It's Okay to Be Done

“The Renunciation

When the angel appears
Suddenly
to tell you of a new life
—no one is ready.
I was shoveling snow and
Mary was doing her thing
when Gabriel appeared,
wings high above his head,
giving her news
in a couple of simple sentences
that would change her life
and change the world—
she would birth a savior.

Oh, I too believed in saving
as an antidote to fear.
Fear not! I gathered the children
working year after year
to wash away the sins
of the father and mother
and suddenly—with grace,
but no wings, my angel,
Gabriel’s opposite,
with a streetlight halo,
of a million snowflakes
swirling and sparkling—
a voice echoing in my head
said: it’s over.

I could hear a
door shut and I knew
with an aching clarity
It was no longer my job
to save the world.
I could feel the snowflakes
blessing my head;
tears washing my face.
I watched the cars roll by
silently in the snow, moving
without any help from me.
”
— Gretchen Schmelzer

Despite all the talk about quiet quitting (a problem I ascribe to a lack of leadership, and not a lack of engagement, and a blog for another day) —and the great resignation -- adults are actually pretty bad at knowing when it’s time to be done with something.

It’s hard to hold the polarity between persistence and transition. The ability to stick with something through the hard times—and then the ability to, as Mary Oliver says in her poem, In Black Water Woods, when the time comes to let it go. The problem is that rather than seeing persistence and transition as interconnected energetic capacities that support learning and growth—these traits get turned into moral behaviors—where you are good if you persist, and bad if you transition—and this fear of a moral failing keeps way too many people stuck doing things that they need to move on from. Turning these capacities into moral behaviors makes it seem like you should do one and avoid the other. As if you should seek a singular state of persistence when in fact persistence and transition are polarities—you can’t grow without both of them—and the task is to be able to hold both ends of this polarity, and feel the loss when you move from one end to the other.

As a therapist and a coach I especially see this struggle when people are done with a current job –not because of any other reason than they have outgrown it—from a developmental perspective, or their values or purpose has changed, or their awareness of what now interests them has shifted. And their real struggle is a nagging feeling that they are ‘giving up’ rather than growing up. The job no longer fits them—and they can’t bring their biggest self, their gifts, their energy to the current one anymore.

The ability to be done with something allows you to grow into something else. Children and teenagers are not only allowed to this; they are outright encouraged to ‘leave those things behind.’ You don’t stay in 3rd grade forever, just because you liked it, or you liked your teachers. You move to the next grade. The structures of youth support us being done and moving and transitioning to the next thing—and then we hit adulthood and the easy conveyor belt of transition ends. And we are required to make these shifts on our own.

Don’t get me wrong—I’m not against constancy, or loyalty, or commitment. I am not against staying connected to work or relationships through difficulty. I’m not saying being done is ‘good’ and persistence is ‘bad.’ I am asking us to hold both of them enough to support our growth and our ability to use our gifts.

The problem with persistence, transition and done is that you find these places as feelings, as images, as quiet voices or drumbeats. They are places that you usually can’t get to with reason. The next thing pulls you toward it and you don’t give up, you persist. Or you suddenly have a sense deep inside you that the thing you are doing right now must stop. And the problem is that the feelings might not ‘make sense.’ They aren’t the logical answer. And often, you fear that they might disappoint somebody else.

I know this dilemma intimately. Ten years ago I gave up my private practice as a therapist because I needed a break from being so connected to other people’s emotions and thoughts. I was exhausted-- I had been taking care of people since I was a toddler, and I could feel, in my cells, that I wasn’t going to be able to heal myself unless I let go of healing others for a while. It was a wrenching realization, and ultimately, a crucial shift for me. A shift that came with a good deal of sorrow that remains. And that’s the hard thing about this polarity between persistence and transition, between persistence and done—there’s a loss, or grief, or sorrow at the parting. And there’s joy, excitement, hope and interest in what comes next—all things you might have missed if you hadn’t risked the grief, hadn’t risk the disappointment.

The nudge here isn’t to persist or to be done. The nudge here is to reflect. To listen to that small voice inside you tell you what it needs now. To trust the images and visions your unconscious offers you. To allow yourself to listen to what your body is telling you. And to hold that neither side is permanent. You can let yourself persist, you can let yourself be done. They are both okay.

© 2022 Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD

Poem Inspired by The God Abandons Antony by Cavafy in:


The Work Before the Work: The Healing Phase of Stabilization

This past week I was reminded how little the world understands of healing. So many people are trying to forge their way forward from the pandemic –carrying so many burdens—up against so many obstacles. They are facing challenges that would have been hard anyway, but with the exhaustion of the last two years, there is a new level of overwhelm and frustration.

When Covid-19 first hit, I encouraged people to add the phrase, “…in a pandemic” to the end of every sentence: “I’m helping my kids with their schooling…..in a pandemic.” “I’m managing a virtual team….in a pandemic.” I wanted people to understand that the task they were trying to do was not as simple as it seemed because the context had changed. I wanted people to understand that they were doing something that they had never done before—so they could hold their challenges with compassion.

As the pandemic shifts into a more chronic and ongoing state, it seems we need another infusion of compassion. We need a way to hold our current context that has us understand the task of healing that is required of us.

This week I got the image in my head that recovery from the pandemic looks like everyone getting in their cars and trying to drive back home to ‘normal’ (whatever definition they have of that) but the roads have all been destroyed in the last two years: we are all driving on roads full of potholes and frost heaves. It’s hard to drive—and it’s hard on the car. People keep feeling like it should just be a simple drive from here to there. But it’s jarring and exhausting and it feels like because of the condition of the road, the ‘car’ is always on the verge of breaking down. The party line is that the pandemic is ‘over’ and things are ‘back-to-normal’ now. But that isn’t most people’s experience. That isn’t what it feels like.

Healing from trauma isn’t a simple here-to-there journey anyhow. Healing happens in cycles; it’s spiral. My method of healing from trauma—the Cycle of Healing Repeated Trauma-- is made up of five distinct phases—or areas. These five phases of the cycle of healing are: Preparation— or the area of getting ready, Unintegration—or the area of a controlled coming apart, Identification—or the area of sorting, naming and mapping, Integration—or the area of weaving the pieces back together, and Consolidation—or the area of solidifying and stabilizing. From an emotional, cognitive, spiritual, physical and relational perspective, each phase or area has its own focus and purpose, as well as its own set of needs to attend to.

The first stage of healing is often ignored. It is the Preparation phase and the goal of this stage is to strengthen all of your resources both internally and externally and build a relationship with your support network. In this stage you strengthen your self-awareness and emotional management skills. You work on your communication skills and relationship skills. You make sure that you have a safe place to live and meaningful work (whether paid or unpaid). This stage mirrors preparation for a safe high-altitude climb. A climber must be physically healthy and strong, must be knowledgeable about the climb and how to use the right equipment, acclimate to the altitude, and be part of a well-functioning team in order to manage a trek safely. It is not possible to skip the Preparation stage of a high altitude climb without risking failure or injury, and it isn’t possible to skip the Preparation stage in healing from trauma either.

But the problem is that this crisis of Covid has catapulted everyone into a feeling of falling apart—into what feels like the Unintegration phase –and everyone feels like they should be through the healing journey—when in fact, it hasn’t yet begun.

When a healing journey is started in a crisis—you don’t just start in the middle, you back up-- you don’t even start with preparation—you back WAY up to start with stabilization.

Stabilization is the work before the work. It is the work we need to do even before the Preparation phase. Stabilization acknowledges that there needs to be a pause. There needs to be some assessment: what will help me feel sturdy? What will help me feel solid? It acknowledges that there may be pieces missing. That you may need to put some things into place for a while.

Stabilization recognizes that we now need to stop and assess what was hurt. We need to assess what needs repair. We need to strengthen or build our routines and resources that will help us lean into our strengths and strengthen our relationships. We need to build the muscles we will bring into the preparation phase.

The tasks of stabilization are concrete tasks—they are the daily routines, rituals and reflections that can help you and your family feel more grounded. They are the meetings and conversations that can help your work teams feel more solid. They are the tasks and behaviors that help the world feel more predictable and help relationships feel connected and trustworthy. Unlike an x-ray of a broken bone that can be identified and set with a cast—your stabilization is an assessment only you can make. Below are some questions to support you in this work. And meanwhile I encourage you to add a new phrase to each statement you make, “….while I am (we are) healing from a pandemic.”

