Recently, I’ve been writing about what it takes to move forward as a Corporate Misfit.
This short excerpt from The Way Through The Mountains talks about the reality of being a misfit and the physical manifestation of those 20 years in my body.
This is from the chapter entitled: The Chasm.
It took me 10 months to detox from corporate life.
My last day worked was December 31st, 2009 – and, bar for the legal waiting period, the new decade saw me a free agent.
I was abuzz with possibility – knowing I’d be spending more time with my family, working on my terms, and no longer living with the stress of maintaining my corporate mask.
During that period, as I described earlier, I landed a couple of consulting gigs, and it really felt like I’d made the best decision ever.
Except for my back which, increasingly over the months that followed, tightened and tightened. I’d always suffered from lower back pain, and some part of me knew that it was attached to sub-conscious processing of stress
(and connected to that muscle just below my neck)
but there was a lot to distract me.
In the late-Spring of 2010, I got the call I’d been dreading ever since leaving the UK for the US in 2003; my Dad was seriously ill in hospital, with very high likelihood of non-recovery. Within weeks I would make the trip home to sit with my Mum, Sister and Brother to discuss what would happen if he did not turn the corner
(he did, amazing as he was, surprising doctors and family alike with his fortitude and sheer persistence)
What followed were months of pre-emptive grief, with multiple trips home. In the late Summer, my Nan – who lived with Mum and Dad – went into respite care so that Mum could have a break. Nan died in the August of 2010, peacefully and at ease.
Dad recovered, but the emotional weight was deep in my heart and soul.
Around the time my Dad fell ill, I had reconnected with Mark Mooney, my Somatic teacher from the Strozzi Institute, when he hosted a seminar in Boston, and I flew out to California to take the next step of my somatic journey a few weeks later
(just before I had to leave for the UK for Dad)
As ever, Mark took me deeper into my own body, heart, spirit and soul, helping me find my own path and uncover profound questions that will take a lifetime to answer.
All the time, my back got tighter and tighter, my posture stiffening. And I became aware that my legs were tense and aching all the time. My whole body was becoming concrete.
In August, I took a trip home to see family, then a quick trip into New York to visit with my former colleagues. In the city, I walked miles; it’s truly my favorite place to be.
But my back was agony.
Even more so the following weekend, when we spent a day with the kids at an arboretum about an hour’s drive away. The journey there and back was torture.
The next morning, after I showered, my back spasmed – I heard the muscles snap – and I fell to the floor of the bathroom, unable to move, lost in the pain of this physical collapse.
Over the next 3 months, I committed to deal with what I’d been denying: my own emotional state
(The Water, again…)
Because of my back, I had been reading about myofascial release already and that bit of knowledge clicked. I began working with Basilia, a deep tissue massage therapist. On a weekly basis, she worked the tightness out of my body.
Alongside this, I worked with Jenn, a somatic coach in Massachusetts recommended by Mark. Jenn would take me deeper into those questions that had thrown me so earlier in the Summer.
It took me 3 months of this in-depth work to release myself.
And a couple of curious things began to appear.
First, that tightness in my legs gradually worked its way down my left leg, until it felt like I was wearing a concrete boot.
During a session of Somatic body-work with Jenn
(an activated form of meditation and self-awareness)
I was lying on the therapy table, with my eyes closed, and knew that Jenn was standing behind my head – however I felt a distinct, forceful tap on my left leg, like someone was trying to get my attention.
I asked Jenn if it was her, it wasn’t.
Over the next few sessions I listened for who wanted me to hear them.
At some point in my work with Jenn, I described it as being the vestiges of my corporate self, the persona I’d worn all those years; and all the things I wish I’d said or done, while wearing that persona.
All the time, the concrete boot was getting heavier and more focused around my left foot; the rest of my body beginning to relax.
By now, I clearly knew it was old me clinging on for dear life; I had an image of Gollum at the end of The Return Of The King, hanging from the rocks above the fiery hell of Mordor; clinging on to the “precious” of corporate identity.
Until, the day in October when Basilia was working the long tendon running along the bottom of my left foot. Old me was hanging onto my big toe, high above the lava, I felt it clearly.
Starting at my heel Basilia began stretching the tendon – her thumb felt like liquid fire as it progressed; like a scalpel blade. I must have registered this, and she asked me if I wanted her to stop.
I knew this was it, and told her to keep going; the pain was exquisite, such an endorphin rush!
Then, just as she reached my big toe, I felt him let go – he’d been pinching my toe, and then, almost with a pop, he just let go.
And was gone.
We enter The Chasm long, long before we realize we’re descending. It’s why it can be so disorienting; and difficult to accept. Denial has a shelf-life.
Over the course of our life, and particularly while we walk The Thorny Forest Path, we collapse a lot of experience, emotion, and opinion into both our conscious and subconscious identity.
Every compromise we make, every word we swallow for fear of saying it out loud, every sleight, every success, every thorn scar. They all go into our mutated understanding of: “This is me, this is who I am”.
Remember in The Clearing when we found that every version of us could show up? Well, guess what? Yup, you’ve been carrying them all this time.
The Chasm is where we meet them, pay them respect and leave them behind.
I had thought I could walk away from Corporate, flip the switch and live a new me.
After all, I thought, I did that when I left Chemistry, when I left the UK… And on.
But the truth was, though my conscious mind thought I’d moved on in each of these transitions, I’d truly just buried them. They were all there as I made my way through The Chasm; waiting.
Every rebirth demands a death; every Phoenix must burn before it can rise.
It is in the letting go that we find ourselves.
And the way out is always through.
Hi, I’m Vince Tuckwood and I’m a recovered Corporate Misfit – I spent 20 years building a successful corporate career while my artistic self slowly suffocated. Award-winning HR leader, all the right credentials, none of the right feelings. The whole time, that voice whispered: “this isn’t it… this isn’t you…” Turns out it was right. I left corporate in 2010 and have spent the years since helping other Corporate Misfits make sense of their own whispers. I understand the misfit experience because I’ve lived it – the mask-wearing, the pretending, the slow realization that you might be built for something entirely different…