Rigobert - 39

I was born and raised in Germany. I grew up on the west side of the Berlin Wall and moved to Düsseldorf at a young age, where I was raised for the first ten years of my life. To say I'm an immigrant, a foreigner in Canada, while I've lived here now for twenty-nine years, I still feel so deeply rooted in my European heritage. I think that's maybe partially because I still speak German at home, and I have mannerisms and cultural ways that I've never given way to Canadian customs. And the ones that I have, I've learned to reclaim for myself.

Immigration was a very difficult part of my life. I think that's where truly one of my greatest wounds of belonging came through. Children don't mean to be cruel, but they are, and they can be cruel about things they don't understand, such as the Second World War, which was something that, as a German, you didn't speak about. It's not something that was taught to you at such a young age, let alone something for you to understand. To come to Canada in high school, be called a Nazi, and be told all sorts of terrible stories about your family, and as a child, not being able to understand that, was very challenging for both myself and my brother. It was met with, for us, just a lot of feeling misunderstood and having to dive deeply into the wounds of our nation to understand truly what was at hand.

I would say that for most of my life I've been a lone wolf, again and again trying to seek belonging, but also having a tendency to just move through life at my own pace, by my own will, in my own state.

I'm a naturopathic doctor, and my story begins when I went into practice, because it was easy to hide in education. I was good at science. You study long enough, regurgitating information just to forget it afterwards; unfortunately, that gets you pretty far in life. At least on paper, not personally. My personal growth journey started when I went into practice and actually had to show up and be real with patients, which was initially a hurdle because I couldn't really show up as myself. I felt like I had to wear the coat as an authority. I thought I had to have all the answers. I had a hard time charging my worth, and there was a great sense of unease and disenchantment in my first years.

I found that my practice has had to redevelop itself, rediscover itself again and again and again, not just in terms of what it is I do or why I do it, but how. How do I show up? How am I going to be the real me so that I can invite others to do the same? Because this work is depth-oriented. We're not just working with the body here; we are working with the spirit, we're working with the mind, the very soul and essence of a person and the way they show up in their life.

I came to Salt Spring Island to start a cancer care inpatient retreat centre, which fell apart as a result of COVID, and I hid all of my shadow in there. That belief was: Well, I am something if this is something, so this project is a representation of me and all my worth. When it was worth nothing, I was worth nothing. That's when I hit bedrock.

That's when the real work started. And lucky for me, I was, or have been, raised in a family that values personal development, and I was exposed to workshops, retreats, and experiential journeys. I remember I naively assumed that you do the work and then you finish it and you're done, just like taking a course. I realized really quickly that the work is never done.

At the same time, I'm also so tired of always having to look like there's something wrong to work on. What if I just chose to truly look at every task not as something to be conquered, a dragon to be slain? What if I looked at it as, "How could I enjoy this more?" What if joy preceded safety, so that I didn't have to perform? Because I've been performative all my life.

I don't know if that's a cultural phenomenon or a family phenomenon. It's gotten me very far, but I can certainly see the double edge to it. I am someone who wants to experience all of life, and as someone who is a perfectionist, that is a very tall order, one I recognize now is impossible.

I also live now with my family, my mother and my father, which was a pain point for a period of time. The way that I judged my own sense of self-worth after having broken the proverbial umbilical cord, only to be reconnected again in such close quarters, together with my child and wife and my dog, is both humbling and illuminating. I learned so much about myself and my family patterns. It's also really special to live in a multigenerational home; so much is available to be discussed, to be processed, to reflect on, and to laugh over.

Being a father has been one of the most rewarding experiences in my life because it has allowed me to fully step into my childlike essence. That joie de vivre, that chutzpah that I am renowned for, people share with me that there is a light inside me that beckons, blossoms, and beams in the way that I show up. I love that I can bring that to my children, albeit there is a huge ADHD component that comes with it. I have come to hold, hug, and embrace my hyperactivity and my attention deficit. In some ways, they are my biggest skill set.

What also allows me to be an effective naturopathic doctor is that I am able to hold space, diagnose, prognose, treat, and process all at the same time because of the way my mind works. It allows me to draw from so many places, and instead of fighting against it, I have learned to embrace it and wield it as my cum laude. My greatest force. My asset.

I'm a high school sweetheart. I'm one of the lucky few who found their love early on in life, before I picked up all that extra baggage. Instead, I got to pick up the baggage together with my wife, every step of the way.

We've now been together for approximately twenty-three years. Twelve of those we've been married, and we have steered and helmed our life and traveled the world. It's unbelievable how we continue to discover and rediscover new aspects of one another and of ourselves. A partnership such as ours has been a fertilizer for growth, and that means it isn't always amazing. Some days are harder than others, but we come through it. Raising our children together has been such a highlight.

Being a part of a men's group has been phenomenal for me, because it has not just allowed me to be validated, respected, seen, and heard, it has also provided me with people in my life who have the capacity to call me forward. It has given me the space to continuously expose myself and let go of the armour of posturing, which is what I'd done all my life to get through, to feel safe. Instead, now I face the music. I recognize I can't please everybody as the captain of the ship, and there is relief in recognizing that I can let that go. That's okay. I also recognize my coping tendency: feeling like if everyone else is okay, then I'm okay. How exhausting for someone who tries to derive superhuman strength, whose nervous system is so attuned to his surroundings that he's always checking in.

I feel like, for once now, moving forward, I'm really listening to the tune of my own music, taking some relief, taking a breath of fresh air. Somatic therapies and shadow work have been the most profound gifts in my life, allowing me to develop into my true self. I've got to say, it feels good to love myself. It feels good to be me. I wouldn't want to be anybody else.

Music - Rigobert's music choices during our photo session included A Winged Victory for the Sullen, Freddie Gibbs, Nujabes, BADBADNOTGOOD, and dreamcastmoe.