Hello! I’m Bay
Writer, Coach, Highly Driven Person & Entrepreneur Lover of creatures, especially dogs. Believer in magic, dreams, humanity, and you. Doer of impossible things and seeker of adventure.
Growing up, I was a typical, happy little kid, though, given the circumstances, there were plenty of reasons not to be: a traumatic divorce and custody battle, plenty of pretty significant family dysfunction resulting in my big brother growing up in a series of foster homes by the time I was 7 years old, persistent poverty that meant my single mother and I lived on welfare and food bank donations and never knowing if we could make next month’s rent. I moved at least twenty-two times that I can remember before I moved out at the age of 22.
Teachers, social workers and family therapists all agreed that I was thriving. In the face of everything going wrong at home, I was a model of grit and resilience.
But the thing about resilient people is that we make it look so good on the outside that it’s easy to forget that no one becomes resilient without needing a damn good reason in the first place.
My resilience showed up in my absolute focus on high performance. I became incredibly driven. I fixated on my goals and nothing shy of perfection was acceptable to me. I set impossible standards and I tended to meet them.
Growing up first in rural Nova Scotia, then on Vancouver Island, I played outside, making up fantasy worlds, talking to animals and mostly living off in Narnia, Neverland, or any land where my life wasn’t limited by my circumstances, everyone got along, you always had a place to call home and love won in the end.
Despite the challenges, it never occurred to me that my life would be anything less than amazing. I believed I could do anything if I was willing to work hard enough. I believed in impossible things because mostly anything I wanted seemed impossible from where I was.
The Winning Strategy
The most impossible thing I believed was that I could be perfect. I was so sure that if I could do everything just right, I could make everyone happy, and then my life would finally be perfect, too.
It was a pretty good plan, if I do say so myself. Now, of course, we all know that perfection is impossible, but you know what? You can get pretty darned close, if you try hard enough. And trying hard is something I’m exceptionally good at doing. When something felt hard, I pushed harder, no matter the cost.
I was obsessed with ballet, even though I really didn’t have the body for it and would later discover that I literally bent my leg bones by forcing them into ballet-perfect flexibility I didn’t have.
While many kids take a few dance classes after school, I took more than 15 ballet classes and rehearsals a week, seven days a week, while whizzing through school at the top of my class (except for math, my nemesis).
I attended an exclusive and highly competitive performing arts college. Over a thousand people auditioned and forty of us were accepted. I was invited into a fine arts writing program without submitting the requisite portfolio, because of my grades and because my high school English teacher had shared my writing with a friend in the university writing department.
I became a police officer when I was 21 years old, because I wanted to help people change their lives, idealistically forgetting that not everyone wants help or change or life to be different just because I did.
Before I knew it, however, I’d become so driven to succeed that I’d lost sight of what I was seeking. I was looking for the stability I’d never really had, forgetting that what I really wanted was a life of adventure filled with love, magic, joy and passion. And in all my pushing forward, it had never occurred to me that these things could co-exist.
Instead, I sought out safe, well-paid government jobs, creating the security that had been missing in my life. I thought that once I had the stability I’d never had, Life would become magical again. Without realizing it, I’d shrunk my dreams down to fit within the cubicles in which I’d chosen to work.
I was So. Very. Bored. It was all too easy and too disappointing at the same time.
So off I went, back to school for a master’s degree and I got an MBA. Now I could do Important Things! Now people would take me seriously! It would be years before I realized that no one was going to take me seriously if I didn’t value myself, first.
I created an ideal role for myself in health promotion, writing my own job description and becoming an award-winning blogger with a dream job in marketing and communications.
I had a great career, an exceptional education, a wonderful husband, a beautiful home with pets I loved. I traveled to places that seemed like fairy tales and owned a shoe collection that made Imelda Marcos look like a novice.
It should’ve been enough to make me happy, but it wasn’t.
Enough wasn’t enough for me. I wasn’t content. I still wanted more.
How I Got Here
Sometimes, people forget they had dreams and then they forget that they’ve forgotten, falling into the lull of numb contentment, which can be a mercifully comfortable way to exist.
Me, though? I wasn’t content, I didn’t feel numb and I certainly wasn’t comfortable. I felt empty, dissatisfied and almost desperate for things to be different. I was resentful that this world, this life, was letting me down. Adventure and magic had abandoned me.
Most of all, I’d been so hell-bent on getting “there” that I didn’t realize that I was crushing myself with my impossible expectations, perfectionism and self loathing in the process.
Everything about me was a project. I was something I could improve. I was a problem I needed to resolve and for more than four decades, I relentless chased the solution.
I was trying so hard to get “there” because then, finally, I was sure I’d be happy and content and worthy of the love I didn’t think I deserved.
This is what had been driving me all along, even though I couldn’t see it. A deep yearning for love that I was certain would come from outside of myself and definitely had to be earned by improving upon the version of me I was.
Like a greyhound running after a fake rabbit, I was grinding myself to pieces just to get something that didn’t really exist. Love is not a destination or a trophy.
Slowly, I’ve learned that self loathing is not a personal development strategy and I cannot hate myself into a version of myself I can love.
I’m still just as driven as I always was, but now I’m driven by my desire, joy, curiosity and love, which have turned out to be a much more sustainable fuel than trying to squeeze myself into a version of myself I thought was acceptable.
