Awaken

14Honoring My Mother and Becoming Whole

I started working with a life coach for the first time after turning 60 in 2018. At our first session, I told her my life story. I described my challenges with my father and the trajectory of my work. By the end, I was in tears. Suzanne asked if it was OK for her to hug me to comfort me. After the hug, she leaned back, closed her eyes, and was silent for a few minutes. She then looked at me and said, “Do you realize that you have been honoring your mother with your work for the last 15 years?”

Now it was my turn to be silent. Her insight startled me. A chill went through my body.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“You spent 45 years trying to impress your father, trying to make him proud of you and accept you for who you are,” she replied. “All that did was make you feel miserable, inadequate, and unfulfilled. But then you found your true path, which was to bring your mother's loving energy to the world of business. That is when your work began to have an impact on the world.”

Her words struck me with the force and illumination of a thunderbolt. I felt the truth of what she had said in my bones. I had inherited many of my mother's qualities, and she had nurtured me as a single mother for my first seven years. My spirit had always been much more in harmony with her spirit than with my father's. I was born a calm, sensitive, and affectionate child. My innate nature, my swabhav, was to be trusting, peace‐loving, and idealistic. After my father ...