The Sacredness of Constancy

“Talons gripping the edge of the nest
wings spread, gauging the wind
the young osprey pushes off,
soaring.

With each practice flight,
the young bird returns to the nest
and places at his mother’s feet,
one twig.

Every evening
in the dark, bright, quiet
of the moonlight the young bird
sleeps.

While his mother,
taking his twig,
builds a nest in
his heart.

So when he flies away
wherever he lands
the young bird
is home.”
— Gretchen Schmelzer

Up here in Maine, the tides go out, and the rocky shoreline appears and then the water comes back in, right up to the shore. It may be a small thing in the grand events of the world, but there is such solace in that constancy—in knowing that as you watch the water go away from shore, you also know it will return. It is a twice-daily event, which adds to the experience and learning of the constancy that nature provides. The moon disappears from view and it comes back. The sun disappears from view and it comes back.

The very best of parenting is like the constancy of the tides. Children are their own force of nature. It is the sacredness of constancy that helps hold them and shape them. You are the tides for your children. You are the air.  You are the sun and moon that their world revolves around.

Constancy isn’t cool, or hip, or sexy, or most importantly, marketable. “Hey, let me sell you a ticket to watch the tide roll back in over the course of hours!” Constant moments aren’t Facebook postings: The First Day of School, Graduation, Soccer Championships, Recitals. These are all wonderful and I personally love to see the pictures whether I know you or your kids or not: there is such joy and humanity in those photos. But these aren’t pictures of tides, they are pictures of special events: like meteor showers and rainbows—the colorful moments of life that occur, but you catch them and enjoy them when you can.

I can market Disney and make you feel great about being the kind of parent who takes their kid to the Magic Kingdom. But there is no equal marketing for you getting the 5th glass of water that night. Even if that 5th glass of water is actually the thing that will become part of the fabric of your daughter. Even if that act is the nutrient all children need. Much like there is marketing for Sugar Cereal and Junk Food and not carrots.

The sacredness of parenting rarely shows up in pictures, it’s hard to share on Facebook, it’s hard to see when you are in it. The sacredness of the everyday—the mundane, routine, constant all-of-it—that is what makes the warp and weft threads that create a person. The sacredness of the everyday of parenting is what makes up the fabric of who a child is, the self and worldview they rest in, the blueprint for relationship they will carry with them.

There are no pictures of you putting a Band-aid on arm that actually doesn’t have a cut on it. Of picking up cereal, or socks, or Legos off the floor. The endless laundry, dishes, trash. There are no pictures of the hundredth viewing of ‘Frozen’ or reading of ‘Goodnight Moon.’ The seventeenth math problem. The tears after a fight with a friend. There are no pictures of bedtime after bedtime, and breakfast after breakfast. Of the wrestling matches of putting on socks and finding shoes and NO I WON’T WEAR THAT COAT. Your ability to shepherd all of these things are the tides that come in and out.

I have such a perfect image of my niece as a toddler, all wrapped up in a towel after a bath at night, sitting on my sister-in-law’s lap. She was just hanging out, her wet hair slicked back, pink cheeks, sucking on her fingers, her blue eyes looking out, but not all that interested in the grown-up conversation around her. This was one of those sacred moments of childhood—where it was nothing special—to the outside world--but it was everything special to her inside world. This is the sacred everyday act of parenting. The absolute building blocks of safety and security and contentment and confidence. This was just the end of bathtime, the beginnings of bedtime, the transitions of the everyday. But they are the bricks of healthy capacity—put thousands of them together and you have a foundation that can hold anything.

The very definition of this constancy is that you can take it for granted. You believe in its existence utterly. I don’t worry whether the tide will come back in. I know it will. I don’t worry that the moon will reappear. I know it will. And the constancy you provide your children is something that they can and should take for granted. I am not talking about material things or that they will never learn to pick up their own Legos. I am talking about the constancy of asking for help and hearing a response (even if that response is age-appropriately telling them they can do it themselves). I am talking about the constancy of nighttime after nighttime of good-night, and morning after morning of good-morning, of bath, books, and bed; of lunch boxes and walks to the school or bus stop; of someone who listens again and again to the same story, the same movie, the same knock-knock joke. Of whatever it is we will figure it out.

Your super powers are your indestructability and your ability to show up over and over again. What makes your work important are the thousands and thousands and thousands of small threads that you weave around their heart, their soul, their growing being. This is what makes constancy sacred. You are building a space in their heart for this constancy—for this ability to hold the world and themselves. You are building this constancy in them so they can hold the rest of the world--which so often isn’t constant. Like the poem of the Osprey above with each mundane, routine, sacred constant act, you are building a nest in their hearts that they can return to for strength and comfort for the rest of their lives.

