“I write because when I was an adolescent I looked in the mirror and no one was there. Can you believe it? Complete nothingness. And then, beside me, “others” assumed great importance.”

– Rosario Castellanos

I actually remember feeling that way, looking in the mirror and having no clue what I saw. It scared me and I had no idea how to be as a person completely invisible to myself. I was 16.

It was a seriously tumultuous road to recognition – not external, because what was on the outside didn’t end up mattering much at all. It ended up being the stuff inside me - the junk that made me doubt my worth, do incredibly stupid things that were not only embarrassing, but impetuous and distinctly un-friendworthy.

You’d think that after a few years of general idiocy I’d have come to my senses. But, in reality it was well into our daughter’s second year (and my 35th) that I began looking in the mirror and understanding pieces of what stared back at me. I began to understand where I had been, all of the things left behind and plowed through and the woman I was, both in potential and reality.

She’s still a bit of a mystery to me. But, I consider it a major accomplishment to know that at least I found her. Strangely, I still wonder where she came from. I seem to have unintentionally run into myself somewhere along the way to figuring out whether I exist at all.

For women – in this case, those who take on the task of motherhood – there is a place in us where we need to create something which confirms that very existence.

We perpetually live at the intersection of life’s phases - forced to take on the challenges of each place, moving in a constant state of reformation.

The question of doing what we love is overwhelmed by the people we love, their needs, the requirements of parenthood and the general predicaments that women face both physically and emotionally.

When do I get to do what I want? Not even I know the answer to that question. Life is, in truth, a sacrifice one way or the other. It’s what and how we sacrifice that defines us.

Maybe, the more soulful life process is asking “What do I need?” Not in an “I need a nap” or “I need to leave my kids at the grandparents for a week to regain my sanity,” or “I need a bath but my three kids haven’t eaten yet today.”

More in a “what does my soul need to complete itself?”

It’s an unholy huge question - one that has no simple answer and no elevator pitch to go with it. I suspect the answer is profoundly complex… to do what we love.

Since I was a small child, I’ve loved the act of tapping in to the collective stories of people. I’ve always been surprised by how much we are the same at our base – shaped mostly by our own weirdness, acts of personal distrust and general stupidity when we appear so different.

There have been naive attempts to take that love and turn it into something else. But, really, I’m a storyteller.

When people ask me how I figured out what I wanted to do when I grew up, I’m pretty much blank except for that fact. That whole complete soul thing for me equals telling people’s stories and – instead of the dark and heartless tales of crime and woe that marked most of my journalism career – it took me 35, or so, years to understand the whole “Use Your Superpowers for Good‘ theory on life.

But, lately, more often than I like, I have wanted to back up entirely.

There is a balance in life that can get lost in progress. There is a sense of space that closes in with not having the time to recognize the bits of life that are such places of joy. Love is major – it is a whole lot of work, and the speed of light thing makes me want to stand still.

I wonder to myself “What would it be like to do…” or “What if we…” It’s an interesting day dreamy grass-is-always-greener thing. But, even when I’ve gone far enough down that road and see something tangibly new, I cannot see myself ever walking away from my one true love. At least not forever.

That’s never proved itself out more than last Sunday when we launched our new SHIFT News section. A long time ago, 10 years now, I walked away from my daily newspaper career vowing that I was done. Done with the newspaper business. Done with my own personal darkness. Done (did I say I was done?)

But, as the elements for SHIFT News fell into place, Colleen Dane and I worked on her first piece for the section, and it made its way on to OBE, something inside me felt alive again. The news woman in me had simply been on hiatus. She’d done the whole banishment of demons thing. She’d taken a much different approach this time around. But, whoa, the flames of love.

And I remembered, again, the actual why to so many things I had been busy questioning.

That day, when you finally recognize yourself in front of that one mirror, is a moment of revolutionary consciousness. From that point on, life isn’t going to let you do anything else except what brings you back to all you love.