“You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.” ~Jon Kabat-Zinn
My three-and-a-half-year-old daughter was playing at the park when her eyes began crossing and uncrossing. One moment she was moving through the afternoon like any other little girl, and the next I was watching her face, trying to understand what I was seeing.
She told me her head hurt, but then she went back to playing. Everything around us still looked normal, yet something inside me had shifted.
The pediatrician’s office was about to close, and a nurse suggested we go to the emergency room just in case. By the time we arrived, my daughter’s symptoms had disappeared, and for a while it seemed possible that we had overreacted. The doctors nearly sent us home without testing. Then someone decided to order a CT scan.
I do not remember how long we waited, only the strange suspension of time that happens when you are trying to reassure yourself while also knowing, somewhere deep inside, that something is not right. Eventually, a doctor walked into the room and said the words no parent is prepared to hear: “Your daughter has a brain tumor.”
There are moments that divide your life into before and after. That was one of mine.
We were rushed to a children’s hospital in the middle of the night. I remember sitting on the cold hospital floor, calling my sister and somehow forming the sentence, “Ann has a brain tumor. She needs emergency surgery.”
Then came the decisions, conversations with doctors, and the impossible act of handing my little girl over to a surgical team. I prayed with everything I had and wondered what her future would hold.
At the same time, I was the mother of a seven-month-old baby. One child needed surgery, another still needed nursing and holding, and there was no place in any of it where I could simply stop being needed.
So I functioned. I listened carefully, made decisions, cared for my children, and moved from one necessary moment to the next.
I was terrified, but terror had to coexist with responsibility. There were people I loved who needed me, so I did what I knew how to do: I held everything together.
Eventually, we received the news we had been desperate to hear. The tumor was benign. My daughter had made it through surgery, and she was going to be okay.
More than a month after everything began, I sat on the floor of my bedroom and sobbed. I had spent so long containing what I felt that, once the immediate danger passed, it was as if a dam inside me finally gave way.
I did not know much then about mindfulness or somatic healing. I only knew that somewhere in the middle of those tears, I needed to breathe.
So I focused on one inhale, then one exhale. Then another.
For the first time in weeks, I felt the smallest flicker of peace.
That moment changed the direction of my life. I began reading everything I could about mindfulness and healing and eventually developed a daily meditation practice that gave me a steadiness I had not known before.
The work helped me enormously. I became better at observing my thoughts without automatically believing them, staying present with difficult emotions, and returning to myself when life became overwhelming.
Over time, these practices gave me a steadiness and presence I had not known before. They helped me feel more grounded in myself and better able to meet difficult moments without being swept away by them.
From that more stable place, another layer of the work began to emerge. I started noticing the deeper patterns beneath my choices and reactions, including the ones I had been living for so long that they had become almost invisible.
Years later, I was leading a school, raising my family, and carrying what felt like an endless stream of responsibility. From the outside, I looked capable, productive, and deeply engaged in a life I cared about.
Inside, I was exhausted.
My days were packed with meetings, emails, decisions, conversations, and unexpected problems. I tried to be responsive to everyone, and my office door was almost always open.
At home, the rhythm continued with one more task, one more person to support, and one more thing that needed attention. Because I was capable of carrying a great deal, I kept carrying it.
Beneath all of this was a thought so familiar that I did not initially recognize it as a belief: “I have no choice. I have to do it myself.”
It did not feel unhealthy. It felt responsible.
Meanwhile, my body was speaking in ways I had become very good at overriding. I dealt with fatigue, jaw tension, back problems, digestive issues, thyroid concerns, and other health challenges.
I had come to understand that the body often carries what the mind has not fully processed. Stress, emotion, and deeply ingrained patterns can leave their imprint physically, and I began wondering what my own body had been trying to tell me.
That did not mean ignoring medical care or searching for a single explanation. It meant treating my body as a source of wisdom, not merely something to manage, dismiss, or push past.
I had learned to listen to my body, but often only until what it was telling me became inconvenient. If I was tired but something needed to be done, I kept going. If I felt tension rising but someone needed me, I stayed available.
If I needed space, rest, or help, someone else’s need almost automatically moved ahead of mine. Over time, I saw that this was not simply about being busy or responsible. It was a pattern of overriding myself.
That realization was uncomfortable because I already knew so much about self-awareness. I knew boundaries mattered, rest mattered, and there was strength in asking for support.
I had meditated for years and examined my beliefs with sincerity. Yet here I was, still living by this one.
Eventually, I began to see a connection I had missed.
