The diet. We dread.

“What’s it like?”

“Like watching everyone else eat it.”

“But never tasting it.”

“Then you do.”

“Instantly love it.”

“But know you’ll never taste it again.”

I’m sitting on the uncarpeted floor. Trying to tell her what it’s like. Without words. Or language to express, interpret. Translate. Summer burns outside. And within. Therapy. 2025.

I’ve dedicated my career to working with humans experiencing great loss, longing, lack. Environments of exigency. In communities that crave compassion and care.

An obvious attraction that pushed as well as pulled. Like a magnet. And lightning rod. From my earliest memories. The innate drive to make better. To create change.

Coming from an insatiable need to save them. To absolve me.

The parallel process.

Train tracks that run side by side a journey never destined to consciously converge. Only metaphorically meet.

I experienced significant loss as a child. The kind of loss that changes you before having time to stay the same. Like sand in an egg timer that gets flipped prematurely. Before its 3-minute lifespan.

I’ll never forget a colleague educating me about the parallels between the sectors I was working in and the behaviours of the staff it attracted. Once she opened my eyes to this phenomena, it was all I could see.

Which necessitated looking first.

At me.

Reflective practice. The commitment to regularly review and curiously question. In a world that teaches us to focus on the one finger pointing outwards. At the expense of the other three.

Research highlights parallel process plays out mostly unconsciously as we recreate early attachment patterns through our professional relationships. We seek parents in bosses, mentors and colleagues. The “good enough” leader or culture becomes the “good enough” parent we miss. Or never had.

Then one day. Caught off guard. Out of the blue. They appear.

The parallel tracks that weren’t supposed to meet.

Crash.

And when asked what it looks like, this totally foreign feeling. This unexpected uprising. For which you have no memory. You hear yourself say:

Like tasting chocolate.

For the first time. At 49.

Without knowing it, that boss, mentor, culture becomes your focus. You throw everything you have into nurturing, growing, savouring it. Keeping the dream of it.

Alive.

Somewhere deep, knowing it cannot.

Live.

For very long.

And you’re left with an amygdala primed, experiencing pain more acutely the second time. Relying on neuroscience to explain why "re-losing" feels worse than never having at all.

Weighing up the scales of being better off with the gluttonous calories of knowing. Against the micronutrient deficiency, of not.

Learning to live without chocolate.

But with the bittersweetness of finally knowing how good it tastes.

As the egg timer runs out.

And you know it’s time to diet. Again.

H2BH 042/365