I’d hardly, if ever, felt that kind of love in all of my forty-two years. Where had I been?

I was the daughter of a highly competent single mom who put herself through college when my brother and I were young, then went on to a life of nonstop political activism, serving on the city council and as vice-mayor as well as being the administrator of a prestigious research laboratory. We were latch-key kids who lived on pizza and cereal. There wasn’t time or room for feelings or affection, and words of praise were rare. Hers was a “sink or swim” tough kind of love. We weren’t seen or heard, we had what we needed, and it didn’t occur to me to want more. After all, we were a family of service.

I accepted that way of life and headed toward medical school. The hazing that comes with any college experience was a sport to me; each hit made me tougher for the next. The best way to describe the grueling weekly exam schedule, which lasted two years, would be to imagine having a final exam every week. The inhumanly long hours of residency and resulting sleep deprivation were insane, and abusive attending physicians didn’t help.

After graduation, I took three jobs: hospital, community clinic, and private practice under a mentor. I also got pregnant and bought a fixer-upper with a man who couldn’t bear anything close to half of the weight of the life I was creating, although I didn’t realize that at the time. Beyond being devoted parents, our way of life— me a triple-employed breadwinner, him a reluctant homemaker, both of us unable to communicate — was bound to fail. I was giving everything to my patients, my daughter, and a relationship that refused to thrive. I began to speak to my partner and daughter in the same demanding, argumentative tone my mom had used, which felt horrible.

My fatigue ran deep, and for six years I was rarely well. I began to react badly to all sorts of scents and foods, and I was diagnosed with an autoimmune condition. One day, I woke up thinking, “I’m going to die.”

I left the house and the relationship. My energy was gone. I was young but I looked old. I sought help from doctors, energy healers, shamans, and intuitives for three years, but little changed. My instinct told me that healing was not going to come from the usual places, that it was time to turn inward and just be alone for a while. It was terrifying and painful. My intuition said, “Be patient.”

After about a year of contemplation, I began to recall traumatic experiences from my college years, when I was using too many drugs. I decided to see a doctor who practiced hypnotherapy, and who had treated some of my most difficult patients with great success. This is silly, I can’t be hypnotized, I thought to myself as I lay on his table. Then I dropped into a deep, lucid trance. I can’t describe exactly what happened during the session, but when I came to, the doctor told me that my heart had been closed for a very long time, and that if I wanted it to open, I had some work to do.

“I know of just the thing,” he said, and sent me the website for Orgasmic Meditation. I looked it up. Surely he can’t mean this, I thought. What could this have to do with healing? I was willing to do almost anything, but I couldn’t bring myself to do that. I went back to circling the drain: more overwork, more chronic fatigue, autoimmune thyroiditis, plus my mysterious sensitivity to various scents, mold, and foods.

A few years later, a friend was excited to tell me about an amazing OM he’d had. “Oh, that practice” I said, skeptically. But as I saw the light in his face and felt the excitement in his voice, I found myself open up to trying it.

When I walked into the class, the room and the people there sparkled, especially the women. Although it was winter in San Francisco, they seemed more than comfortable in sleeveless dresses. How peculiar, I marveled, hidden under layers of sweaters I had no intention of removing. I immediately felt a stirring of emotion in my body, an energy rising up that felt both alive and extremely uncomfortable. As I flipped through a brochure on women and power, my eyes fell on Marianne Williamson’s quote: “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.” My throat began to tighten. Then tears came. When the tears didn’t stop, I stealthily made my way to the bathroom to manage myself. One of the teachers followed me with a box of tissues. “You don’t understand,” I said. “If I start crying, you could be standing there with that box of tissues for two weeks.” She just stood there and smiled. I know now how deeply she understood what I felt.

Over the four years that followed, during which I’ve regularly practiced Orgasmic Meditation, I learned to feel safe just feeling. I paid more and more attention to the sensations in my body — the heat, the buzzing, the tightening or loosening in my gut and chest and throat — and less and less to the stories in my head. It was terrifying at first, but I felt more alive than I had in a long time. Perhaps for the first time, I felt seen: by OM partners, lovers, friends, and my family. I learned to make “vulnerable asks” instead of demands. I learned that feeling seen and seeing another, with no need to give advice or fix a problem, was profoundly nourishing. Slowly, as I became more willing to give and receive such attention, it felt like a superpower.

