Success Decompression Sickness: Why Every Mother Needs to "Find Her Golf"

Written By: Ronke Champion-Adeyemi

If you had met me at age fifty-five, you would have met a woman who was winning on paper but drowning in quiet.

I had just sold my multi-million-dollar hospice business. My kids were grown. My husband and I moved to the stillness of California. And for the first time since I arrived in America with $500 and a baby on my hip, I had absolutely nothing to do. No payroll to meet. No crises. No children needing rides.

I realized something that terrified me: I didn’t know who I was without a crisis to solve.

I was suffering from a condition I call Success Decompression Sickness (S.D.S.). In medicine, decompression sickness—"the bends"—happens to deep-sea divers who come up to the surface too quickly. The same thing happens to a woman's spirit when she goes from the high-pressure depth of "saving everyone" to the surface-level calm of stillness too fast.

When you have spent decades as the fixer, you confuse usefulness with worth. I didn't know how to stop running.

The cure came in the most unlikely form: a sport I swore I would never play. My husband dragged me to the golf course. I was terrible at it. I swung and hit nothing but air. But eventually, my competitive "Cheetah" spirit woke up. I entered a tournament, was assigned the lowest handicap possible, and finished 58th out of 63 women.

I wasn't last. And it was one of the best days of my life.

For four hours on the golf course, I wasn't a CEO. I wasn't a wife. I wasn't a mother. I was just a human being trying to get a ball in a hole. Golf became my antidepressant without medication because it forced me to be present.

We have raised a generation of women who believe that "Self" is a dirty word—that our value lies in how much we can carry for other people. But you cannot pour from an empty cup. Finding your passion—finding your "golf"—is not a luxury. It is a survival strategy.

It is never too late to start something new. If you are breathing, you have time. Find your golf, whatever it may be. Because the best thing you can give your family is a fully alive version of you.