© 2016 Gretchen L Schmelzer, PhD

Kindness is the answer. We need Kindness. Huge Kindness.

“What I want is so simple I almost can’t say it: elementary kindness. ”
— Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams

We need kindness. Oh, the world right now needs so much kindness. We need big kindness. We need huge kindness. We need badass kindness.

Physicians have to take an oath that states, “Do no harm.” I wish that all of humanity would have to take that oath. Imagine a world where everyone had to take an oath that said, “Do no harm.” Or imagine it one better: A world where everyone took an oath to Be Kind.

I have worked all over the world and all over my own country and I can tell you this: People want the same things. They want to see their children tucked in bed at night, peacefully asleep. They want a safe comfortable place to live. They want to do meaningful activity and be able to provide for their families. They want to eat and laugh and drink with their friends and loved ones. That’s all. Everything else is extra. And if any of those things are missing, then the extra doesn’t matter. Are there bad guys in the world? Yes. But they are the exception. Not the rule.

We need kindness in a world that seems to have forgotten it. The internet and social media have such potential as a way to spread information and joy, and yet there is too much sarcasm, and too much hate. From every possible side. And there is really only one cure for all of this darkness: and that is kindness.

And yes, you may think kindness is naïve. It’s not. Kindness is not naïve, despite its simplicity. It has been a tenet of religion and philosophy for ages: all religions.  And most philosophies. 

Kindness has stood the test of time. But Kindness isn’t easy. It is easier to stay small and closed off. It is easier to be mean or sarcastic because it doesn’t require anything of you. Kindness takes muscles. Kindness takes effort, restraint, stretching and most of all courage: kindness requires that you will open your heart, you will feel yourself in the relationship, you will grow. 

Want to add kindness but not sure how? Start with Do No Harm. Thinking about writing that snarky thing on FaceBook, or ranting back at someone: Don’t. Look for a place to write something kind instead. Add kindness to the world. Or if you can’t manage kind, add beauty, add creativity, add love. Or simply go outside and sit in the sun and look around at the world. Sometimes we aren’t kind because we are tired. It’s okay. Rest. Be grateful. Be humble. Be still. Let your kindness grow.

Random acts of kindness are good. Intentional Acts of Kindness are Great. Write a thank you note to someone who helped you in your life and doesn’t even know that they did. Bring flowers to someone who could use them. Mow someone’s lawn. Text a friend who you miss seeing. Donate your used clothes. Bring food to a food bank. Make your famous cookies. Listen to someone’s story.

Kindness is compassion in action. It requires you to be brave sometimes. When someone on your team at work starts saying something negative about someone else, you can say, “We don’t talk about people like that here.” And then change the subject, say something kind about someone.

So if you are wondering what to do about the problems in the world--do the kindest thing you can do right now. If you are wondering how to get more from your employees or co-workers at work. Try the kind thing. If you are wondering how to shift the mood in your house or your office: try kindness. 

And kindness is not just about other people. Kindness is first and foremost an inside job: start with yourself. Start where you are. Start by saying something kind to yourself instead of what you were going to say. Take care of yourself. Get rest. Get food. Stay nourished. If you are kind to yourself you will have more to give others. Like the Roman fountains, the kindness in your bowls will build up until they naturally spill out to others. If we all did it, it would be endless.

© Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD 2015

“If someone is too tired to give you a smile, leave one of your own, because no one needs a smile as much as those who have none to give.”
— Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch
“Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world. ”
— Desmond Tutu
“My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.”
— Dalai Lama
“Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.”
— Ephesians: 4:32
“Tenderness and kindness are not signs of weakness and despair, but manifestations of strength and resolution. ”
— Kahlil Gibran
“There is a reward for kindness in every living-thing. ”
— Prophet Muhammad
“No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted”
— Aesop
“Goodness is the only investment that never fails. ”
— Henry David Thoreau

Refuge. Sanctuary. Love.

“That vague sweetness/ made my heart ache with longing/ and it seemed to me/ that is was the eager breath of the summer/ seeking for its completion./ I knew not then that it was so near,/ that it was mine,/ and that this perfect sweetness had blossomed/ in the depth of my own heart”
— Tagore

Refuge is the end of the trauma—a place where the active part of trauma is over. But it is not the end. It is a beginning. Refuge is the beginning of healing. It is a place where the possibility of healing exists.

Refuge is the minimal requisite environment for healing, but it is not the healing itself. Refuge is a place where you can rest. Often physically, but most importantly, emotionally. It isn’t the rest itself. I make this distinction because healing and mending can take a lot of work. A place of safety and refuge allow you to do this, but they are not sufficient in and of themselves. Healing isn’t just being away from trauma or grief. Healing is the work of mending, repair, grieving. And once you have sufficiently healed there is the possibility of resurgence of growth—a place I would call sanctuary. In refuge you mend, in sanctuary you grow.

