The Art of Being Seen: A Yes. A Shovel. A Business Intensive turned Hot yoga and Belonging.

The story of the ransom I paid to move from a survival baseline to a place of belonging.

The summer of 2024 was an act of rebellion. It was the moment I finally picked up the shovel to face exiles buried in the graveyard of my own Self-Abandonment.

I was standing in my kitchen negotiating an internal hostage situation, debating on saying yes to a twelve-week business intensive program for self-employed therapists.

I wanted to jump out of my skin at the thought of not being smart enough. Failing. Wasting time, energy, money. Except a calm, discerning voice, beneath the chaos of my brain blasting my body with uncertainty, breathed: Just lean in. Just say yes.

I knew it would be life-changing; it was a forced end to my excellent footwork in the dance of avoidance. By saying yes, I was submitting the ransom money to free myself from a life of playing small and limiting my potential.

When I got still, read off the credit card, I felt an emerging sense of freedom within. A lightness in my chest offering hope and possibility. While a manic buzz faintly lingered in my body, whispering: What the hell did I just do?

In any specialized trauma therapy training, there is always a therapist crying in the corner. I am that therapist. We have to practice the techniques we plan to utilize in sessions, but I never anticipated the excavation of the deep wounds I’d be facing down when joining a business intensive.

I thought I had done a lot of my work. HA!

The goal of the program was simple: help burnt-out therapists stuck in the sludge of overwhelm. I quickly learned I can’t manage a business I was still hiding from in the ways I needed to show up.

You get out what you put in to these programs. My level of investment was all in. I was working under intense pressure, by choice, while navigating a full caseload and trying to re-engineer my professional life. I dug with both hands. I couldn’t just focus on the landscaping of the surface while the truths were still screaming six feet below the soil.

I had to face why invisibility felt like safety. I lived in a perpetual state of dread mixed with the exhaustion of doing it all. It was a tightness in the chest; a constant wait to be called out as an imposter.

I kept getting triggered left and right. I was repeating patterns: pushing beyond my limits, needing to prove my worth, and discovering just how intense my perfectionism was to perform at a level not sustainable. This was my survival baseline.

The truth I kept forgetting: No one has it together. We all struggle with imposter syndrome.

This program was manual labor. Every Thursday, the accountability email arrived like fresh orders to return to the trenches. Cue the rage, grief, pain, shame and guilt with the same questions. I wasn’t expecting callouses from a business course, but unearthing years of self-abandonment is heavy lifting.

I was a baby giraffe trying to get her feet under her to walk, trembling under the weight of my own possibility.

I instinctively chose to stay small to stay ‘good.’ Abuse of power rewired my brain to believe power meant dominance; it convinced me leaning into my potential was arrogance. Every time I tried to redefine it, my chest constricted and I felt myself freeze. It was a pattern of self-abandonment I needed to stay safe.

The Risk to be Seen was a muscle atrophied from years of surviving on breadcrumbs. I paid the ransom to learn a new art: the resonance of showing up for myself.

When the program ended, the three women who said “yes” to staying together began as a wobbly accountability spin off. Even then it was hard to be seen. It’s one thing to hold space for a client’s trauma; it’s another to let three other women see your own professional exhaustion and messiness.

We chose supportive collaboration over the isolated grit we were used to. Slowly, those Zoom squares morphed into meetings with roots, wings, and a safety deepened by beautiful friendships.

I learned from these three friends how family is truly found. I didn’t have to hide parts of myself.

This ever-evolving version of myself was learning:

I’m allowed to take up space and be seen.

I can take chances and be supported, not shamed.

It’s okay to be messy.

I don’t have to have it all figured out at once.

I can just be me.

Recently, closing in on two years, we all finally met. In Texas. To celebrate a milestone for our friend. Embodying joy while witnessing theirs was a somatic screenshot. It’s a memory I recall the moment I feel myself start to shrink. I can feel my entire being light up with warmth and lightness.

We did a yoga class, the four of us lined up in a row. It was an absolute first — a hot yoga class I didn’t feel fueled by homicidal rage. I’d move to Texas just for this yoga class. Instead, I felt an all consuming love within and surrounded in the energy of the class. I sobbed afterwards because I just got to be me. “Maria, we love you.” I was hugged. “Sometimes, it’s still hard to believe,” I tearfully whispered.

Over a delicious brunch with a mimosa, the irony wasn’t lost on me. I was finally sitting down to a feast after a lifetime of surviving on breadcrumbs. I shared: ‘You all mean so much to me… I’ve never had this…this belonging.”

They accept me for where I am and where I continue to grow. They are there when I stumble. They cheer me on. They also give me honesty when I need to hear it, which is often and usually consists of me needing to slow my roll since my ideas are bursting at the seams twenty-four seven.

We recently shared our get together with the architect of the intensive, Allison. I had a random “Maria moment,” emailing her about my own benchmarks and then half- jokingly suggested she put us on her podcast, to share life after Limitless, because the ripple effects were reaching farther than the eye could see. There was magic from the program. You could have knocked me over with a paperclip when the email came back asking us to join her to talk about our journeys since the intensive.

My initial gut reaction to the podcast invite was a jolt of fear: I did something bad. Hello, old narratives. I was waiting for the fallout of not asking my friends’ permission, still reacting to a mother who isn’t in the room. Narratives don’t have to make sense to be felt. The body holds the story until we’re ready to unpack it.

Those trust-myself muscles are hard to build after years of surviving with sheer grit, pushing beyond my limits. I didn’t believe I deserved a break because my worth was tied into proving myself to others. Hello! I exist! Look at my worth! That’s just giving away my power.

Real power is in the deep knowing of my own inherent value.

I am doing the once impossible: harnessing my power and being brave to be seen. This is the magic of belonging to yourself and the safety of being seen by those who truly know you.

My power isn’t a utility just to survive. It’s a way of taking up space for myself and showing others how it can be done.

It’s a daily practice of integration. I have moments when old beliefs flare up but I don’t get sucked into the void anymore. I have more compassion in these moments when I notice it. It helps when you have friends who can lovingly remind you it’s okay.

All of this because I took a wild chance saying YES to a business intensive, on a random sunny weekday afternoon, standing in my kitchen.

Best ransom I ever paid to free my internal hostage stuck in self-abandonment to belonging.