From loss to freedom

From loss to freedom

Last night I lost something that mattered to me.

Not a person, not a possession, but something I had quietly built my hopes around. It wasn’t a big, life-shattering loss, but it was the kind that pokes at your sense of identity and makes you pause and ask, "Who am I without this?"

And strangely, today, I feel freer.

The Anchor I Didn’t Know I Was Holding

For the past two years, I have felt confused about my work, my direction,and my next steps. I have found myself envisioning and dreaming new projects (this substack page being one of them), looking to colleagues for direction, and simultaneously feeling stuck, aimless, and terrified of producing nothing useful in my lifetime.

About a year ago, I discovered a new conference in the city where I live in. It felt so aligned with the part of my professional identity that remained, I contacted the organizer about being part of the coming year’s event and to my relief, she enthusiastically agreed. And then, without realizing it, for the past year, I had been gently shaping my professional hopes around speaking at this conference. Notes, ideas, draft presentations, voice memos, all to keep track of my growing idea of what to present at the main event. In a year that was marked by major life shifts, personal bereavements, a global polycrisis and shattering world-order… this talk became a quiet anchor.

Then I got the message from the organizer: “All the spots are full — maybe next year.”

It hit harder than I expected.

Ego, Identity & The Grief We Don’t Name

I felt anger. Self-doubt. Embarrassment. Shame.

Had I wasted my time? Was I not good enough? Why did this matter so much?

Feeling like a little girl, unvalued and unseen.

I realized that these feelings were not necessarily new, they had just found a new place to land. What I lost wasn’t just a speaking opportunity; I had lost a piece of my self-image, or what I had ‘taken myself to be’. The idea of the role I might play in a community I longed to belong to.

This is what psychologists like Carl Jung might call an encounter with the shadow i.e. the parts of ourselves we’d rather not see. When our outer identities (the ego) falls apart, the parts we’ve tucked away show up to be witnessed. In my case, as long as the conference was there, my ego held onto an identity of importance, believing that I had a spot was confirmation to it that I am worthy. And so like a bandaid covering an unhealed wound, the ripping off exposed something ugly to me. Something I didn’t want to see or be.

The Gift of Witnessing

In order for me to work with and hopefully eventually outgrow these unconscious patterns, they must come to the surface first, to be examined and understood. I could never work with the wound (shadow) itself if it was covered by the bandaid…

So instead of pushing the feelings away, I watched them. Like the sun shows up every day and stays present, no matter what the events that unfold before it. She simply witnesses it all, rise and fall. The simple act of witnessing would allow for the natural forces of the body and psyche to do the healing.

I noticed the thoughts — the fear, the judgment, the stories I told myself. And slowly, I started to realize: these aren’t who I am. They’re simply patterns unfolding in my consciousness.

A Quiet Kind of Freedom

The next morning, I felt lighter. Something had shifted.

I no longer needed that opportunity to feel valid. I wasn’t the person with the conference talk. I also wasn’t the person who lost it. I was something deeper, something that doesn’t fit into a title or event.

My Self is far more fluid and adaptable, and transcendent than any of those boxes.

In Buddhism, this process is called non-attachment or the practice of letting go of things we think we need to define us. Buddhism teaches that the act of attaching or identifying with our sense of self (Ego) is, by definition, constraining. This is because unconsciously it leads us to believe on some level that we are defined by it, we need it, or we even are it. And therefore releasing it is by definition expansive to the perceived sense self.

Jung might call this process individuation, becoming whole by integrating all parts of ourselves. The journey of individuation involves gradually loosening our dependence on external markers of self: roles, achievements, social approval, even our own curated image.

We begin to see that our job title, our audience, our political alignment, our persona are all expressions, not definitions, of who we are.

Jung believed that as we individuate, the ego begins to serve the Self, the deeper, wiser core of the psyche, rather than trying to be the Self.

This is a radical shift.

We stop striving to prove ourselves through external confirmation and begin to live from an inner wholeness that needs no proof.

What I’m Taking With Me

We cannot grow without discomfort. That is, suffering ‘ego wounds’ or experiences that shake our sense of self, always reveals to us a deeper layer of who we are, beyond that perceived sense of self.

This loss gave me a small doorway into that deeper self. And while I wouldn’t have chosen it, I’m thankful for what it revealed.

So if you’re clinging to something right now — a title, a role, a plan — maybe notice what’s beneath it. You don’t have to let it go today. Just look. That might be the beginning of something freer.