Getting Fired Saved My Life

TW: suicide ideation, adoption, reunion

Eckhart Tolle describes the “dark night of the soul” as:

a term used to describe what one could call a collapse of a perceived meaning in life…an eruption into your life of a deep sense of meaninglessness.  The inner state in some cases is very close to what is conventionally called depression.

Picture it…

It was December 2019 - I had just completed my third semester of doctoral studies at Arizona State University. I was a full-time student, an assistant director to what we then called “ASU Women’s Chorus,” a traveling voice teacher in the Phoenix metro area, and a director of the 4th-6th grade Chandler Children’s Chorus (CCC).

From the outside, it sounds like I was living my dream, when in reality, I was dying inside. I was over-worked, energetically depleted, and running on auto-pilot. Unfortunately, it was working with the children’s choir that pushed me over the edge…

Every Tuesday night, I had rehearsal for CCC - and every time, on my drive to rehearsal,

I would fantasize about driving my car into oncoming traffic or a pole.