Sara Sweat, MA – Founder, Monarch
Two summers ago, I took my son to the same lake in Minnesota where my grandfather had built a small cabin in the mid-1960s.
Grandpa’s cabin was long gone. But I found a rental home just ten houses down from where so many of my best childhood memories had happened. To my surprise and delight, the lake looked much the same as it had decades before.
The cabin I rented had the same knotty pine walls and scratchy old rugs and a screened in sleeping porch that opened up to a familiar cool and fragrant breeze. The sunrises looked exactly as I remembered — hot pink and dusty purple giving way to a light so bright that when it reflected off the lake – you could barely look outside.
I was happy to be there. And, I noticed all of these similarities easily. I remarked on them. I was even grateful for them.
But, then quickly returned to whatever task was at hand. A quick email for work. Applying sunscreen to my son. Applying bug spray to anything that stood still.
The momentum of productivity, familiar and automatic, carried me through those moments in the same way they carried me through every moment.
I was not fully present, but not checked out either. Efficient. Consistent. Going through life in a kind of liminal state – where nothing was wrong, but nothing was great & I wasn’t ever really…there.
Then one evening my son, with a freshly purchased Paw Patrol fishing rod in tow, asked me to teach him how to fish.
We walked down the creaking boards of the worn dock over the lake. I listened to the distant hum of boat motors and water lapping on the sandy shore. But, instead of registering like background noise, these sounds – this moment – transported me like a time machine.
Three generations of my family had fished this lake. My grandfather. My father. Me.
And now – right now – in this very moment, a fourth generation was being initiated. It was like time converged and all the moments of the past and present aligned in perfect symmetry as I heard myself instructing my son with the same words my father used to teach me.
I showed my son how to cast. How to pick your spot on the water. How to time the release and control the line with a flick of the wrist. I showed him how to reel it in with tiny but erratic jerks to mimic the movements of an injured & appetizing worm.
On his first cast, the line left the rod with that familiar “zing” — traveling through the air, landing “kerplunk” on the glassy still water — and something inside me shifted.
For the first time, in longer than I could remember, I was actually present.
I could see it, feel it. Experience the moment fully – while I was still in it. I noticed the dragonflies buzzing around us. The way the colors of the sunset changed and how the water reflected their transformation.
I wasn’t busily planning my next move. I wasn’t thinking about work. It didn’t even occur to me to leave the dock and start making dinner. I was just…here. Every part of me was present for this moment – like it was the only thing happening in my whole world. Because it was.
And in that stillness, I remembered something I had kind of forgotten: I belong to a legacy, to a family, to a great big world of experiences and expressions and ideas – and moments just like this.
I am not my output. I am not what I can do for others or what I can secure for myself. I am more than a calendar of events, or a list of to dos, or even my greatest accomplishments and boldest dreams.
I am here, now. And, that is enough.
In fact – that’s everything.
Because when we stop defining ourselves by all these things about us and remember who we really are – everything gets easier and better.
A whole new toolkit of skills come online. We see entirely new connections, generate completely unique imaginings, and unlock mysteries that are only solved when we’re completely and totally – us.
This is what it feels like when your nervous system finally comes home. At Monarch, this stage in our evolution is called – Ascend.
It’s usually not a dramatic breakthrough or a moment of sudden clarity or a grand transformation. Just a quiet moment when you remember who you are, are present enough to see it, and are connected enough to enjoy it.
This is what we are building toward. This is where Monarch is leading you.
Ascension
If you’ve been with me on this journey, you know what brought me to that dock.
You know about the father I lost too young and the mother who disappeared into addiction. You know that I became someone who learned to hold everything together because no one else could.
You know about the survival skills that became a career and the career that became an identity and about the year when everything fell apart.
You know how survival skills start as an adaption to a chaotic or overwhelming experience, then morph into a way to achieve, and finally take over as an identity we confuse with who we are.
And, you know – probably all too well for yourself – what living this way costs you. What it means to survive your life instead of living it.
If you’ve recognized yourself in any of it — if you’ve been nodding your head the past few weeks as you read — this is where it all starts to change.
Because, there is another way to go through your life.
A whole way. A way that is sourced from all of you — not just the parts that were forged in crisis.
This is what it means to Ascend.
You cannot think your way there. You cannot achieve it — and believe me, most of us try. You can’t will yourself into a different relationship with your own life through sheer force of personality, discipline, or some simple optimization of your morning routine.
Ascension requires something different.
It requires knowing who you actually are — beneath the survival skills, beneath the performance, beneath the identity you built on top of everything you survived.
And for most high-achievers who’ve been through hard things, that is a genuinely terrifying thought.
I work with so many impressive humans. So many achievers and cycle breakers – accomplished and respected in every area of life. People who are outwardly successful, but are terrified that the chinks in their armor are starting to show. People who know they don’t want to keep living this way, but feel powerless to change it.
Because your survival skills have been so reliable, for so long, that they have become indistinguishable from how you see yourself. From your value. From what makes you feel safe.
It’s like we are terrified to answer the question that we can’t stop ourselves from asking. If I strip away the capability, the achievement, the relentless productivity…take away the hard work and the hustle, and the grit — what’s left?
Claim Your Identity
The Monarch Method starts with that all important question. With claiming your identity. Your true identity.
Not the one you built for survival or the role you’ve been playing, or the capable, competent, always-handles-it person the world has come to rely on.
But, your deeper identity. The one that actually informed your survival skills. The part of you that knew you needed something you didn’t have & went about building it with whatever raw materials it could find. The you – behind what you survived.
I want to introduce you to an exercise I use with my clients all the time. I call it the Golden Thread.
Think of one of the hardest moments of your life. Not to relive it — you don’t need to reprocess it or re-examine it through a therapeutic lens. Just observe, from a distance, with one specific question in mind:
What was I doing in that moment?
