Today I Choose to be Purified – How to be Purified

When Curtis almost died, everything unnecessary fell away. Not gradually, not thoughtfully, but instantly – like someone had taken a machete to the jungle of my priorities and cleared a path straight to what mattered.

I spent a month in that hospital room, and you know what I thought about? Not work. Not the important meetings I was missing. Not the compliance issues piling up on my desk. Not the eighteen “urgent” emails that kept pinging my phone until I finally just turned it off.

I thought about all the vacations I’d worked through. The family moments I’d missed while building someone else’s empire. The dreams I’d deferred because I was too busy being indispensable. The book I’d written – “Today I Choose to Be” – that sat unpublished on my hard drive because I never had time to figure out publishing.

Crisis has a way of purifying your priorities with brutal efficiency.

The Hospital Room Reckoning

Those first 72 hours, when we didn’t know if Curtis would make it, my entire worldview went through a forced purification. Every belief about what was “important” got examined under the harsh fluorescent lights of potential loss.

Important: Whether he would wake up.
Not important: The quarterly report due Monday.

Important: Being there when he opened his eyes.
Not important: The board meeting I was supposed to lead.

Important: Understanding his medications and advocating for his care.
Not important: My inbox reaching 500 unread messages.

The purification was ruthless and immediate. Twenty years of accumulated “shoulds” and “musts” and “have-tos” just… evaporated.

The Physical Purification

Living in a hospital room for a month forces a kind of physical purification too. I had three changes of clothes. One phone charger. A notebook. My reading glasses. That’s it.

No closet full of options. No bathroom full of products. No kitchen full of gadgets. No office full of important papers. Just the essentials for surviving each day.

And you know what? It was enough. More than enough. It was liberating.

I didn’t need seventeen lipsticks to feel put together. I didn’t need perfect hair to advocate for my husband. I didn’t need my power suits to be powerful. I just needed to be present, alert, and fierce when necessary.

The Emotional Purification

Sitting in that chair, watching Curtis breathe with beeps and whirs, holding his hand while he fought through ICU psychosis, I went through an emotional purification I didn’t know I needed.

All the petty resentments I’d been carrying – about housework distribution, about his fishing obsession, about the way he loads the dishwasher wrong – they burned away like morning fog. Who cares about dishwasher loading when you’re not sure if someone will ever load a dishwasher again?

The grudges I held at work, the slights I’d been nursing, the professional jealousies I’d been feeding – gone. Purified by the simple reality that none of it mattered if Curtis didn’t come home.

The Priority Purification

Before the hospital, my priority list looked like this:

1. Work (always work)
2. Work emergencies
3. Work opportunities
4. Family (if time)
5. Health (if really time)
6. Joy (what’s that?)

After the hospital:

1. Curtis’s recovery
2. My health (can’t help him if I collapse)
3. Family connections
4. Joy (because life is short)
5. Work (only what’s necessary)
6. Everything else (maybe never)

The purification wasn’t gentle. It was like being thrown into a fire that burned away everything that wasn’t essential, leaving only what could survive that kind of heat.

The Career Purification

When I finally returned to work after Curtis came home, I was a different person. Purified of the need to be indispensable. Purified of the belief that the company would collapse without me. Purified of the illusion that any of it really mattered in the grand scheme of life and death.

In my first meeting back, someone was having a meltdown about a delayed project. The old me would have jumped in, taken over, worked nights to fix it. The purified me said, “That sounds stressful. What’s your plan to handle it?”

The shock on their face was almost comical. Where was the Susie who solved everyone’s problems? Who worked through vacations? Who always said yes?

She’d been purified. Burned away in a hospital room where real problems had real consequences.

The Relationship Purification

The crisis also purified my relationships. You find out quickly who shows up and who disappears when life gets real. Who sends actual help versus thoughts and prayers. Who can handle the raw truth versus who needs you to perform okay-ness.

Some surprises:

• The colleague I barely knew brought meals for a month
• The “best friend” sent one text and disappeared
• The neighbor I’d never really talked to mowed our lawn without being asked
• The family member who talked about helping never actually helped
• The acquaintance from Curtis’ networking group became a daily support

My relationship roster got purified down to people who show up. Not the ones who talk about showing up, post about showing up, or promise to show up. The ones who actually appear.

The Dream Purification

In that hospital room, I made a list of dreams I’d been deferring:

• Publishing my book
• Starting Enlightenzz
• Learning to paint
• Taking real vacations
• Writing daily
• Building something of my own

Every single one had been pushed aside for “more important” things. But sitting there, watching Curtis fight for his life, I realized I’d been deferring my actual life for a performed life that didn’t even make me happy.

The purification was simple: If Curtis survived, I would stop deferring. I would stop waiting for “someday.” I would stop putting everyone else’s priorities before my own dreams.

The Daily Purification Practice

Now, months later, I practice daily purification. Not the crisis-induced kind (thank God), but intentional clearing of what doesn’t serve.

Every morning, I ask: If this was my last day with Curtis, would I spend it doing this? It’s not morbid – it’s clarifying. It purifies my schedule of unnecessary obligations.

Every evening, I ask: Did today’s activities align with what I learned in that hospital room? If not, tomorrow gets purified.

It’s not perfect. Old patterns creep back. The world pulls you toward complexity, accumulation, obligation. But I have a touchstone now – the memory of that hospital room where everything got stripped down to love and breath and hope.

The Ongoing Purification

Being purified isn’t a one-time event. It’s a practice. The world keeps trying to complicate things, add things, convince you that more is necessary. But I know better now.

I know that you can live for a month with three outfits. That work continues without you. That most emergencies aren’t. That time with loved ones is the only real wealth. That dreams deferred might become dreams denied.

So I keep purifying:

• Saying no to committees that drain me
• Leaving work at work
• Taking real vacations (laptop stays home)
• Spending mornings writing instead of email-checking
• Choosing presence over productivity
• Prioritizing joy over achievement

Today’s Choice

Today I choose to be purified. Not through crisis (please, no more crisis), but through conscious choice. To regularly examine what I’m carrying and ask: Is this essential? Does this align with what I learned in that hospital room? Would this matter if someone I love was fighting for their life?

Most of what we carry isn’t necessary. Most of what we worry about doesn’t matter. Most of what feels urgent isn’t. Most of what we defer is more important than what we do.

The hospital purified me through forced subtraction – everything unnecessary stripped away by circumstance. Now I practice voluntary purification – consciously releasing what doesn’t serve, what doesn’t matter, what doesn’t align with the truth that crisis revealed.

Curtis survived. Recovered. Came home. And I kept my promise – to live purified of the unnecessary, focused on the essential, committed to what actually matters.

Today I choose to be purified. To carry only what serves. To prioritize only what matters. To remember what that hospital room taught me: When everything unnecessary falls away, what remains is love, presence, and the dreams you’ve been deferring.

Everything else is optional. And most of it isn’t worth carrying.

The purification hurt. Crisis always does. But it also freed me from twenty years of accumulated “important” things that turned out to be not important at all. And that freedom? That clarity? That purified priority list that puts life before work and joy before achievement?

That’s worth everything I let go.