“If the Angel decides to come it will be because you have convinced her, not by tears, but by your humble resolve to be always beginning; to be a beginner”
This week as I start a new writing project I come face-to-face with the work of beginnings. There is just so much work that goes in to tilling the soil of what you are about to do—reading, writing practice, re-reading, re-writing. All without any noticeable forward motion, but with a sense of depth, familiarity and comfort in the new landscape. And the other work of creating what I have come to call ‘writing compost’: small pieces of writing that result in one new idea to move your writing forward, or notes from articles to hone definitions and expand my understanding of the topic. Work that helps me integrate what I know with what is new and what I have experienced. And this is all work that will never see the light of day or be seen by anyone else. All work that is just there to feed the ideas and feed the work so it can grow.
When I began my last writing project I asked for advice from friends about beginnings and one wise friend told me to ‘have the courage to be new.’ And I think of this advice every time I find myself starting again at anything. It’s amazing how powerful ‘the old’ is, how much you feel attached to the old, and wary of the new. Our old habits, old worldview, old beliefs. Even if they aren’t helping us, even if they are actually getting in our way. The old familiar can feel so solid and comforting, and the new feels so wobbly and incomplete.
Beginnings are inevitable. As long as you continue to heal and grow, you will hit places of beginning again. Because healing from trauma is a cycle and as you complete one cycle of healing, you come back around to beginning again. You come back to the preparation phase again—where the work is tilling the soil, creating compost, gathering resources, and taking a look at what needs to be healed, mended and repaired. As you come back to the beginning you assess what worked the last time and what didn’t. What other supports or resources do you need? What do you understand now that you didn’t then? What’s the next piece of work?
Preparation work requires a belief in, and a devotion to, your healing, to the hope and vision you have for your future. It isn’t work that others will cheer you on for because often, no one can see this work but you. Beginning work is inside work, and inside work is often invisible. Preparation work is work that you are doing on behalf of your future self—the you-- a year or ten years from now-- who is grateful to you for your courage to begin now. Grateful for your courage to take these slow and awkward steps.
One problem with beginning is that in our current culture, and especially our culture of healing, we don’t acknowledge the long on-ramp of beginning. We equate beginning with action, successful action and this isn’t at all where beginnings start. Beginnings start with contemplation. Beginnings start with hopes and fears. Beginnings start with watching other people do it, or reading about other people who did it. Beginnings start with fantasies of what it would be like to live differently or complete that really hard task. And then beginnings start with lots and lots of attempts and failures. Getting up and falling down. Learning from your mistakes and learning who you are in the process. Beginnings start with one word, and one sentence. Sometimes repeated over and over again. Beginnings start with putting your hand on the door handle of the gym, or the door handle of a 12 Step meeting only to turn around and go home and try again tomorrow. Beginnings are not an event--they are a process and in that process you build the strength and gather enough knowledge to really know the problem you are dealing with and how you want to approach it. Your success will actually depend upon how much you are willing to begin, again and again.
Beginnings are hard and I have real compassion for the many people who don’t want to begin whatever it is that calls them. Only a few days in to the new writing project and I can feel, really feel how big the work is ahead of me, how long the effort will need to be, and how slow it will likely be before the project begins to look on paper the way it appears in my mind. My hopeful confidence dashed, I am reminded of the kind of effort it takes to hike a long distance in the rain because you know that day will be a long, cold, tiring effort, and very little payoff in terms of vistas and views.
Beginnings are all about trust. In therapy a lot of the beginning work is about building trust in the therapy relationship—where you learn to trust your therapist and your therapist can come to trust you. But across healing and even in other endeavors like writing—much of beginnings is learning to trust in yourself. And no matter where you are learning trust the biggest part of trust is constancy: showing up. Showing up again. And again. So the biggest gift you can give yourself to start something is to make it easy enough to show up. Write for 5 minutes. Say one thing that’s true. Read another article. Ask for help again. Try mindfulness again. Whatever it is that you need to do. And was hard to do. And you couldn’t do before. Do it again. And again. And again.
It can feel unfair to find yourself at the beginning again. It feels like all the previous work you did should have you starting higher on the mountain, and not down in the valley looking up. But there are real gifts for you in beginnings that only can happen when you start, or start again. Beginnings belong solely and squarely to you. All of those moments where you don’t abandon yourself, but instead keep yourself company so that you can stay at your task long enough to begin. Those hours of companionship with yourself are something no one can give you –they are what makes the difference in healing and growth. Yes, it can feel unfair to be back at the beginning again. I had no idea I would have to give up my wings and go back to being a caterpillar—back to crawling again. But it’s not the flight we’re after, but the courage to make the shift.
© 2020 Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD