Fresh starts and new notebooks

First day of school pictures. The bright shiny faces. The anticipation. The excuse to buy new notebooks. I have been so jealous.

I have spent more than 30 years of my life as a student, teacher, professor or coach—which means that for most of my life, the real New Year began in September, and I can feel the pull each year as the summer draws to a close.

When you aren’t on an academic schedule, there is no restart. There is no infusion of the ‘new.’ No way to come at the problem with a new view, a new team, or as an ‘older, wiser, version of yourself.’ In the academic world you get to start your year in September after a summer of gaining back some energy and connections with friends, family and nature—you actually have the resources to tackle the old thing in a new way. In the non-academic world they give you a New Year in the dead of winter following a long string of holidays. You aren’t so much interested in a fresh start as you are in a really long nap.

I was especially envious of the ‘first day of school’ pictures because this week I was feeling stuck about a project that has been long underway. I was wrestling with the problems that come midway through a big project and I wanted some of that ‘start up energy’ that kids get every single year.  A new school year acknowledges change and growth and a shift in understanding. You get the reassurance that something has shifted. You get to start again.

And in big projects, or big struggles, in grown-up lives, there aren’t always opportunities for a new start—and in fact, that’s not really what would be best. We need to, as one rowing coach shouted at us once, finish the race you started. But we all need fresh energy sometimes. And we all need to see how much change has happened. And we all need a way to bring a new view to places that feel stuck.

So I decided to listen to my desire for new school year energy. No, I couldn’t start a new year. But I could do the next best thing: buy a new, bright notebook. My colleague and I decided to head into the store, buy a brand new notebook and take the project we have been working on for a long time, and start with a new blank page. We each took a series of questions that we usually ask the people we work with, and we became beginners again. We let the blank page allow us a fresh start—not from the beginning, but a fresh start from where we were.  An afternoon with a new notebook and the ability to have a new conversation were enough. A simple low-tech, high yield intervention. 

A new notebook is magic. For less than a dollar, you can still start again. You can ask new questions, or old questions. You can write or draw or scribble your way back to your center—and your excitement. Notebooks allow for messiness and scribbles and cross-outs. They allow you to play again with ideas. They require that you use your hands in old fashioned handwriting—they connect your body to your brain.

So let September bring a new start to whatever you are facing. Let it bring its energy for beginning and growth. Grab a bright, shiny, new notebook—and be a student of your own work and passions again.

© 2023/2015 Gretchen Schmelzer, PhD

*And in the spirit of new notebooks and new projects—I am working hard on a new writing project—which requires time and attention. Over the past year I had endeavored to write twice a week and mostly kept up that pace. And for this coming year I will be shifting to a mostly once a week schedule so I can complete my project. Thanks for your support and patience!

The Wisdom of Respite

“Each person deserves a day away in which no problems are confronted, no solutions searched for.”

— Maya Angelou, Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now

My guru of respite is Dr. Maya Angelou, who was the commencement speaker for our class at Mount Holyoke in 1987. It was the most extraordinary speech I have witnessed. She sang. She spoke. She recited poetry. And she talked about everyone’s need to ‘take time out.’ The need for rejuvenation so that your heart can continue its important work. I listened to the speech trying to drink it in.  I remembered a lot of it. But at 21 I didn’t understand it. Or believe it. I believed in effort. I believed in achievement. I believed in pushing as hard as I could. But the wisdom of respite escaped me. And now I have returned to the scene of the speech to take in the wise words spoken to my 21 year old self.

The definition of respite is ‘an interval of relief.’ Our animal brains and bodies were designed in such a way as to require respite for optimal functioning. We spend nearly half our lives awake, doing –and half our lives asleep, resting. During sleep our brains and bodies repair themselves. During sleep the brain, your cerebellum, updates your memory with that days information. The problems encountered by sleep deprivation are in part a failure of respite—a failure for your brain to be able to update itself and consolidate its gains.

I’m not sure why, but we often think of rest or respite as something separate. Separate from the act of doing, separate from the act of healing. We think of it as getting off track, rather than a necessary part of the track.

