ABOUT

ABOUT MARGO DAVIS, MSW, LICSW

I am a licensed psychotherapist, writer, coach, and public speaker. Undergoing divorce and becoming a single parent in 2011, I didn’t have a pile of money and my constitution was so-so. Heck, I didn’t even have a job. I was determined, however, to succeed on my own, despite having no real plan for supporting my household. Like most women working through a major life upheaval I faced many tests and trials, however it was this all-consuming life upheaval induced setback that ultimately made me whole and earned me a clear sense of achieved identity.

I have worked with women and couples as a therapist and coach since 2007, I received my Master of Social Work degree from Adelphi University and my life-coaching certificate through the Newfield Network in Boulder, Colorado. I am a longtime practitioner and facilitator of Insight Mediation. As an experienced workshop leader and public speaker, I’ve presented annual women’s programming on healthy relationships at Kripalu Center in Lenox, MA. I live in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts.

My Story

About nine months into my divorce, I am standing at my stove after a long day of work and single parenting, and I hear an author on NPR talking about The Hero’s Journey, popularized by renowned mythologist Joseph Campbell. As if a lightning bolt directly struck my consciousness, I had to pause from stirring the lentil soup and turn up the radio so I could take notes. As if my destiny was speaking, “YOU WILL NEED TO BECOME A HEROINE MARGO—THAT IS THE ONLY WAY YOU CAN GET THROUGH THIS!”. I knew then and there I was on a noble quest—just like every other woman out there swashbuckling her way through overwhelming roadblocks.

Adopting the heroine archetype to regain my self-respect

The heroine metaphor resonated because of how much courage and tenacity were regularly required for me to face my own gnarly habits of dependence and self-betrayal. In short, I had to dispel life-long illusions of being rescued by someone else. In my book I’ve tried to write about this very human reckoning with my own limitations, raising my two sons while endeavoring to become financially sound and emotionally whole. Integral in my approach is the concept that you can be your very own elixir; a radical departure from the female script of looking for nourishment everywhere but within yourself. This is how we break free from the power-leaking grasp what I call provider mythology.

Rooting out the erroneous myth about our own dependence is the first step to becoming whole. Taking myself under my own wing, I began to see each obstacle as a quest for my inner heroine to courageously tackle. Solving my own hard problems every day delivered me from the patterns of learned helplessness that had been leaking my power for decades.  At this very visceral level becoming my own robust provider was rearranging the way I saw everything and how I operated in the world.

Developing Self-Efficacy Builds Wholeness

What once seemed like a relentless series of terrifying obstacles, now I saw as obstacles calling me to develop a host of new skills and tools for navigating life. I could not have imagined trapping the skunk that had been spraying into my basement, or repairing my own toilet from a YouTube video would become my path to wholeness. But triumphing over these and other “manly tasks” became my new superpower. I was no longer waiting for any kind of rescue to solve my problems. This is where something else was tested—my willingness to really have my own back instead of looking for validation from someone else. This may sound radical, but once I literally committed to, and wholeheartedly became, the validating voice I had always been seeking, everything changed. I became my own doting grandparent, my own inner coach, even my own erotic lover for a spell. Heck, I became my very own dependable husband. By eradicating the erroneous belief in my own learned helplessness, I stopped systematically leaking my precious power and was finally able to create the robust life and livelihood I longed for.  

The problem that has no name: The female Provider Myth

Over time I came to see the many subtle forms of self-abandonment embedded within my thoughts and actions. My addiction to longing was gradually replaced with a richer experience of having, appreciating and harvesting the fruits of my very own labors. I learned to live more in the present moment instead of a future time when everything would be much better. With echoes of Betty Friedan’s “problem what that has no name”, I was able to pinpoint what I would later coin as the insidious female  “provider myth”.  Pondering what it might mean to be whole and full in oneself, I formed a new personal mantra, “when you come to see that you are the only one, you can always count on, to never abandon you in any way, ever again”, and it was life changing! But this revelation did not surround me right away–not at all. In truth it took many months, even years for me to gradually learn to become my own robust provider and source for everything I desired.

While I would not have chosen this exact life upheaval in the form of a divorce, divorce and life upheaval were 100% necessary for me to forge an amazing new career, a new relationship with money and a more enlightened paradigm for partnership. Still, if I was to tell you about the most important prize from this journey, hands down it would be the achieved sense of identity I found through witnessing all I could accomplish from my very own resources.

The Boomwrangler And The Inner Critic

Amazingly, the toughest obstacle to overcome was that of my own self-doubt—the quiet inner critic whispering to me ‘it’s just too hard to do on my own”. Yet the hard work of fully committing to have my own back, instilled in me a mighty sense of my own possibilities. I came to see myself as a boomwrangler, a woman who believes she can handle whatever the world throws at her and somehow come out on top. This new view of myself and my capacities has truly become my very own magic sword, and I would have missed it if not for the long and winding road of my divorce. As a therapist working with all kinds of smart successful women, I began to see that many kinds of life loss and life upheaval could initiate a sacred journey into the nexus of female power and feminine wholeness.

Substack Newsletter: Self-Abandon No More

In her 1992 book, Revolution From Within, Gloria Steinem writes, “Self-esteem isn’t everything; it’s just that there’s nothing without it”. So how do we acquire that greater sense of self-esteem? I believe self-esteem comes from compassionate self-acceptance coupled with an intrinsic rock solid sense of self-efficacy.  In my Substack blog: selfabandonnomore.substack.com, and in my work as a therapist and coach, I explore the question of what it means to be a self-referenced woman and how to achieve a greater sense of wholeness and achieved identity.

Book: Self-Abandon No More: A Therapist’s Quest For Wholeness

I have written an instructional memoire, “Self-Abandon No More: A Therapist’s Quest For Wholeness”, showcasing much of  the fear and resistance I was forced to reckon with before I could become a courageous provider for my family. Throughout the book, you will see how I eventually grew excited each time I spotted a new obstacle on the horizon. Over time the very obstacles that had me in tears on the floor, like when I didn’t have the money for new brakes or a month’s rent, taught me to look to my higher power, as well as my deep inner resources for help. With both humility and self-efficacy, this kind of “wiser-minded” way of greeting problems became the building blocks of my burgeoning self-confidence.

My goal here is to help women achieve wholeness and that coveted milestone of identity achievement. This work will give you a method for placing your own life upheaval, be it a financial crisis, a health crisis, or the loss of partner, into a evolutionary context of feminine wholeness.

Each obstacle you encounter has the power to grow you because of how it helps you forge new skills that will greatly increase your self-efficacy. Before you know it, you will be triumphing over so many obstacles on the way to your awesome new post-upheaval identity. The hard part is that we do this by facing whatever we most fear, but the good part is that by facing what we fear we eventually have less to fear and our anxiety and depression are reduced, while our self-confidence and self-esteem are increased. This journey is a really good one and I hope you learn to truly value yourself and take your own journey as far as it can go.

With all good thoughts,

Margo