No one wants to be a refugee, but I believe that anyone who has lived through trauma or severe grief is a refugee--especially if you choose to heal. Trauma and traumatic grief mean that you are cast out of a land of innocence. Not just a world where you would believe that everything is okay—or that the world is just. It’s bigger than that—because trauma and severe loss mean that you lose an innocence of self—an innocence of believing that in a difficult situation you would rise to the occasion—you would do the right thing, not the human thing. You know that you have done whatever you needed to do to survive and you know what it means to feel truly helpless. You have seen yourself at your worst in a world that couldn’t help you at that moment: and you can’t ever go back. And never being able to go back is the working definition of refugee.

And the truth is, there is no going back. For those who had peace and safety before the trauma or loss, you long for the world as it was, and for yourself as you were. But you can’t unknow what you know, and you can’t unfeel what you feel. You are changed. This is a simple, but difficult fact. And for those who never experienced anything but trauma and loss—you long for safety, for a world you have only heard about, or read about, or seen from far away. And really, it is all a longing for refuge, for a safe space. For care. For a chance to repair what was torn apart. For the chance at a heart that can love again, and can be loved.

My host mother in Germany, a refugee during World War II, recounted a story on my last visit. Her family had fled the East as the Russians approached. They had travelled terrible miles in trains meant for animals—they were exhausted and hungry and frightened. And when they got to the West, host families took in the refuges from the East. The family who took in her family gave them dinner, and clean clothes and warm beds. The host-wife took the youngest sister, a baby, and let my host mother’s mother go to sleep. The first sleep she had had in days. The host family did everything in their worldly power they could to allow that tired refugee family to rest.

That is refuge. The space to rest. To breathe. To look around, not out of fear, but curiosity. Refuge allows you to notice and see. All through the trauma you had to be nothing but vigilant. And refuge allows you the chance, the beginning, a place to practice, just being again.

Everyone needs different amounts of time in refuge. Some people need days or weeks. Some people need years. Some people need decades. In refuge the walls that helped you survive begin to come down—some you actively take down and some just fade away over time. But the walls only come down if you are in a state of refuge, if your brain and heart have an environment to rest in.

No words can capture the heart-wrenching longing that binds you to refuge like a mother to a sick child. A longing that seems to break your heart—because that is exactly what it is doing: breaking down the walls that surrounded your heart during the trauma. This longing is excruciating, intense, and ever-present. And it if you are lucky enough to feel it, to work with it, to lean in to it—it is your lifeline through refuge to healing.

And no words can capture the devotion and gratitude you have for the people who provide this refuge and the fear you can carry that they might leave or disappear. People who live through famine stockpile food. And people who have lived through terror want to stockpile safety—but it's intangible, it always feels as if it could slip through your fingers. It always feels like you could lose this place you have worked so hard to find and keep. That you might be exiled back to trauma at any moment. Refuge is to healing trauma as a cast and crutches are to a broken bone: you must rely on refuge and the people who provide it utterly—you must put all your weight on refuge and your helpers so that the bones of your heart and your life might mend. This is fierce and powerful. And takes more courage than most people recognize. 

And then one day, unexplainably, you feel a fleeting sense that you can’t lose it—lose refuge, lose the people, or even abandon yourself.  This is sanctuary. That the days, weeks, years of refuge have woven themselves in to your being. That the people who helped you are with you even when you can’t see them. In this fleeting moment you are not standing in refuge, you are standing in sanctuary.

Sanctuary is an open space. Your heart is open. Your mind is open. The future is wide open. In trauma the future is known: you are always anticipating the trauma you lived through. In sanctuary, you really don’t know what might happen next. It is lovely. And it can be scary. Like any big developmental milestone. You have arrived in a place where you can’t return. The way a toddler can’t turn back in to a baby—the way a tree can’t turn back in to a sapling.

Both as a therapist and as a client I have found that healing defies language—and this can get in the way of helping people find and tolerate healing. It’s so hard to find the language of refuge, of sanctuary, of healing. It’s so hard to tolerate the feelings of longing, of leaning, of needing that healing requires. But from my many expeditions I am here to tell you, to report back that these amazing views exist if you stay faithful to your trail. If you trust in your own hard work and the hearts of others.

A few weeks ago, I was in my own struggle in refuge—tangled in longing, in reaching, in the fear of letting go of the ‘known’ shores of the old story. I was walking up the stairs to my office and caught the sight of sunlight on the wall and decided to just turn around and sit on the stairs, half-way up. Sit there and lean on the wall and be in that space—neither here, nor there. Instead of running from the feelings, I would just sit in them. And I did. I sat there for nearly an hour. I sat there long enough to literally lean on refuge, on the walls of my home to hold me up, and find that solid place inside. Find the sanctuary of not abandoning yourself. Find that years of refuge had woven a rope for me to affix myself. To feel solid in a moment I had thought one of my worst. Find that you can lean on your own heart and it holds again. The way to sanctuary is through refuge. You must lean on it with all of your heart, and you will find that the center, your heart, holds.

“I knew not then that it was so near,/ that it was mine,/ and that this perfect sweetness had blossomed/ in the depth of my own heart.”

© 2016 Gretchen L Schmelzer, PhD

 

Tired of the Old Story? Ask New Questions.

“...no way/
to your future now but the way your shadow could take/
walking before you across water, going where shadows go/
no way to make sense of a world that wouldn’t let you pass/
except to call an end to the way you had come/…”
— David Whyte, excerpt from Finisterre, Pilgrim

Tonight when it finished raining, my dog politely requested a walk. He does this by sitting next to me and intently staring at me until I get the hint. I am new to this neighborhood and decided, since it was going to be a short walk, that I would walk the other way, to the end of the street. I live on a dead end and I thought I knew where the walk would end and yet as I neared the end of the paved road, I spotted a path. So I kept going and found that the path went out through woods toward the river and to what looked like an old bridge embankment. You think you are at an end in one place, and you find another end, a different end—maybe even a beginning.

The river was moving quickly with today’s rain and it was leafy and green in the woods on the banks. It was a magical spot. Totally unexpected and it was only yards away from the neighborhood, but it felt a world away. It was a lovely jolt—to be suddenly transported, out of the work I had been doing and out of the neighborhood I thought I was in.

The funny thing is that it wasn’t the first dead end I had hit today. Earlier I had hit a dead end inside myself—a place where no matter how hard I try, I run up against one of my edges. I mostly try to ignore these edges, walking the ‘other way’ to avoid these dead ends. Walking the other way means avoiding situations or conversations that would have me in that dead end. But it’s hard to avoid them all the time, so mostly I rant against these edges and despair about them. In some ways the particulars of the dead ends don’t matter. It doesn’t matter so much what my dead end or your dead end is: Loss, fear, rage, shame, abandonment, vulnerability, despair. We all have some dead ends in our inner neighborhood—places we can get into, and it seems we can’t get out.

It occurred to me today that when I hit these dead ends I don’t need answers to my problem, I need new questions. Beautiful questions, as the poet David Whyte and the Pilgrim Satish Kumar described them in my class last year at Schumacher College. David Whyte describes ‘beautiful questions’ as questions that disturb our current thinking, or as he says in his poem ‘Sometimes’  questions “that make or unmake a life….that have no right to go away.” They are questions that put you in conversation with yourself, with your core, with your past, present and future. As he says in his Letter from the House:

“One of the most beautifully disturbing questions we can ask, is whether a given story we tell about our lives is actually true, and whether the opinions we go over every day have any foundation or are things we repeat to ourselves simply so that we will continue to play the game. It can be quite disorienting to find that a story we have relied on is not only not true - it actually never was true. Not now not ever. ”

The story I had about my street was not true. It was a dead end for a car, but on foot it continued—and it didn’t just continue on, but it continued to beauty, to respite, to refuge.

So what about the stories I tell myself about the dead ends that I hit within myself? Can I ask that first question: Can you see a different path ahead? Is the story I am telling myself about this true? Is it still true today? If I kept walking, if I continued on and left the spot I call the end, what might I find? What am I afraid to find? What is the question I don’t want to ask?

These questions don’t fix your problem with your edges. You will still hit an edge, but it won’t be in the same familiar place. The thing about my walk tonight was that I still hit a place I could no longer walk forward. I stood on the path looking at the river and my dog put his paws up on the old granite bridge stones and peered over. For one thing, this dead end felt different. It felt expansive, beautiful, restful. But it was an end of the walk. Any next phase of travel would require a boat or a bridge or some other means of getting across water. But a dead end is only a dead end if you limit yourself to what you were doing before: if you only go forward in the same way you have been going.

And that is what I have to remember when I hit my own internal dead ends. You have to be willing to take a different route, different path, throw away the old plan and especially the old story. In order to ask yourself different questions, beautiful questions you must have courage. But I believe a fair warning is in order. If you ask beautiful questions you risk ending up in new places. You risk the heartache of leaving something or some part of yourself behind. You risk the story you know for a new story—and the knowledge that even this new story will also have to be left behind at some point.

So what is your beautiful question? The question that opens up a different path? The question that would change the conversation you are in? The question you don’t want to ask?

© 2016 Gretchen L Schmelzer, PhD

Pilgrim
By David Whyte
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