My Therapist Says

My Therapist Says To Try an Elimination Diet for the Soul

As the pandemic recedes, I’ve got to decide what kind of life I actually want to live

Michele Bigley
Elemental
Published in
5 min readApr 7, 2021

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Illustration: Xinmei Liu for Elemental

When school let out for winter break of 2020, I finally started to lose my shit. It wasn’t the holidays, a possible election coup, my kids off Zoom school for a couple weeks, writing deadlines, managing my newsletter, or having to ready my online classes for a January 4 start date that had me at a breaking point. It was the upcoming vaccine rollout.

Everyone was starting to plan their vacations; schools were talking about bringing the kids back to campus; my partner was talking about going to a fall 2021 concert. Yet, I felt anxious. At the culmination of a year when we were all put on a public pause, but were expected to fully function digitally, after I’d figured out how to bedazzle my kids’ quarantine lives, and to some extent, my own, I realized we’d have to pivot from our new normal into a new new normal. I’m a dancer, and even for me, that’s a lot of pivoting.

On a beach walk with my therapist friend, I vomited my fears for after the vaccine, explaining that I didn’t know what kind of life I wanted anymore. She said, “This is the perfect time to get rid of anything you don’t need. Marie Kondo the…

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Michele Bigley
Elemental

Award-winning writer specializing in regenerative travel, environmental solutions and parenting. Michele’s writing a book about mothering in the Anthropocene.