Distancing Myself to Find Myself
It’s spring of 2025, and I’ve been reflecting deeply on my journey over the past six years. So much has changed as I’ve engaged in intense healing, learning, and unlearning—trying to live more authentically and take part in the life-long work of collective liberation and social justice.
This week, a vivid dream reminded me how far I still feel from the life I want to live: one grounded in deep connection, mutual care, and presence with others. In the dream, I rode my bike through alleyways filled with people joyfully connecting. But I was passing by, alone, trying to get “home.” That image mirrored something I’ve sensed for months: to truly find myself, I first had to create distance—from people, from community, and from old patterns. Here’s what I mean.
Conditioning, Performance, and the Illusion of Success
I was raised in a high-functioning family dynamic shaped by addiction and immersed in the societal values of capitalism, white supremacy, and heteronormativity. Like many, I internalized perfectionism, emotional suppression, and the drive to perform. As early as eighth grade, I wrote about my future: a successful career, a suburban home, marriage to my college boyfriend, and three kids. By my early 30s, I was living that exact plan—working a high-paying job in tech, married, with a house and a dog.
But something inside me was unraveling.
“I worked in corporate DEI and it broke me.”
Awakening and Disillusionment
In 2018, I changed my career path from engineering joining the DEI organization within HR at Intel. That shift was transformational. I immersed myself in anti-oppression work, diving into both class and racial dynamics thanks to communities like Resource Generation, Education for Racial Equity, and The White Privilege Conference. I also began exploring my queerness and opened my marriage to polyamory.
At first, I thrived. But as time passed, I became disillusioned. Corporate DEI felt like window-dressing—attempts to fix systemic harm without real change. This January, at a grief gathering for white people reckoning with white supremacy, I finally said out loud: “I worked in corporate DEI and it broke me.” I hadn't realized how true that was until that moment.
Coming Out and Pulling Away
When I came out as non-binary in 2021, I expected challenges—but not the deep loneliness that followed. In my corporate DEI space, getting my pronouns right was hard for colleagues. That period marked the beginning of my withdrawal. Years of people-pleasing and caretaking had shaped me into someone who made themself invisible in order to make others comfortable.
In early 2022, a partner helped me see my over-functioning as a trauma response. I couldn’t rest. I couldn’t stop doing. That realization led me to 12-step recovery work with Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACA), where I found something rare: the space to be witnessed without being fixed.
Unraveling and Rebuilding
2022 became one of the most emotionally intense years of my life. I got divorced, finished a coaching certification, and at the end of the year left my 11-year corporate job—all while trying to learn how to feel my own feelings. I look back in awe at my over-functioning skills that got me through that time at a significant cost to my well-being.
As I began to slow down, I realized I had built distance—consciously and unconsciously—from people in my life. Expressing my own perspectives felt unsafe, so I aligned with others and then backed away when I sensed difference. I mistook discomfort for incompatibility. I sometimes blamed others for not understanding me, without offering them the chance to.
“Today, I see that distance not as a failure, but as part of the journey. I needed to disconnect in order to meet myself”
Shame, Growth, and Reconnection
Today, I see that distance not as a failure, but as part of the journey. I needed to disconnect in order to meet myself. And now, I feel a shift: I’m more ready to engage across difference—to stay in relationship even when it’s messy, even when there’s discomfort. Because everyone has a different life experience. (Just ask my sister, who grew up in the same household but has no problem saying exactly what she thinks 😛).
I’m reaching back out. I’m having honest conversations. I’m naming the gaps—what happened and what didn’t. Whether or not relationships continue, the naming feels like a sacred act of accountability and reconnection.
Gratitude and Vision
I’m deeply grateful to the therapists, coaches, 12-step communities, healing groups, and chosen family who have traveled with me. And I’m especially thankful to my biological family, who support my authentic life—particularly my 90-year-old grandma who reminds me every time we speak that I am loved as I am.
I wish for all humans to feel that kind of love and belonging. That’s the world I want to help build—and the work I’m committed to, day by day.
