When the Past Became the Teacher - And I Finally Listened

I have spent much of my life in search of healing.

Therapy, on and off, for decades.
Yoga and meditation retreats.
Torah study that often felt just out of reach, until I found At The Well, where Judaism began to speak to me through the cycles of the moon and the rhythm of the Jewish months.

There were also mushroom journeys. Acid trips. Even ketamine.

And yet, nothing woke me up, healed me, or revealed the truth as clearly as the year 2025.

I have spent a lifetime asking myself what was wrong with me.
How could I fix myself?
Why do I feel so deeply?

I always assumed the problem was me.

I was told I was too sensitive. That I needed to “get over it.”

Only in recent years have I come to understand that my sensitivity is not a flaw; it is the source of my empathy, my ability to listen deeply, my intuition, my capacity for compassion.

What cannot be changed or undone has, nevertheless, shaped the person standing here today.

For much of my life, I carried a quiet responsibility for other people’s emotions, especially my mother’s. Her alcoholism. Her volatility. Her inability to face her own history. I absorbed it all, trying to smooth, manage, and contain what was never mine to hold.

I couldn’t see it clearly when I was young. I didn’t fully understand it even as an adult. It wasn’t until after my father died in 2007, my anchor, my guide, my steady presence, that the fog began to lift.

My mother was not a role model for me. In many ways, she was the opposite. And yet, I became who I am because I knew, deep down, that I did not want to live or love the way she did. My father, on the other hand, embodied what I now recognize as grounded, ethical, and kind. I wish I had the maturity then to truly see what he gave me. Even that longing has softened into gratitude.

My sibling, I now understand, mirrored much of my mother’s emotional landscape. What I experienced from him was not closeness, but control; not warmth, but calculation. It took me years to recognize how deeply that dynamic shaped me.

There is a memory from the summer of 1979 that has stayed with me.

We were driving north, me to Berkeley to look for work for the coming school year, him to San Francisco to find an apartment for graduate school. On that drive, he was kind. Warm, even. I had resources, friends, and places to stay. For a brief moment, I felt wanted.

What I see now is that I had something he needed, and to get it, he had to be nice to me.

On the way back to Los Angeles, we pulled over near a vast sunflower field. We smoked a joint and sat among the tall yellow blooms. We called it “meditating,” though I wouldn’t find yoga or a real meditation practice for years.

Still, I remember the feeling I had chased my whole life:

He likes me. He finally likes me.

It felt the way Sally Field sounded when she stood on stage at the 1985 Academy Awards for Places in the Heart and said, “You like me. Right now, you like me.”

It felt like joy.
Like acceptance.
Like relief.

It didn’t last.

Within twenty-four hours of being dropped off, the psychological cruelty returned. Just like that. The warmth disappeared, replaced by the familiar sting of confusion and self-doubt.

What I see now, what I couldn’t see then, is that I learned very early to confuse fleeting approval with love. To mistake conditional kindness for connection. To believe that if I just did or gave or endured a little more, something would finally stabilize.

One of the clearest lessons of this past year is this:

I am not responsible for how other people behave or react.
And I never was.

It has very little to do with who I am and everything to do with what they carry.

At nearly sixty-five years old, I am finally comfortable in my own skin.

I am no longer seeking.
No longer chasing.
No longer looking outward for validation or permission.

And because of that, something has shifted. There is space now for openness, for generosity, for receiving what is good without suspicion or fear.

I’ve never been much for New Year’s resolutions. I don’t believe a turn of the calendar permits us to dream, only to disappoint ourselves weeks later. I believe something else instead: every single day offers an opportunity to begin again, with clarity, not pressure.

As I reflect on this past year, I don’t deny what was lost. But I am far more focused on what was gained. Because without the loss, I would not have seen the truth so clearly. I would not have released relationships that were never reciprocal. I would not have recognized love that had been steady and present all along, a love I found at seventeen and struggled, for years, to fully trust.

The past no longer feels like a weight I am dragging behind me.

It feels like a teacher who has finally finished the lesson.

And because of that, I’m not looking back.

I’m standing here, grateful, grounded, and open to what’s ahead.
Not because I know exactly what tomorrow will bring,
But because I now trust the person who will meet it.

With clarity and kindness,
Susan

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