I remember the first OM when I physically felt stress melt from my body. I remember the first OM when I physically felt my heart soften and expand as this other person directed his attention on my body and our “beingness” filled the space between us. I remember one OM when I focused on sensations in my body and heat built inside me as if my attention were causing it to magnify.

Many times, I felt the whole room light up and come alive as I OMed. In these moments, I had no sense of myself as separate. There was no chatter in my mind, none of the usual, I wonder if I’m doing this right or I wonder what my stroker thinks of me or Do I belong here? I didn’t think at all. I felt. In love. With everything and everyone.

As my practices of OM, meditation, and doing various writing and journaling exercises continued, my body woke up, and so did my heart. I had so much curiosity, and the capacity to be still and savor all of it — yearning, pain, sadness, joy. All the breathtaking and heartbreaking parts of life. I started laughing more, crying more, and feeling more deeply in love with life.

My relationships transformed, subtly at first. The first thing I noticed was my teenager. She stared at me and smiled, as if I were her favorite person in the world, which I for sure had not been before. She began opening up and sharing her most private thoughts in a way she never had. She’s fiery and rebellious, as I was at her age, and I wasn’t sure what her adolescence would bring. Now she and I talk about everything, and I give thanks for that whenever I practice gratitude. She is happy, confident, and brilliant. I no longer worry about her well-being in this world, which is a huge gift.

My body feels new. Life feels new. My heart has healed, and my world has come alive. This past year it’s become clear to me that true healing doesn’t come from a medicine bottle. It comes from being connected to our hearts, to each other, and from being in service to love.

My work with my patients feels less like work. I spend most of my time listening to them, and feeling them, even when the topics are difficult. Our conversations are about connection; connection with ourselves, each other, our families, our communities, and the planet. It’s amazing how being attuned in this way reveals what we actually desire and need in order to feel whole.

Here’s just one example: When I began to pay close attention to a patient who presented one health problem after another, I learned how much she hated her job and struggled in her marriage. I carefully reflected this back to her and asked, “What do you want to be doing? Feel into it.”
“I want to be an alchemist of chocolate,” she said.
An alchemist of chocolate!

She quit her corporate job, started a chocolate company, left her mediocre marriage to the safe rich guy, and met the love of her life. Her career as a perpetual patient ended.

Four years ago, I did not know the feeling of belonging. I was burned out, uninspired, and barely wanting to be alive. Now, with each passing day, I feel more relief and more freedom, as if light is coming into all the dark, hidden places within me. I’ve had to work through tons of resistance to risking judgment, failure, and the self-doubt that still surfaces as a necessary test of my courage, resolve, and willingness to follow my heart. Especially when my head doesn’t agree. I’ve learned that true courage is about being terrified of something and doing it anyway.

My body has become a reliable guide. I fall asleep when I’m not offering my knowledge and power to the world. When I procrastinate about completing a task I literally can’t get up in the morning unless I am willing to attend to it, and then my energy comes back to me. Each new bit of information I receive from my body brings more desire to give. I used to give to feel worthy. Now I give from a pure, natural desire to have others feel loved and free.

My newest passion is coaching other doctors. It’s challenging and amusing to openly confront so many of the assumptions upon which medical education is built: that doctors know what’s best for people; that people are broken and we are obligated to fix them because they can’t or won’t heal themselves; that our job is to look for what’s wrong, not what’s right; that we need to do more for others than we do for ourselves. It’s fulfilling to watch the lights come on in their eyes when doctors realize that there are other ways to work that are effective, enlivening, and restorative for themselves.

I finally got the math right. This life is about service, not sacrifice, as I once believed. I’ve learned that medicine is feeling and being truly present. I’ve learned that connection, belonging, and love are as necessary as air, and that my willingness to receive translates directly to power — being plugged into the vitality of life, channeling that into action, and doing so authentically and without apology. True service is offered when we give from a cup that is full.

My cup is full.