Listening to My Life

by. Katie Kroeker

We often talk in contemplative spaces about listening along our journey. By the time we reach the second half of life, we may be familiar with listening to others, the divine, love, self, and nature. We have learned to listen as we go about our days, perhaps through prayer or meditation, and by developing our awareness and ability to listen to the whisperings of life.

But what does it mean to listen in the dismantling and rebuilding of one’s life? To whom do we listen? What voices can be trusted? What does it mean to listen to our lives?

I’m not sure how it might look for you, but I can share what it has looked like for me - what happened when I broke the glass of my life to pull the big red emergency exit handle. What it felt like to fall and yet be promised a soft landing. I will share how, in listening broadly and deeply, I met my deepest self and found that often lauded but poorly marked place where my passion and the world’s needs meet.

I saw my house burning down. I was hunted and murdered. I was eaten by crocodiles. I watched

helplessly as my sister drowned in a burning lake of lava just beyond my reach, and then I died,

each night in a different way.

Lasting for two weeks, these apocalyptic, terror-filled dreams marked the zenith of my burnout and became the catalyst of my waking up. My husband was staying and working on another Gulf Island. I was alone, anxiety-stricken in the day and scared to go to sleep at night.

About a week later, my husband and I were boating to one of our favourite little island harbours to spend the weekend on our boat. It was my most favourite thing to do in the whole world. And yet, en route, I had an anxiety attack. I knew then that I was not ok. My life was not ok. My container had failed, as Richard Rohr said it must.

At this point, it almost seems cliche - on paper, everything was good until it wasn’t. And thus began the scary work of dismantling this good life that was killing me. My husband and I spent the next few months talking, thinking, and planning how to move forward in a way that invited life for both of us. I decided to step away from the business we had built together and look for something new, trusting that a little daily distance would bring some freshness to our enmeshed marriage. I thought I’d take a month off to regroup, dust myself off, and go from there.

But then my husband said, “Why don’t you take a gap year?” and, in doing so, broke our whole world open.

I felt unmoored - cut loose from striving and performing. I felt alone and adrift on the open sea, far beyond the familiar markers of safety and place. I dreamt of falling from a great height, only this time, instead of meeting a grizzly death, I was blown gently to safety and serenity. My husband’s gift of time allowed the question “What do I want to do?” to be replaced by “Who am I now?”

I began deep listening - saturated in silence and stillness. I looked for wise voices and spent intensive time in spiritual direction and counselling. Recognizing that at some point, I would have to begin to look for work, I canvassed friends, colleagues and clients to hear how they experienced me. I reluctantly listened when the same word came up in every response. Myers-Briggs labelled me a mediator, and the Enneagram offered peacemaker.

Although these were outside voices, they served as trailheads as I explored my interior territory. I listened to my wounds, and I gave voice to my longings. I even listened to my favourite political TV shows. Up until this point, I thought I liked them because the characters had bigger problems than me, and somehow, that was comforting. But returning to them again, I realized that I was deeply drawn to the challenges they faced and finally recognized a longing to contribute to global solutions. I laughed at such audacious dreaming. How does a former landscape designer become involved in global politics? It felt like a joke.

And yet the longing lingered.

A week before my self-imposed deadline to begin job hunting, a friend told me about SSU. Looking into it, I felt drawn to the MA in Peace and Justice program. It wasn’t a deep yes, just a soft wondering that began to take root. I told my husband I wanted to take one course, thinking I’d play it safe and test the waters, but he said, “Why don’t you do the whole thing?” and cracked my world open once again.

Over the past year and a half, a deep resonance has developed as I have explored themes of justice, peace, equality, and what it means to be a peacebuilder. The convergence of my story, coursework, and thesis research resulted in a watershed moment of listening. Driving home from errands, I was reflecting on a UN Report that I had recently read that said that at the current rate of progress, global gender parity was 300 years away.

Amid my anger and outrage, I heard my deepest self say, I am not going to stand by and just watch. I am going to do something about this. This is the work of the rest of my life. In all I do, I will ensure that women are seen, heard and lifted up. This is what is mine to do.

As I complete the final semester of my program, I still have many questions about how and where life will take me. Yet, in the stillness, I hear Love remind me to pay attention to my roots, to the support structure that allows for growth and flourishing, and to put down my secateurs with their illusion of control. Love tells me to nourish the practices that keep me in close connection with essence instead of ego, to listen to the supportive voices that help me to bend and not break, and to develop roots that ignore inconvenient fences and property lines in their lust for life, bringing growth that climbs up and over, turning the functional into the beautiful.

Somehow, I am climbing over logical barriers, sneaking past the reasonable, and wandering into the shockingly possible. To complete my thesis, I will interview women who have changed the world. These women, who were trailblazers, diplomats, and politicians 25 years ago, have since become global leaders in peacebuilding, justice, and Women, Peace, and Security.

I’m going to ask them about wisdom.

And I will listen.

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Katie Kroeker is a JFI alumna currently completing her M.A. in Peace and Justice at St. Stephens and is anticipating entering the Women, Peace, and Security space in global peacebuilding. With a background in creative environmental sustainability, she explores the ways in which women’s experiences shape our understanding of wisdom, peace and conflict transformation. She lives in a little town on Vancouver Island, Canada and can often be found hanging out with the ocean.