Your Answer Is In The Question

Photography by Valentina Faubion

By. Becca Carucci

This is the first essay from a collection called “Rightful Places: Stories of Coming Home to Myself.” I haven’t always felt at home in my existence, my body or my life and have spent a lot of time looking externally for a place of belonging. I have come to learn that we must begin the journey to peace by looking within, examining our souls and discovering what exists there. Somewhere between the bravery to dive deep, the grief of the losses we face and the freedom there after, within the mundane and the extraordinary we will discover soon that we have indeed found our rightful place. My deepest hope is that between and within the lines of these five essays you become a step closer to a true home within, the place we are all longing for. Yours, Becca

Part of making a home in your life is learning to understand the calls of your soul, learning to hear the small voice, to take time to care, to show regard. Learning to know which words are important, which lines are old narratives, which tapes to press stop on and which tapes to press play on. These are all stops on the road to existing in your rightful place. If you’ve been around for any amount of time, you’ve faced a situation that left you asking “why?” over and over. The scale and gravity of our why’s depend on the situation at hand. We ask this in our day to day when someone is rude to us in line, all the way up to our live’s most harrowing and painful moments like the loss of a parent or spouse. It contains all of our multitudes, our deepest fears and longings and yet we often shout it without clarity on what we are really wanting in response. One of the clearest ways to know there is something worth listening to in your internal world is when you begin to hear this word “why” surfacing frequently. 

Things are rarely what they seem like on a surface level. In my work as a therapeutic specialist, I teach younger clients about anger using the metaphor of an iceberg. At the surface it may look like screaming, shouting and slamming doors but right below the external response, you’d be surprised to see things like shame, fear and jealousy. I sit with them and brainstorm what they may actually be feeling when they get called on in class to answer something they don’t know. The teacher sees a student rolling their eyes, while fear of failure bubbles up inside an anxious 5th grader. I teach them about my own experience with anger by using the example of getting cut off in traffic. When I yell at the driver who hastily went in front of me, my body is really just responding to the intense fear of almost getting into an accident. Just like our emotions may be clueing us into so much more if we take the time to look at them, our ‘why’s’ are doing that too. 

These days, we are collectively and individually finding ourselves asking this question. The temptation to jump into a pool of hopelessness may come to mind every other hour with new headlines, tweets and stories emerging that seem to point us right in the direction of the deep end. Lately, I’ve been vacillating between the wave of optimism and the wave of grief, I believe it will get better and then I am convinced the end is near. But the truth is, even as every fiber of my being perks up at the idea of getting an answer to why certain things are happening, I know that it wouldn’t satisfy the ache in my heart. And in your agony of wondering, you may believe differently. Trust me, countless nights have passed that I’ve laid in bed believing that if I knew why it all went wrong in a relationship, a test, or a job interview that I’d be able to rest easy. It is natural to believe an answer is the missing puzzle piece we long for. In many areas of our life, when something is missing the problem is fixed when it is found. Our souls are not so simple. Just like our anger iceberg, these thoughts are floating on top of the chasm that is your precious soul. I don’t blame anyone who doesn’t dive off the top to look under. The waters are dark, they are cold, and they are the threshold into spaces we have long forgotten. If we go there, what will we find?

There is so much power in the question, but the power would never come from an answer, the power comes in the reason we are asking it in the first place. Think of a breakup you’ve gone through. The ending happens. You recount and replay every step that led up to it. Why did I do that?  Why did they say this? You dissect it, pulling out every mishap and holding it under the microscope. And after hours of examination, you lie there, exhausted. Sure, you may have gotten somewhat closer to understanding what led to the ending. But did you get all the answers? If you did, are you still weary? The truth is, we don’t actually need these answers in the ways we strongly believe we do. That’s just what’s on top of the iceberg. I know it feels impossible to let go of wondering what went wrong. I know it feels impossible to believe in life after death, whether it was a physical death or the death of a dream, the death of a career, the death of a relationship. In our life’s most shocking moments, the ones where we find ourselves on our knees begging for the answers to it all, we must dive underneath the surface to see that our souls just want to know: Am I alone in this? Will I make it through this? The answer to those questions is ultimately what will satisfy your anguish. And you already have those truths within. 

When Covid began I was in the final stages of the interview process of a dream job. It was a leadership & development role at one of the largest private construction companies. It would have been over double my current salary, a three minute drive from my house and an entrance into the world I want to work in. After four rounds of interviews and making it to the top two candidates out of forty, I got the phone call that they closed the position because of a hiring freeze due to Covid. I could taste it all right as everything fell through. For weeks my mind flooded with angry questions...why couldn’t they have begun interviewing in January rather than February? Why this…why that ...which spirals into the bigger questions when we feel like nothing goes our way: why is my luck shitty? Why can’t I have what I want? It is so easy to do a deep dive into the dissatisfaction of our lives when one thing goes wrong. My only way out of the muck of disappointment was to name it and then share it. My brain tells me to keep asking why while my heart tells me to share it with others. Because when I do, I am met with “I get it…” I didn’t need the “why” of this job falling through, I needed the rugged and tried hands of my people to hold. The familiarity of a shoulder to lean on, to cry into. It is not to get off on other people’s disaster, grief or misfortune, but to look at it, to look at ours, and use our stories together to combat against the lies that tragedy is only happening to us. 

This is the power of our why’s, it points to one of the greatest teachers and truths: we are better when we are honest about the reality of what is happening within. We are better when we dive under the surface of our questions and swim through the murky waters to see the reality of our souls. And lastly, we are better and closer to our truest selves when we show regard to our souls by offering its truths to the world around us. When you find yourself on your knees, when you find yourself at the end of your rope, because you will, would you ask yourself to look beyond the shadows of your anxious questions? And as you begin to look, when you open those spaces, your why’s will slowly dissipate and the comfort your soul longs for will be found in the truth that you aren’t alone in your grief. Your losses will still exist, but you will be found in that place. 

Becca Carucci works as a therapeutic specialist at a mental health clinic in Southern California and is currently pursuing a Masters degree in Organizational Psychology. Her passion for people having a deeper understanding of their stories began in 2013 when she moved to Ethiopia to work with women and children who had been victims of human trafficking. Since then her life has brought her on a journey of self discovery that has only deepened the desire to partner alongside people as they uncover more about themselves in order to live fuller and more meaningful lives. She enjoys writing and can be found most often holding an americano in one hand, a book in the other with The National playing in her headphones. Instagram: beccacarucci .