Not what was happening to you. What you were doing.
What were you thinking? What did you say? How did you interpret the situation? What details did you see? Where did you go with the insights you perceived?
One of my earliest Golden Thread moments was in the days following my father’s death.
My mother was devastated – having lost the love of her life suddenly and traumatically. Before the funeral, as the family was gathering to leave, the reality of what was happening came crashing in for my mom & I found her crumpled on the floor of our dining room, wailing in sorrow.
There were adults in the house. Everyone saw or heard what was happening. But, no one engaged. No one even tried to comfort her. They avoided the room she was in and literally side stepped her as she wept.
I did not. At fourteen years old, I got down on the floor with her. I told her I was there. I comforted her with words and reminded her of her strength. I showed her she was loved – by my Dad, by her children, by so many others. And, I got her off the floor and into the car.
In that moment, I had no idea what I was doing and was I scared out of my mind. That image of my mom bereft on the floor is burned into my memory like a brand. And, I can still hear the sound of her cries.
If I go back into that memory looking for the trauma, I can find it. The fear, the responsibility, the weight of being a child in a situation no child should be in.
But if I go back looking for the golden thread — looking for what I was doing, what I was capable of in that moment — I find something else entirely.
I didn’t flinch from a person in pain. I held my own fear at bay and chose to act, regardless of what everyone else was doing. I used what I had – my voice, my body, my words – to uplift someone else in one of the worst moments of their life.
Should I have had to step in as an 8th grader in that moment? Of course not. Did it leave its own mark on me, who I became, and how I went through the world? 100%.
But, when I look at it now – objectively, as a adult – does it also reveal something core to who I truly am? Abso-freakin-lutely.
My golden thread? I am the kind of person who steps up. Even when no one else can, maybe especially when no one else can – I am someone who sees pain and is moved to respond. I am someone who is willing to witness it. To honor it. To heal it.
This is core to who I am. This is the motivation behind so many of my motivations in life. And, it’s at the heart of my superpowers as a speaker, writer, and coach.
You see, the problem was never who I was. It was how “who I was” adapted into “how I survive”.
I went from being the kind of person who steps up – to being someone who thought her only value was in stepping up. From being the person who could witness pain, to being the person who had to eliminate it from everyone she ever met.
Our survival skills are born from our strengths – we just take them too far. They become the armor we use to protect us from the chaos of life – instead of the character that defines how we live it.
Healing from hard things is important. And, a necessary step along the way. But, if we come to terms with the hard things that happened to us, but never reclaim the person who survived them – we are doomed to do little more than survive what’s left of our lives.
And, that’s simply not good enough for me. It’s not good enough for the people in my life. And, it’s definitely not good enough for her – for that brave little girl I once was, who turned toward the chaos and dared to intervene.
Those golden threads that came shining through in moments of hardship – are mine. They are the glimmers of blessing amidst the breaking. They are the essence of who I deserve to be.
And, I am not allowing the hard things I’ve been through to claim them. These skills. These gifts. The particular, specific, hard-won essence of who I am deserves to be restored to its rightful place in my life.
As my strength.
What’s True for You
This is what the Golden Thread exercise reveals: the things that happened to you left you with more than scars. These moments are windows into the purest, most beautiful parts of who you are and why you’re here.
Maybe, it’s the way you read people. The way you hold steady in chaos. The way you know what to say when everything is falling apart or simply see what others miss.
These are your golden threads. You can see them, woven through the hardest moments of your life. The trauma didn’t create them — they were already there. The trauma leaned into them to create your survival skills.
But, you don’t need to survive anymore. You need to live.
Claiming your identity means pulling those threads into the light. It means looking at them with clear eyes and saying: this is something that belongs to me. Something I can carry forward. Something I can use — not to survive, but to build the life I actually want.
This is where Ascension begins.
Not with a new set of skills or a hacky productivity system or yet another annoying thing to optimize. But, with the recognition that who you already are — who you’ve always been – isn’t something you can lose. And, to bring it back into the light to build something extraordinary.
Something sustainable. Something joyful. Something that doesn’t cost you everything to maintain.
I think about that evening in Minnesota often.
The zing of the fishing line. The smell of the lake. The look on my son’s face when the bobber went under for the first time and he felt a tug on the line.
I was there for that. Fully, completely there. Not managing it. Not performing it. Not executing a plan for a meaningful family vacation.
Just there. On a dock. In a moment that connected me to my father and his father and every member of my family that cast a line into those waters and waited.
That is what I want for you. Not just as moments – but as a life.
As a default way of being. To live with a quality of presence that comes from truly inhabiting your own life rather than managing it from afar.
You have been so capable for so long. You have managed it all and held everything together and achieved so much. And, there is so much more to achieve and build and do.
But, you deserve to actually live inside this big, beautiful life you built.
Not someday. Not when things slow down. Not after the next milestone or the next achievement or the next proof that you’ve finally done enough to earn the rest.
Now. Exactly as you are. With everything you’ve survived and everything it gave you and everything you have yet to discover about how amazing and miraculous and powerful you really are.
The door is open. This is what’s on the other side.
So, try your own Golden Thread exercise this week. Go back to one hard moment. Not the hardest — just a simple challenge from childhood. Observe it from a distance, and ask yourself this question.
What was I doing? What was I capable of, even then?
Write down what you find. Start pulling your threads. They belong to you anyway.
They are you.
And next week, we’ll starting talking about how to weave them all together into the life you deserve to finally create.
Monarch is coaching and community for high-achievers who’ve been through hard things and are done surviving their lives. If this opened something up in you — share it with someone who’s been there, too.
And, subscribe to stay with me as we architect what comes after.
