On Taking Flight: A Fledgling's Prayer

Fledge. v. [flej]

-       to acquire the feathers necessary for flight or independent activity;

-       to leave the nest after acquiring such feathers

-       to rear until ready for flight or independent activity

Over the years I have become, and I’m not using this word lightly, obsessed, with the Eagle cam in the Washington Arboretum. I watched them every day from their hatching from eggs until they fledged. I was obsessed with them learning to eat, getting their feathers, and with them learning to perch and then fly. This year I have had fledging on the brain.

And maybe I become even more aware of it at this time of year because it’s when many of my young friends start to go off to college and I (with their parents) watch with both a joyful and heavy heart as they make the big leap into flight. And for so many of you this past week has really been the great migration--so many fledgings: first grade, high school, college. New jobs, new moves, new lives. Humans fledge hundreds of times. Maybe even thousands if you count all of the hops, leaps and flights.

I love the fact that the verb 'to fledge' is reflexive in its own way. That it is both the act of leaving the nest, but also the act of raising a bird to flight. It is both.

And so this is my offering to those who are fledging, and those who have raised their young for flight--no matter how young or old the fledgling or big or small the flight.

“The Fledgling’s Prayer

These are my wings—
Feathers and muscles and sinew
grown from your love and care,
sewn and mended
with your devotion and constancy.

And now—
I am ready to soar
with all that I am,
from all that you gave me.

All flights are practice flights.
They happen in that
blessed space between us.
A space wide enough
to stretch my wings
but not lose touch.

Tossed into the air
an arm’s length away.
Jumping off the dock,
three feet away.
Dropped off at Kindergarten,
three blocks away.
Dropped off at college,
Three hours away.
All flights are big flights.

And how did this happen?
None of us ever knows for sure.
I think perhaps Joy and Sorrow
grabbed hands and leapt
—forming the wings
that carry me forward.
.
But remember no one leaps, really.

I didn’t fly because I
jumped—so much as I simply
forgot for a moment to hold on.
I did. I forgot.
I forgot because the wind,
or is it God? –
whispered in my ear,
and sang the melody of my future.

I forgot for a moment to hold tight
and the wind caught my wings
pulling me forward.
It does. Life pulls you forward.

You are not the wind beneath my wings
as that old song croons.

No, you are the wings themselves.
I carry you with me and
you will always carry me.

The wind? Well that is God’s song
for each of us, our purpose, our passion.
It is the tidal pull of the universe
helping me to find my place,
helping me to share my gifts.

And you, sitting proud and brave
on the edge of our nest.
This small prayer is for you.

May the sight of my wings flashing
and the tales of my long flights
bring you as much joy as they bring me.
I can hear the wind calling and my heart
is full of the hopes we have both carried.

The fullness of myself,
the fullness of your love,
and the fullness of the world you gave me
take up my whole being.

This fullness defies language
except to say
that it used to be the feeling
I had when I leaned on you,
when you had hold of me.

And now—oh joy—
the nest I used to rest in
has made a place inside of me.

But for you, as for me,
there is also sorrow.
I am sad that this prayer
is all I have to offer you
in return for my wings.

And my heart aches imagining views
and vistas we will not share.
Do they exist if you don’t see them too?
Do I exist, if you can’t see me?
If I forget you for a moment,
will you remember me?

I pray that we both may find comfort
in the pages of books you read to me long ago,
that no matter what—
we are doing or
no matter where we are flying—
we both live under the very same moon.
And all we need to do is to look up
in to the night sky
to know that we are still connected,
to know that we will always belong,
to know that wherever we are,
we are home.”
— Gretchen Schmelzer

© 2023/2017 Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD

For more information on the Eagle Cams of the American Eagle Foundation

 

The Healing Power of Pause.

“In bullfighting there is an interesting parallel to the pause as a place of refuge and renewal. It is believed that in the midst of a fight, a bull can find his own particular area of safety in the arena. There he can reclaim his strength and power. This place and inner state are called his querencia. As long as the bull remains enraged and reactive, the matador is in charge. Yet when he finds his querencia, he gathers his strength and loses his fear. From the matador’s perspective, at this point the bull is truly dangerous, for he has tapped into his power.”
— Tara Brach, Radical Acceptance

It has taken me so long to learn the power of a pause. I was a disciple of effort—and misunderstood the pause. I believed pausing wouldn’t just be a short rest, I believed that it would mean ‘losing ground.’ That any lack of forward motion meant you were going backwards. I didn’t understand that the pause is a time of work all its own.

