My Story

The truth is, the journey to being a BullBuster takes a lot of courage, often a lot of time, and involves some pain. But, then, avoiding the process of BullBusting, in my experience, caused more pain, stress, and agony than confronting and overcoming it.

I was going about my daily life, aware that I wasn’t terribly happy in certain areas – well, the big ones like career and relationship – but found myself latching on to stories I created.

“”If I work really hard, I’ll get promoted.”

“If I am patient, he’ll change and grow and my life will be fine.”

“If I just try to be a little bit less me, I’ll be more accepted at work, and my husband will be happier with me.”

There were dozens more, and I created new ones almost every week. This was my miracle solution! I could keep on staying in a job and relationship that made me unhappy with a combination of stories (aka, lies) and convince myself they were true! Yeah, I just dulled myself down – I stopped being such a loud mouth at work, and I stopped participating in my marriage because my participation wasn’t making a difference any way, so this seemed less stressful.

For a while, I really fooled myself! Yup, I was doing just great. I felt kind of stuck in my life – there was no movement, I couldn’t see any future, or any change coming, and I just told that internal spiral ball of frustration in my gut to stop being so impatient. I woke up every morning with my heart in my stomach, feeling yesterday was another mistake, but hoping that today would be better. I put on 20 pounds, and thought, “Great, I need to go shopping!” Then, Christmas dinner one year at my in-laws, I walked across the floor and my knee went “click”! And I couldn’t walk. I went to the doctor and it turned out I had arthritis. He was shocked to see it in someone so young, but there it was. “Oh, well!” I thought, “Now I have something in common with 70 million other people, a definite ice breaker at parties!”

Some time went by, and I kept belittling my injury, and then my wrist started hurting….I got tendonitis! Then, more months went by and I couldn’t breathe so well….I got bronchitis!

Then it hit me. I had 3 inflictions that all ended in “ITIS”. I looked at that more closely, and I saw “IT IS”, and decided my body was declaring the message in my heart that I thought I was ignoring so well. “It is what it is, you need to accept it.”

And so I did. I made some big changes in my life, or so I thought. Things got better for a brief moment, but it turned out that I had only half-committed to them. I created more stories to keep attached to what was familiar in my life, and created other stories and lies so I could, in effect, live a double life. I told friends and family one story, but was doing just the opposite of what I told them. I felt sick, the weight kept packing on even though I tried Jenny Craig and exercising, but I just kept doing the same old thing every day, waiting for something to change, or something to happen, a sign from the universe, something, ANYTHING! The anguish of waiting was eating me up.

I felt stuck again, even though I thought I had freed myself. That made me get angry with myself (you ever try being happy in life when you spend every day telling yourself what an idiot you are and doubting everything you do and say?!), frustrated, sad, lonely. I did everything I could to distract myself from my feelings, and pretend that the half-freedom I created for myself was enough. But there was a tug of war going on between my head and my heart. And then….

….one day, I got up from my couch and my neck hurt a little bit. 4 days of Alleve and Ben Gay later, I suddenly couldn’t turn my head left or right. It was stuck and it hurt worse than any pain I had ever experienced. My left shoulder felt like someone had hung, literally, 2 tons on it, while simultaneously pulling down on my hand. I was in so much pain I could do nothing but cry. A quick trip to the doctor and an MRI later, I learned I herniated not one, but two discs in my neck. Again, the doctor was perplexed at why someone my age was experiencing injuries not expected till much later in life. I asked him if stress could cause it, and he informed me that yes, this is possible.

I thought about the messages. “Conflict between head and heart.” What’s in between? The neck! Another friend pointed out to me the message of “I don’t know which way to turn in life”.

Once again, though my mind could create stories and lies I could pretend to believe, my body just refused to let me live outside of my alignment and integrity.

Then I did some deep personal work, and realized I had 2 really big stories that had pervaded my thoughts, and my life, up till then:

“I am too much”

“Emotions have no place, you must hide them.”

With shock, and horror, I realized I had spent my entire adult life in jobs where emotions had no place, and where every boss I had told me to pipe down and be less verbal. I also had to fess up that I had chosen a partner in life that helped me reinforce these messages. He needed me to be a little less me, and I started paying attention to all the times I was told “you’re too….[insert various adjectives].”

I couldn’t live this way any more. The pain of remaining in the life I had created became greater than the perception of pain I had if I left.

So I had to make some big changes in my life. One of them was the hardest thing I have ever done. The pain and heartache of letting go of someone you love, someone who loves you back, but with whom you cannot be in integrity, is torture. This was one story I didn’t want to admit. But it was the only way to be in alignment within my own life.

As I looked back on all that I suffered, and the path I found to free myself, I realized there was a process that could help other people to be more in alignment with themselves, and to help free them from the pain they might be suffering through right now. In the hopes of helping other people live in their own integrity, I created The BullBuster Cafe and Boot Camp, and hope it helps you free yourself from whatever pain in life you are currently suffering and choose, instead, to create a life you love.