During my daughter’s illness, my ability to function had served me. In one of the most frightening periods of my life, there truly were moments when I had to put one foot in front of the other and keep going.
But somewhere along the way, “I can get through this” had quietly become “I have to carry everything.”
The strength that had served me so well in difficult moments had also become a default way of moving through everyday life. I was so accustomed to being the one who handled things that I rarely questioned the cost.
For years, I had assumed that if I understood a pattern deeply enough, I should be able to change it. When the same behavior returned, my instinct was to analyze more, reflect more, or try harder.
This time, I began asking a different question.
Instead of asking only, “Why do I keep doing this?” I became curious about what happened inside me when I tried to do something different.
What happened when someone offered to help me? What happened when I imagined saying no, closing my computer before every email was answered, or allowing something to remain unfinished?
The answers were not intellectual. Sometimes I felt tension, sometimes guilt, and sometimes an unmistakable urge to jump back in and take control.
My mind could say, “You are allowed to rest,” while another part of me behaved as though rest had to be earned. I could believe that receiving help was healthy while still feeling safer in the role of the person giving it.
Slowly, I began to understand that we can know a belief is no longer true and still find ourselves living as though it is.
That insight changed the way I approached myself. Instead of treating discomfort as something to overcome, I became curious about what it might be showing me.
One of the first places I experimented with this was at work. I redesigned my schedule so I had designated times for email, meetings, projects, and walking through the school to stay connected with the community.
I also started closing my office door when I needed uninterrupted time. It sounds like a small thing, but it did not feel small to me.
I had spent years equating good leadership with availability, so closing the door stirred up discomfort. Part of me worried that I was being less supportive.
Instead, several staff members told me that when they saw me working all the time, they felt as though they should be working all the time too. When I began protecting my own focus and energy, they felt permission to create boundaries of their own.
I had been afraid that taking better care of myself might diminish what I gave to others. Instead, it changed what I was modeling for them.
That experience taught me something another book or meditation could not have taught me in quite the same way.
I closed the door, and nothing fell apart. I accepted help, and I was still capable.
Little by little, I began to have experiences that challenged the old rule I had been living by. Change was no longer only something I understood. It became something I could feel and practice.
That has changed how I think about being “stuck.”
When we have done years of personal growth work, repeating an old pattern can feel like evidence that we have somehow failed. We think we should know better by now.
But knowing better and feeling safe enough to live differently are not always the same thing.
If there is a pattern in your own life that you understand and still cannot seem to change, perhaps the next question is not “Why am I still doing this?” Perhaps it is, “What happens inside me when I try something different?”
You may notice tension when you think about setting a boundary, guilt when you rest, or discomfort when someone offers to help. You do not have to immediately explain or eliminate what comes up.
Sometimes noticing is enough to create the first small space between an old response and a new possibility.
Then perhaps you try something small. Let one email wait until morning. Ask for help with one thing. Say no once without writing a paragraph to justify it.
The new choice does not need to be dramatic to matter. Sometimes transformation happens through small experiences that quietly teach us that what once felt necessary no longer is.
More than twenty years ago, sitting on my bedroom floor after my daughter’s surgery, I learned the power of one conscious breath. I thought that experience had taught me how to find myself again in the hardest waters of life.
It had.
What I learned much later was that I also needed to listen more closely to my body and to the patterns operating beneath conscious awareness.
The exhaustion mattered. The tightening mattered. So did the automatic yes and the reflex to take on more than was mine.
So did the belief that everything was mine to carry.
I still catch myself slipping into that old current sometimes, but I recognize it sooner now. I can pause before I automatically pick up what is in front of me and ask a question that once barely occurred to me:
“Is this actually mine to carry?”
Sometimes the answer is yes. Sometimes it is no. What matters is that I am no longer answering automatically. I have created enough space to listen, to choose, and to respond in a way that feels more aligned with who I am now.
If this story feels familiar, begin with one small pause. Notice the belief or automatic pattern that keeps pulling you back into an old way of responding and pay attention to what happens in your body when you try something different. Then make one small new choice. Real change often begins when we stop forcing and start listening.
About Dr. Lena Kushnir
Dr. Lena Kushnir is a transformational coach, author, and speaker who helps people reconnect with themselves through self-awareness and embodied healing. After nearly three decades in education and leadership, she now supports others in creating meaningful, aligned change. She is the author of A Gentle Return Back to You. Take her free online quiz for a snapshot of where your life is flowing, where it feels stuck, and where to begin. Follow her: Instagram @lenakushnir_