As a child therapist, I understood quiet. Children naturally work and then pause. They work at one thing and then shift to another. They get engaged in what they are building and ignore you. Pausing the conversation and doing their own work. Child therapy has its own rhythm—has its own ebbs and flows. Much of what you do is follow along and be there—stay with them.

In my own healing I had a much harder time with pausing. Yes, I was used to effort, but it was more than that. Being more visual than musical, I saw the pauses as white space, and white space in art is what allows an object to stand out—to be seen. Pausing felt dangerous—there is no way to hide in a pause—no distractions. I would be seen by another, but I would also be able to see, and hear myself in the pauses. Much like the pause in music, feelings would reverberate. I would feel them. So for a long time constant motion felt safe, and pausing didn’t.

In the beginning, exhaustion substituted as a pause. I would only be able to stop and take things in when I simply got too tired of driving forward. But in those moments I was really aware of the feeling of calm, connection and groundedness that could come from these moments of pausing. Exhaustion would force me to let go and rest.

Mozart said that the music is not in the notes, but in the silence between them. And I have found that the music of healing comes with the pauses. The pause you need can be a simple pause in conversation. Or a break from forward motion while you sort through what you have already talked about. It can be a break from hard work altogether—a chance to write, play, draw. Or it can be a complete break—a time out from healing while you focus on something in your daily life that needs attention.

In pauses you feel your feelings, you renew your energy and find, as Tara Brach states above, there’s not just rest or calm in the pause, there is also power. When you can pause, when you can stay, you realize you are bigger than the thing you have been running from or hiding from. You realize that you have the capacity to hold it, to feel it, to heal from it. Whereas the trauma had you feel powerless, surviving the pauses reacquaints you with your own power in a quiet and wonderful way. And it’s a place you can always return to. That place of rest. The pause. 

© 2023/2016 Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD


Embracing "First Drafts" for Healing and Growth

“Nobody is ever meant to read your first draft. The first draft is you, telling the story to yourself. ”
— Neil Gaiman

Sometime before the Covid years I went to an Elementary School Science Fair—and found that I was shocked at the perfect and professional displays that the children were presenting because most of them had used PowerPoint. I shouldn’t have been. I obviously went expecting what I remembered from science fairs: hand lettered poster boards with drawings in colored pencil, dioramas made out of shoe boxes—everything hand made. But time had marched on, and new technology had entered elementary school. These projects looked polished, almost corporate, which felt jarring given the seven-year-old standing in front of me. It made me feel like something was lost, though I couldn’t put my finger on it. I confess I like seeing a child’s version of a great horned owl much more than I enjoy clip art.

Don’t get me wrong. I think kids should learn the latest technology—but there’s something about learning, about being connected to the process, about experiencing the steps between an idea and a polished product that are harder to see or appreciate when it happens automatically. The new technology makes first drafts seem unnecessary—or even too childish for children. It makes it seem like there’s always a way to get it right the first time.  

But getting it right the first time isn’t how you heal. And it isn’t how you grow.  When you heal, or grow, when you are trying to get your story out, or trying to sort what you know, or what you know now—it can be really hard. And part of what makes it hard is the lack of practice or familiarity, and perhaps, most importantly, honoring of the fact that this piece of work is just a draft. You can get hung up on truth—or you can get hung up on clarity—both of which are important, but at this phase of sorting, naming, exploring—the goal is to get out what you can—what you know at this moment—what you can bear—what you can hold.

You forget that you can write something one day and contradict yourself the next. You forget that you can write your way into an idea and get lost for a while—and not have a clear idea of where you ended up—or where you wanted to go. You forget that you may tell the same story over and over—trying to connect, not the words, but the emotions, until suddenly, one day—it all comes together.

And while you may be telling the story to yourself, you sometimes need a listener: often a therapist or someone in a helping role, or a growing role. And that’s why it’s so important in the helping and growing professions to learn how to listen, rather than (as is fashionable and satisfying) to learning how to fix. Because you need the chance to talk in drafts—to be able to have first draft conversations. Conversations where you are sorting. Where you say something and listen to it in your heart, mind and body. And then you revise. Conversations you have and then months later, you come back to—and you start again. And again.

If I go back to my experience creating a project for a science fair—to a large poster of a peregrine falcon hand drawn from a picture in the Encyclopedia Britannica—what I got through the trial and error and practice of drawing wasn’t just a drawing, it was a relationship. It was a relationship to the peregrine, one I still have today—where I am overjoyed when I see one. But through the process I was also building a relationship with myself—or with the part of me that was learning how to learn— or was learning how to persevere in the face of something challenging. Building a relationship with the part of me that cared deeply for something—to know what that kind of care feels like.