Respite is noted to be a break from something difficult. And it’s true that we feel the need for respite the most when we have been through something hard, or when the stress has been relentless. We feel the need for respite in our cells and bones. It is like a deep thirst, not for water, but for energy, for renewed hope, for a solid center.

When we finally allow for respite, we say “I am not going to do anything—I am taking a break.” And therefore, we believe nothing is happening. This is a mistake. Respite is what allows for the last part of the cycle of growth.  Paradoxically, not taking a respite is often what keeps us stuck. Without the time to consolidate, we stay in a state of instability. We don’t allow things to knit together. We don’t allow ourselves to sit in the new state.

The irony is, of course, that even though respite is often called a ‘relief’—when you are healing, it doesn’t always feel like a relief. Sometimes it does. Sometimes the break feels just the way it does when you fall into bed when you are dead tired. When you can feel every sore muscle in your body and feel the wash of relief that you don’t have to hold yourself up anymore.

But sometimes you actually have to put effort in to not working—you have to be disciplined about sitting still. Why? Because when you sit still you are more able to see the work you have been doing. You are more keenly aware of the loss or sadness that may accompany the change. So, sometimes respite may be a relief from one thing, but not another.

But mostly, like all the emotions of healing, respite has an intermittent quality. You feel the relief, the slowness and you can finally breathe again. The rest allows your system to calm down and you notice your brain starts working better again: You can think! And then you get pulled down. Your heart aches. The anxiety comes back. You look around for a way to distract yourself. And the discipline is to stay and breathe. Stay and rest. Do what you need to really feel respite. The difficult feelings might bubble up, but they aren’t all of your feelings, they won’t take up all of the time. And you need the rest. You need the respite.

The difficulty in honoring and appreciating respite isn’t just a problem for healing. Though I believe you won’t heal without it. No, this is a problem in our larger culture that we all need to attend to. We need to protect the respite of recess for children, and the respite of lunch hour and vacation for ourselves. We need to protect the down times in the evenings and weekends that need not be scheduled to the last second.

Giving yourself respite reminds me of sending kids to camp. They come back bigger, sturdier, messier. They have gotten to get out of their routines---try different parts of themselves. It is a break from their usual work, but it is a challenge none-the-less. They come back somewhat different—you can’t quite put your finger on it. They have grown.

Every spring I am reminded of the lesson of respite by my flowers. You plant your spring bulbs in the fall and they rest –slightly stressed—under the cold earth. This period of rest is not optional. It is the only way. And then after their rest they grow. When you give yourself respite—the same thing happens. Just because you can’t see what is happening beneath the surface doesn’t mean that nothing is happening. All the work that you put in finally has a chance to come together. Let yourself rest. Let yourself grow. 

© 2023/2015 Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD   

The Quietest Patience

Weaving the many threads

of your life into a

single piece of cloth,

Rilke said,

would clear it for

a different celebration.

What a clearing! Last night

a storm rolled through—

thunder following lightning—

sheets of rain, hail, wind.

The kind of storm that jolts

you in the middle of the night

when you are far too old

to be frightened by such things.

Secretly counting after

each lightning strike.

One, two, three, four—

bracing yourself against terror.

How could anyone imagine

that the act of weaving—

that calm, endless, rhythmic

back and forth, here and there

of the shuttle connecting

one ‘ill-matched’ thread to another

again and again and again,

could create such a perfect tension

inside the old fault lines

that they would no longer hold—

cracking them wide open.

One summer the osprey

returned with one stick

after another to mend

his nest of woven branches.

Weaving in new sticks

day after day until

suddenly

the nest crashed

unable to hold

the weight of growth.

One simple thread,

the weight of one stick--

Oh, it is the quietest patience

that changes the fabric

of your entire life.

© 2023 Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD

Amazing Grace

I’m sitting out on my back porch early in the morning looking out into the yards behind my house and the only thought in my head is “How can I live in a world without her?”

This is one of those mornings when I wish I had more language or ability to write about the massive losses that have happened this week. How my heart hurts for so many, and for myself. The losses are all so big and so different. This week two very different uncles died—and they leave such big holes of loss in their families—my heart aches for all of them, and the loss that they feel, and the ways that their lives will change and shift.

