spirit to express through me. I ask for the cocoon to break open and free my true divine light. I surrender all attachments on all levels to the past and am now ready for what the Universe has in store for me. And so it is.”

  At that moment time stood still. I knew my intention was heard and registered by the heavens, and that my request would be honored and met with divine support. I sensed an inner shift take place in me. I didn’t feel euphoric. I didn’t even feel happy. Rather, I felt somber and quiet in spite of the thousand sounds swirling around me, the Universe saying, Okay, get ready.

  The next morning, I suddenly had a powerful intuitive hit from my Higher Self that said, “Sonia, it is time to heal your life, and the only way to do that is to walk the Camino de Santiago. And go alone.”

  4

  A Pilgrimage?

  Shortly after my father and brother died, a woman showed up to one of my workshops using a cane and wearing a cast over what apparently was a seriously injured foot.

  She sat near the front of the room, and as the class was assembling, I asked her what had happened. She said she had injured her ankle while walking the Camino de Santiago and had to quit before she completed it. She then asked me if I knew about the Camino, which I admitted I didn’t.