You only get a relationship with what you spend time with. Which is where first drafts come in again. First drafts are where we start all of our relationships. How can you have a relationship with your process, your story—the way you understand yourself or others—if you don’t have a practice of first drafts? How do you allow yourself to start? How do you allow yourself to revise? How do you allow yourself to start again?

© 2023 Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD

For more ‘first draft’ inspiration you can watch this interview between Tim Ferriss and Neil Gaiman

Or you can read the best known primer on first drafts: Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird


The Life-Changing Power of a Kind Word

“Imagine what our real neighbors would be like if each of us offered, as a matter of course, just one kind word to another person. There have been so many stories about the lack of courtesy, the impatience of today’s world, road rage and even restaurant rage. Sometimes, all it takes is one kind word to nourish another person. Think of the ripple effect that can be created when we nourish someone. One kind empathetic word has a wonderful way of turning into many.”
— Fred Rogers

I think it’s easy to feel powerless in the face of such big problems in the world. It’s easy to feel like you don’t have what the world needs—or you don’t have the solutions that these big situations require. But we forget how much power we do have. We forget that we have the power to help other people feel and experience their gifts, their light—what makes them them and why it’s wonderful they are who they are. We forget we have this power, and we forget how much of a difference that power can make. How long lasting it is. How much it provides ballast in hard times and energy for difficult transitions. How it helps people persist when they feel like quitting or helps them show up one more time when self-doubt has taken over.

I’ve had a file in my filing cabinet since the early 90’s labeled the “smile file.” Inside are farewell cards from programs and hospital units I have worked on, notes from kids and students, student evaluations and letters of recommendation. I have some of my old papers where the professor wrote a note at the bottom. It’s the flotsam and jetsam from the very beginning of my work life in residential treatment through graduate school to my current work in consulting. There are birthday cards and post-it notes. Any note that someone gave me that made me smile and made me feel hopeful about the work I was doing or my future.

Some of the notes or letters were ones that were required by the organization or an aspect of my training—year-end reviews or letters of recommendation for the internships or my post-doc. But most of what is in the file is just pure generosity. They are notes no one had to write—they were just kind words—the most simple and beautiful gifts.

One of my professors in my master’s program wrote encouraging notes on my papers. And through the years that I was working to get into a doctoral program, while I endured disappointment after disappointment, I read and re-read those notes to give me the hope to persist in my goal. Four sentences scrawled on the bottom of a 2-page paper was literally a dream-saving life raft of sustenance during those years. Four sentences. Such simple, huge power they had in my life.

More kind words. One of my supervisors early in my training, Sharon, wrote an unsolicited letter of recommendation that was really just a letter for me as I already had my placement for the following year. The unit had gone through a crazy transition a week after I had arrived: the hospital and psychologists on the unit wouldn’t sign the new contract, so they all left and the unit I was on reverted to a different hospital system. Week 2 of my second clinical placement as a student and I was suddenly the senior psychologist on the unit, and I would be for the next 6 months. Sharon captured the work I did that year, and the way I managed through that situation- but what had me read and re-read that letter over the years, especially on my worst days—was her hope and conviction in my strengths and what they meant for my future. At every big moment where I had to do something I didn’t think I could do, or when I felt like I had totally failed—I read and re-read that letter—and borrowed her certainty about my bright future.

A card from my therapist when I was in an awful stuck place and thought it would be best for both of us if I quit, and her kind reminder that I would feel better in the long run if I hung in there, and that it was her plan to stick with me through that stuck place.  And a card from my mother-in-law on a really bad day, and a card from a dear friend who sat at my desk and reflected her joy at seeing my workspace and all the things I might do in it. Cards from nieces and nephews. And recently, get-well cards and pictures from great-nieces and nephews.

It's hard even to say how powerful some of these words were. Because they aren’t just words: they are an energy source. They are something that helps you feel connected—to the people who wrote them—yes, but also to a future version of you. To a you that you can’t yet see. To a you that needs you to persist. To a you that is trying to break through the soil and needs a bit more time to grow. A little more water. A little more light.

I think we sometimes think of kind words as just being nice. And what I am trying to say is that a couple kind words can be the reason you know you exist. The reason you know you matter. You have this power. We all have this power. To share a note.  A card. A couple of kind words. A few sentences. To bolster hope. Help people see in themselves the spark that we see in them. Your throwaway line. Your 15-minute card. Your thoughtful letter. Your text letting them know you are rooting for them on their big day. Your kind words can literally be the fuel of someone’s future.

© 2023 Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD