“They don’t even know they have wings.”
I have a hard time with transitions—the day or days before a big trip—the shift from one big project to the next—basically any time I leave or arrive. I used to think it was a character flaw but over time I have come to understand it more as a part of how I am built. And I’m endeavoring to write about it because I know I am not alone. Some of you who are reading also struggle with transitions—and some of you who are reading this have children or loved ones who do.
I get irritable and anxious. I perseverate about stupid details of my trip. I want to cling to my present situation as if you asked me to leap from one tall building to the next.
I have come to understand my struggle of transitions as the flip side of one of my strengths: I get very attached. I get intensely involved in what I am doing—whether that is being home with friends, working in my garden or far away working with a group of people. Once I am ‘in’ I am ‘in.’ I don’t just show up: I send down roots. And so there’s a part of me that always experiences leaving or shifting from one thing or another as tearing or ripping. It feels painful. It feels permanent. It feels too big and too hard.
For a long time I didn’t connect my moods and feelings of meltdown with transition—I thought it was more connected to what was happening in the moment. I blamed myself. I blamed whatever was bugging me. But over time I can now catch myself in the act—and if I pull back and can see it from a distance—see the shift that is coming around the bend—then I can name the struggle as one of transition.
I’m newly reacquainting myself with it because for the three years of the pandemic I didn’t run in to it in quite the same way. And because I hadn’t seen it in a while I mistakenly thought the problem had faded. But it hadn’t. It’s just that I hadn’t used that muscle in a long time. And then 2023 arrived with all of its 2019 energy—with in-person work, and business travel back and there it was in full color again.
Because I worked with kids who struggled with this I have tried some of the things that work with kids: have your schedule in black and white so you can see when things are happening, break tasks into small chunks, remind yourself of what you are excited about for the thing you are going to, remind yourself that transitions feel hard but you always make it to the other side fine, make the process as a easy as you can, give yourself plenty of time so you don’t add more anxiety to the situation.
All of those things are good for mood management. They are good to help you have as much resilience as you can. But they don’t change the fundamental experience. For that, I am trying to learn acceptance. Learning to remind myself that this is how it feels and that’s ok. Asking myself what I need to feel better, or get through it as best I can. Letting myself feel the loss of what I am leaving—and letting my feelings of loss be ok.
For so many years I thought that successfully managing transitions would look like feeling fine, or maybe even feeling nothing at all. And when I couldn’t make that happen I thought I was doing it wrong. And more recently I have come to see changing my feelings isn’t the goal—but instead letting myself go through them—which is a different goal altogether.
We are all more sensitive to some things than others—and mine is connection and separation. Some from temperament and some from history—but the combination makes me who I am. And now I have to figure out how to befriend my reluctant self and not be angry at her or frustrated with her.
Many years ago when I was studying mindfulness meditation I read a piece that talked about using the breath as a way to learn to say hello and goodbye. How you take in breath and say hello, and you breathe out and say good-bye. I haven’t thought about that in a long time, but it came back to me this week because I have been thinking about the smaller transitions—the micro-transitions we have to make all the time. Getting up, going to sleep, arriving home or leaving home for small errands, going to a different room. Even small transitions can throw me off and I can lose focus—looking for something to read on my phone or computer. Looking for a snack or a cup of tea. Looking, I think, for certainty when the transition has made me feel wobbly.
And that’s when an old line from Mary Oliver floated back to me. “They don’t even know they have wings.” The line is from a poem called ‘This Morning’ where she is describing baby birds in a nest. They haven’t opened their eyes yet and their mouths are wide open chirping for food— “more, more, more.” The baby birds are made up of intense need and they can’t meet that need for themselves—so the only thing they know how to do is cling to the nest.
And yet, they don’t even know they have wings.
And what I can’t feel in those moments right before or during the beginning of transitions is that I have wings. Wings I have built. Wings I can trust. I can make the shift and my wings will indeed carry me. And, then the challenge is realizing that having wings is bittersweet. Because those wings can carry you forward. And they will.
© 2024 Gretchen L Schmelzer, PhD