The Difference Between Chasing and Being
Live Sketch of a Man | Drawing by Monica Alisse
I’m not trying to become someone new. I’m trying to come back to someone I was before I abandoned her to survive.
Lately, I’ve been trying to grapple with the concept of grief. Here I am—a 38-year-old woman who has lived a really full life. If you were to meet me for the first time, as others have demonstrated, you’d likely be fascinated, curious, and amazed by the number of things I have done and achieved. And yes—I have, and I should be proud. There are those “shoulds”—something I tell my clients all the time to reflect on.
I’ve had some significant moments of facing reality lately, and it’s been hitting me hard. Whether I see it through self-aware countertransference in my clients’ stories, or in the recognition that I’m tired, would rather be alone, and can’t take bullshit anymore. I had a meaningful experience going to a retreat, and it’s been an amazing reset—and while there’s a reset and that desire to feel like the old me, I need space for grieving first.
You see, I learned how to abandon the old me for such a long time. As I try to remember times of joy and a sense of autonomy, curiosity, and freedom, I went to Fishbowl the other day in Lawrenceville to do some live sketching. Encouraging myself not to isolate and to live beyond my job has been a big challenge since I moved back to Pittsburgh. As we started sketching the model, I did my own thing—no expectations or forcing how the drawing should look. I was enjoying myself during the first half-hour sketching 30-second poses. Then suddenly, as we shifted to 5-minute poses, an overwhelming flow of flashbacks and memories that sting returned to the forefront. I was flooded with intense sadness and grief that made me pause. My drawings became stiff and less flowy. I’d stop and stare for a long time, hoping the heaviness in my body would go away and all the uninvited visuals would leave.
There were memories of going to the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid with my Dutch ex-boyfriend, whom I had a passionate relationship with before leaving to pursue my career as a designer in the Netherlands. Then, there was a fast-forward to me sketching in Washington on the exact day I broke up with another ex-boyfriend—another man I met and left Pittsburgh for after graduating from Duquesne and beginning my career as a therapist. Then, there was me as a young art student in Rhode Island, sketching a model whom I later heard had died. Then I thought of death and all the close people from high school who have passed away this year. They died as artists or died doing what they loved. I couldn’t stay long at the art studio. I thanked the model for his service, gave him one of my drawings, and left.
Here I was, almost feeling the heavy weight of it all. Recognizing how the chase for validation and being chosen for years has kept me from accomplishing my dream since college graduation: to be a successful artist who would travel, collaborate with other creatives, and have a loving family of my own. The pressures of having children are now very persistent—to the point of fear and anxiety. I feel like I failed that 21-year-old who graduated from RISD. And in the midst of chasing dreams in a way that wasn’t true to me for almost 20 years, a lot has changed in society and culture, making this dream feel almost obsolete and meaningless. But it still means something to me, and all I see is that it’s dead or out of reach. I have to try harder or be someone else. My identity has been fragmented in the process of chasing to the point that it hurts to be back in touch with who I was.
I don’t say this to bring doom and gloom to people. To turn this into a more positive light—as I like to say to my clients, reframe—I need to understand that it’s not too late. I want to celebrate all the adventures I’ve had and know that parts of me are not lost. They are all still there and waiting to be heard. Part of hearing them is working through the boredom of making art for myself and not others. As someone who struggled in school and was suddenly “seen” for her talent in art, I found an outlet. It’s been hard to figure out whether I chose art for me or for the validation I was seeking. Every good piece of art I made—suddenly the bullying stopped, or my parents showed admiration and gave less feedback about the rest of my homework. There was never a moment where I’d write an essay and be told to do it all over again. With art, it was seamless, and I was able to go in any direction with it—it was freeing, and people approved.
Then, when entering the art and design world, it became competitive and more trivial. Art eventually became work, and there was gradually less joy in doing it. There were hopes of opportunities after working very hard to make something meaningful, to the point of burnout and disappointment. I figured, since I wasn’t pushing or fighting as much, it wasn’t as much a passion as I thought. So, I concluded people forced me to be an artist just because I was good at something—and I moved on to becoming a therapist.
The beauty of being a therapist is that it is creative. The spirit of art still exists. And that value of seeking connection, helping people find meaning and purpose, and creating through healing has become extremely fulfilling—not something someone encouraged me to pursue. At the same time, I continue to get sidetracked by the desire to find that loving partner who sees me and accepts who I am—in my best and worst times. All of this is rooted in adverse experiences—from bullying, to learning difficulties, and unresolved family dynamics from childhood.
I’ve come across a quote from Lori Gottlieb, which I find very fitting:
“Change requires loss. The loss of certainty, of the familiar suffering, of the identity you’ve clung to. People don’t resist change because they are stubborn. They resist because they are grieving the life they are outgrowing.”
In this case, I am grieving an identity of people-pleasing and performance, and trying to bring back other identities that showed up in the best of times, before I concluded it was all about the chase and hustle.
When seeing a psychic in Sedona during my retreat, she told me that she saw the true path of inner child work had been initiated, and that I had to start practicing living as if I had already accomplished my dreams. That means living in self-love and feeling whole. Doing the things I love for myself and being honest with myself by looking in the mirror and acknowledging what I’m feeling, without reacting from fear and insecurity. These things are very easy to do with my clients, but when it comes to taking on the tools myself, it can be very hard—especially when my productivity has been based on knowing I am loved outside of myself.
Working through the boredom and creating for the sake of celebrating my talents is not new, but it’s not an acquired habit either. Boredom was a survival strategy, and I work to see my bodily sensations as not who I am but what I had to do to keep chasing. But that’s over. Neuroplasticity is a bitch. With self-love, inner-child work, and patience, I am working to reframe my relationship with art and show up for myself for once. It’s uncomfortable because I’m letting go and just being. It’s weird because it’s unfamiliar. And it comes with loss, because I’m leaving behind actions and relationships that didn’t encourage growth, but stagnation, to who I want to be.
Grief, I’m learning, is not just about death. It’s about confronting the parts of ourselves we’ve left behind, the dreams deferred, the identities that no longer fit. It’s in the pause between what was and what could still be. And while the mourning is real, so is the potential for rebirth. I don’t have all the answers, but I’m showing up, feeling it all, and choosing to believe that something new, authentic, and meaningful can grow from this space. Maybe that’s the real art I’ve been searching for all along.
A final question for my dear readers: What are the underlying needs behind your dreams? Is it safety, love, or being seen? How can you honor your dreams without chasing a form or image of how it should look? How can you reconnect with the feeling underneath it and find new ways to let that feeling live without abandoning yourself? Leave comments below and share with us your journey!