And then there is the overwhelming and devastating loss in Maui this week: houses, landscapes, businesses, lives. Jarring and sobering visuals of what it looks like when you lose everything: when you lose what you love most. It is such a stark reminder of how fragile the world is, how fragile we are. A reminder that the only certain thing in this world is uncertainty.

And then there is the loss of a teammate and friend I hold dear, Grace.

And I look around the backyard in disbelief wishing it weren’t true.  This isn’t the I first time I’ve awoken early from a sleepless night with this thought and a broken heart. There is a disorientation, an instability, a deep disbelief of the world after the death of someone important to you. It feels like there is less oxygen. It feels like you have to move more carefully. And the denial of death always makes me want to wait, hope the news was a mistake, just sit still long enough, patient enough for them to return. And then you breathe and take in reality again. How do I live in a world without her?

When someone dies it’s not just that the world feels emptier without them, it feels like there is something in us that has changed. What is the world without them? Who am I without them?

We are mosaics. We are made up of pieces that makes us who we are: we are where we come from, we are where we have been, we are who we love and have loved, and we are what we hold dear.

Grace was the very definition of her name--an unearned gift—an unmerited divine benediction. She brought love, and light and kindness with her wherever she went. She did this at 20, and she did this at 50. I feel her loss keenly even though I wasn’t her best friend—we were teammates on the rowing team in college. And my experience of Grace, and her friendship is such an important reminder of the power of kindness and love. That a small act can be massive in someone’s life. More than you may ever know.

When I was a sophomore and was struggling—with anxiety, self-doubt, fear. She would occasionally leave notes on my door cheering me on—or invite me over for a pep talk.  I didn’t have a lot of support in my life at the time, and her notes and care felt like a lifeline.  Late that fall,  before a big race, she made me a card that said on the inside: You’re a Masterpiece. It was a message that was actually too big for me to take in at the time. But I held on to the card. At some point I cut out the message and hung it on my wall. I still have it. I didn’t believe it when I got the card. But I could feel her belief. I could feel her kindness. I could sit in her grace: the beautiful unearned gift.

In American culture there is such an emphasis on the individual—that I am solely myself. But this notion of identity is an illusion and that illusion is shattered when someone dies. In that moment you can see and feel that the person who died held an important support rope for you. You may not have even noticed it when they were alive. But in their absence you suddenly feel vulnerable, wobbly, as if you could topple without their support. You realize that you could be who you were because of them.

My friend Eddy taught me this. In our work in his home country of Zambia and across the world, he brought the belief he was raised with, ‘Ubuntu’ to our work. ‘Ubuntu’ means ‘I am because you are’— that we are who we are because of our relationships—we are who we are because of our community.  As the psychologist Jean Baker Miller says we are selves-in-relation. And this is the fact we feel most keenly when someone dies: I am because of you. And now, who am I without you?

We are mosaics and when someone dies those mosaic pieces must shift. When someone is alive, they hold those pieces of themselves and through our connection to them we feel the benefits and borrow the strengths of those pieces. And then when someone dies we have the work, the growth, of taking in, of integrating those pieces that we are able to. Taking in those strengths and capacities into our own selves—for us and the community.

That’s why our hearts must break. This is why we must fall apart. This is why grief shatters.  We need the brokenness. Without the brokenness we can’t take in the new pieces. Falling apart allow us to absorb the mosaic pieces of the other. It is this grief that allows us to rebuild a world without them, that includes them. This is why time is so necessary to grieving. It takes time to weave these new pieces in. It takes time to remake our mosaics.

How do I live in a world without her? Maybe the short answer is I don’t. Because I bring her into my life every day. I look for places to cheer people on, and Grace is smiling. I stand in the voting booth and my grandmother is standing next to me. I dig up plants and share them with my neighbors and my mother-in-law is right there with me handing me the spade. I rearrange my schedule to make time for writing and my friends Inger and Janet are raising their glasses and toasting my decision. Our hearts break open and our mosaics, the world’s mosaics, get bigger. First, let yourself grieve. And then, let yourself grow.

© 2023 Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD