This can be our finest hour -- but we need all of you.

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For the vast majority of people nationwide and worldwide, this virus is not about you. This is one of those times in life, in history, when your actions are about something bigger. They are about someone else. They are about something greater, a greater good that you may not ever witness. A person you will save who you will never meet.

You may be healthy, and your kids may be healthy. You parents may be healthy. Everyone around you seems fine. And all the things you planned and the 2020 spring you thought you were going to have has been completely undone. You have to work from home. Your conference is cancelled. Your semester is over. Your work is cancelled. It all seems fast, and out-of-proportion and disorienting. You look at each action and think—but it would be okay if I did that. It’s not so big. We worked so hard. They would be so disappointed.

Your losses are real. Your disappointments are real. Your hardships are real. I don’t mean to make light or to minimize the difficulty ahead for you, your family or community.

But this isn’t like other illnesses and we don’t get to act like it is. It’s more contagious, it’s more fatal—and most importantly, even if it can be managed. It can’t be managed at a massive scale—anywhere. We need this thing to move slowly enough for our collective national and worldwide medical systems to hold the very ill so that all of the very ill can get taken care of. Because at this time of severe virus there are also all of the other things that require care. There is still cancer, there are still heart attacks, there are still car accidents, there are still complicated births. And we need our medical systems to be able to hold us. And we need to be responsible because our medical systems are made up of people and these amazing healthcare workers are a precious and limited resource. They will rise to this occasion. They will work to help you heal. They will work to save your mother or father or sister or baby. But in order for that to happen we have very important work to do. ALL OF US.

So what is our work? Yes, you need to wear a mask, wash your hands, and stay home. This virus spreads with people who have symptoms and people who don’t display symptoms, so stay home whether you are sick or not. But the biggest work you can do is expand your heart and your mind to see yourself and see your family as part of a much bigger community that can have a massive—hugely massive—impact on the lives of other people. I remember the feeling of helplessness after 9/11 and after Hurricane Sandy. I remember how much people wanted to help. I remember how much generosity of spirit there was about wanting to give, wanting to be helpful, wanting to save lives. And many of you have had experiences since then—whether it was a mass shooting, or the wildfires, or floods. There have been times you have looked on and wondered how you could help. And now we ALL have that chance.

You can help by canceling anything that requires a group gathering. You can help by wearing a mask in public and in gatherings where you can’t social distance. You can help by not using the medical system unless it is urgent. You can help by staying home if you are sick. You can help by cooking or shopping or doing errands for a friend who needs to stay home. You can help by watching someone’s kid if they need to cover for someone else at work. You can help by ordering take-out from your local restaurants. Eat the food yourself or find someone who needs it. You can help by offering to help bring someone’s college student home or house out-of-town students if you have extra rooms. You can help by asking yourself, “What can I and my family do to help?” “What can we offer?” You can help by seeing yourself as part of something bigger than yourself.

When the Apollo 13 oxygen tank failed and the lunar module was in danger of not returning to earth, Gene Kranz, the lead flight director overheard people saying that this could be the worst disaster NASA had ever experienced—to which he is rumored to have responded, “With all due respect, I believe this is going to be our finest hour.”

Imagine if we could make our response to this crisis our finest hour. Imagine if a year or two from now we looked back on this and told the stories of how we came together as a team in our community, in our state, in our nation and across the world. Your contribution to the finest hour may seem small, invisible, inconsequential—but every small act of ‘not doing’ what you were going to do, and ‘doing’ an act of kindness or support will add up exponentially. These acts can and will save lives. The Apollo 13 crew made it their finest hour by letting go of the word “I” and embracing the word “we.” And that’s the task required of us. It can only be our finest hour if we work together. You are all on the team. And we need all of you to shine in whatever way you can.

*This piece edited on March 22, 2020 and Nov 1, 2020 to reflect the new research on mask wearing and airborne transmission and to reflect that people should stay home whether or not they feel sick as new scientific evidence reflects that people can carry the virus and not experience symptoms.

© 2020 Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD

Healing depends upon how much you are willing to begin, again and again.

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“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”
— Rainer Maria Rilke

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

Love, love, love

It is Valentine’s day. The day to celebrate love. And I suppose in some small way I want to put the word ‘love’ back in healing. I am all for science and I am all for modern medicine, but when we are talking about healing from trauma we are talking about healing trust and healing attachment and connection. We are talking about people trusting and connecting with other people and we are talking about people trusting and connecting with themselves.

For people who have been badly hurt, love seems a long way away. A country too far away to reach. A homeland one longs for.

I know there are lots of good treatments for much of what ails us physically and emotionally, but to that list or alongside that list we should add love.

The word ‘love’ gets tangled with romantic love and that is not what I am talking about, even if it is Valentine’s Day. Strong affection, attachment, devotion, enthusiasm for, fondness, tenderness, caring. Love isn’t the cure to trauma, but without it, it is hard to imagine healing. Love is what wraps what was wounded. Love is the cast that can hold that broken bone of the psyche steady as it knits back together. Love is what gets absorbed to rebuild what needs to be rebuilt. Love isn’t healing, but it is the raw materials needed to create it. Love is what is needed to, as Galway Kinnell states, “to reteach a thing its loveliness, to put a hand on its brow, of the flower, and retell it in words and touch, it is lovely, until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing.” 

For now, you don't need to do anything different except maybe alter your stance-- allow the word 'love' to hang out with all the other healing words you use. Allow yourself to imagine the possibility that love can support your healing. It is both the way in, and the the goal, all at the same time. Play with it. Wonder about it. Explore it. You may even learn to love it...

Don't start the year with resolutions. Start the year with your questions.

Photo by Fidler Jan at Morguefile.com

Photo by Fidler Jan at Morguefile.com

“The marvelous thing about a good question is that it shapes our identity as much by the asking as it does by the answering. ”
— David Whyte

This year skip the decisions. Skip the resolutions. Don’t resolve, change, vow, promise or start. Don’t start the diet, the exercise program, the life change. Don’t start the beginning of this year with the end—don’t start with a decision.

Start the beginning of this year with a question.  Maybe you already have a question. But if you don’t you can begin with the big “What if’s” in your life—What if I did, or What if I didn’t. What if I said ‘Yes’ or what if I said ‘No.’ What would it look like if I jumped in? What would it look like if I held back? What would it be like if I started something new? What would it be like if I did what I was doing entirely different? Or, what would it be like to really commit to the course I am on? What if I changed? What if I stayed the same?

Let this be the year that you invite your questions. Allow your questions space. Make friends with the questions that have been following you these last few years, tugging at you for your attention. Wishing for you to listen. To understand. To just give them a chance.  

We spend an awful lot of time protecting our old decisions, digging in our heels for old goals that are still tied to old shoulds and oughts. Shoulds and oughts that may or may not even belong to you anymore. Old goals which haven’t been updated or pondered. We protect these old decisions and old goals that desperately need to be asked new questions.

So start this year asking yourself some questions and notice the feelings that come up: maybe a bit of fear, maybe a bit of excitement? Maybe anticipation, freedom, wonder, anxiety? Maybe apprehension, anger, hope, courage? Can you sense a feeling of movement? Can you feel a part of you wake up—take notice—look around? It is actually hard to live in your questions without a feeling of stretching, of possibility, of growth. And please don’t look for answers, or a single answer to these questions. Not yet. Let the answers, the feelings, the possibilities rattle around inside you. Let the questions wash over you. Let the questions walk along side you. Let the questions simply rest next to you or curl up at your feet.

Let the questions, like a seed, grow a bit. Let them extend into the parts of you that need to feel more connected to your values and purpose. Let them extend in to the parts of you that have grown tired of yourself or in to the parts of yourself that you have forgotten. Let the questions inspire and embolden that voice inside that has waiting to be heard for so long—your own voice and not the voice of others.

This year, let yourself, as Rilke says, ”live your questions” and you may find that over this year you will gradually, “without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”  What are your questions?

© 2019 Gretchen Schmelzer, PhD

Some Reading that May Inspire Questions….