“If I hadn’t forgotten who I am I would have come with you.” My mother said this to my daughter when she told her about moving to Australia. And it has really resonated with me.
In fact it is the inspiration for a new book that I have just started writing.
More of that another day.
My mother has dementia, but that isn’t a requirement for forgetting oneself. I list in my head all the ways that we forget ourselves.
Forgetting in parenting
Forgetting in menopause
Forgetting in a job that doesn’t inspire
Forgetting in attachments to status and money
Forgetting in a relationship
Forgetting in compromise
Forgetting in a restrictive adherence to an ideology or cause
Forgetting in depression
Forgetting in a silencing of creativity
Forgetting in duty
Forgetting in order to please others
Forgetting through lack of space and time
Forgetting through imposed narratives and limiting beliefs
This is just the beginning of my list.
I know that sense of forgetting well
My friends know it
My clients know it. We work to reconnect to the self that would come along for the adventure if only they could remember who they were.
Coaching realigns and coaching transforms.