What we call longing is often the grief we still carry.
Two photographs. A life frozen in time.
Trevor and I sat on a bench with our coffees.
Birds in the trees chirping.
With a flat voice, he shared, “In my mid-twenties, getting my MBA, I journaled my dream. I wanted to live like the Marlboro Man. Strong. Invincible. Independent. Forever young. A jet-set life.”
Trever had just been fired as the CFO of a major tech firm in Silicon Valley.
Not a team player, they said. Not strategic enough. Too micromanaging.
He said he felt his heart wasn’t really into his job.
He came to me, feeling burnt out and depressed, to plan what came next.
He chose meeting in the park so he could breathe.
From a frayed old manila folder, he drew two black-and-white photographs and laid them on the bench between us.
One, an iconic image of the Marlboro Man.
The other, a Concorde jet on the tarmac, a smiling captain beside it.
Trever said, “When I look at these, or at myself in the mirror, I see the years gone by.
The gray hair. The mixed success. I’m healthy. Wealthy, but running out of time.
I’m not the Marlboro Man I dreamed of becoming…”
His voice trailed off.
His eyes drifted past me to the horizon.
In my assessment, he was strong. Gifted. Talented. Accomplished.
Every element of a vibrant life, already in his hands.
So, I asked him what those two images really meant to him.
Slowly…another story surfaced.
He grew up in a farming family in the Midwest.
A boy who dreamed of wide open land, small-town life, and an agricultural business like his family.
Instead, he pursued a graduate degree and ended up in corporate towers in big cities. “I was drawn to big money, big titles, living large.”
Two decades in, he was suffocating. Depressed. Restless.
He felt like something was missing…
He was mourning the farming lifestyle that seemed to be slipping away.
At the same time, he could not fully commit to, or enjoy the professional status he had gained.
Together, we scripted a new path.
Stay a business leader for now, build capital, build toward the farm later.
Very soon, he landed a senior finance role and moved to the East Coast.
The farmland, he said, would come someday.
Just not now.
I asked him how he was feeling.
No answer.
. . . . . . . . . . . .
Ten years have passed.
It still aches when I think of him.
Having gained expertise in the psychology of trauma, I now see what I did not see back then.
Growing up, Trevor and his siblings had endured abuse, neglect, and violence in that farmhouse.
I missed the significance of his sharing.
The homecoming he longed for was not about going back to farming.
His farm dream was a mirage.
Instead, it was really about resolving the lingering feeling of innocence lost.
An ache still tormenting him.
Still grieving, with buried anger.
His nervous system was on freeze.
He could not feel safe and free enough to enjoy the new life he had built.
He was trying to close an emotional gash that had been oozing ever since.
His homecoming dream was really about closure, not going back to farming.
I suspect he might even have hated a farming life had he gone back.
In our therapy work, I heard him reminiscing.
The whimsy in the childhood farmland stories he shared.
But…I missed what was underneath them.
The dream matched his wound, not his wants.
This is what I would have done instead…
I would have introduced trauma and somatic restoration practices to support him in working through his longing for homecoming, grief, rage.
Only then would we have focused on life and career planning.
This way, he could finally have said goodbye to the Marlboro man…
. . . . . . . . . . . .
For so many of us, the past does not stay past…
it’s still seeping into our today’s life.
The what-ifs. The missed chances. The broken hearts.
We do not always need a new plan.
Often…we simply want to break free, to feel or say what we could not at those faraway periods of our lives.
The photographs we keep are rarely about the future we want.
They are about the feeling we never got to feel or the story still unfinished…
. . . . . . . . . . . .
Are you pushing through depression, waiting for someday, somehow, quietly wondering, “Why am I still not okay?”
Therapy isn’t about fixing you.
It’s about helping remembering your truth.
Contact me for a 30-minute Clarity Call.
BONUS:
Trauma Eats Your Strategy for Breakfast.
My recent blog on how your trauma and nervous system always beat your org chart and plans.
Leaders who heal it, lead it.
Dr. Ardeshir Mehran
Psychologist . Depression, anxiety, and trauma expert . Leadership coach
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Love Always,
-Ardeshir
Dr. Ardeshir Mehran
hello@ardeshirmehran.com
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