 Questions to Support the Work of Stabilization and Preparation:

 1.     Take time to reflect on your losses over the past two years. What needs the most attention in your life?

2.     What routines support me feeling more solid? Do I have routines that support my mental/emotional health, physical health, relational health, & spiritual health?

3.     What are my strengths? How can I lean into them more to support me at this time?

4.     Do I have routines to support my relationships and spend time with the people who are important to me?

5.     How will I know I feel sturdy?

6.     How do I know I need to ask for help?

© 2022 Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD

For more on the 5 Phase Cycle of Healing from Trauma read: Journey Through Trauma

Learning stillness in a vibrant world

“Between every two pines is a door leading to a new life.”
— John Muir

I don’t have two pines in my backyard—I have one. It’s a white pine, an eastern white pine. And it’s not technically in my backyard as it belongs to the neighbor. The trunk is right up against the property line and half of its branches and canopy reach into my yard. That’s the funny thing about trees, they really don’t care about our silly property lines. They often outlast them. There was a giant Tulip Poplar that marked the back corner of the backyard where I grew up in. The house is long gone—an entire neighborhood built on the properties of five neighboring previous houses. But the Tulip Poplar remains—marking an important coordinate on the old map of that world.

The truth is that you don’t need two pines to reach a new life. One is plenty. I remember a Maya Angelou speech where she began with, “A single individual plus God constitutes a majority.” She was speaking to the Mormon Church as a Black woman with nearly an entirely White audience, and spoke those words powerfully as a source of support for herself and a reminder, it seems, that God saw the world, and its people in it, differently. And sitting on my porch it may also be that one individual plus a white pine also constitutes a majority, or a multiplicity, or an entirety. At the very least—you feel like you have all you need for the morning. The white pine is teeming with life. Initially as I look out, the world seems quiet, but then you notice a few of the needles of the white pine quivering. And as you look longer, you notice nearly all of the needles are in motion.

This giant entity that seemed quiet and still moments before is humming with life. Bees and small wasps moving in an out of the needles and cones. Birds landing on the upper branches. The birds out of sight, but the branches bouncing with their weight. Squirrels running up the trunk and in to the canopy chasing each other. The tree is so big it’s hard to take in all of the action at once. The tree is so big you no longer see it as a tree. It’s a whole universe—and I am only really talking about what I see above ground.

Like everyone else, it seems, this summer, I am reading Finding The Mother Tree and learning about the life of trees below the surface. How they are able to talk with each other and support each other with mycorrhizal fungi  --- the root fungus that allows nutrients to pass from tree to tree. Once you learn about these underground networks between trees you can’t look at a tree or a forest the same way. You see them all as friends holding hands. You see the whole world interconnected in a way that seemed abstract before, but which now feels authentic and true. Which has me look at my pine and wonder what are its connections to the others trees that are nearby? Who are its friends, cousins, children? What is its relationship to the weeping cherry in the yard next door? And to the white pine two backyards away that split from a lightning strike earlier this summer?  Did my pine feel the loss? Is it mourning?

Or is tree time so slow that the loss won’t be felt for a while—the way that we see starlight from stars that have since burned out? I don’t know how slow tree time is, but I think part of the reason that trees feel so healing to me is that they do hold an alternate view of time. They have the capacity to hold the busy-ness of life in their canopy and the stillness and depth in their trunk and roots. The busy part I am good at. But the stillness and depth are my learning edge, and right now my white pine is a good teacher.

© 2022 Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD

 

How To Begin Again

Cayetana Saiz with Scopio

“Beginning,” He Answered.

The blank look on their faces let
Sisyphus know
they didn’t understand
the hard part wasn’t
the work of pushing the rock uphill.

He almost enjoyed
the heaviness of the rock,
and the honest, exhausting labor
of those long days.

They couldn’t know
that momentum started,
even uphill,
carries its own weight.

They only saw the size of the rock,
and the angle of the hill,
and naturally assumed
the work they could witness
was the hard part.

No one was there
in the cool mornings
as he stared at his rock
in silence,
his feet still,
his hands gently resting
on its curved sides.

No one was there
to hear the unspoken words
shouted to the Gods, pleading
for the strength to bear,
not the rock,
but the desperate weight of wondering,
how to begin,
again.
”
— Gretchen Schmelzer

I have beginnings on the brain. Tomorrow I am giving the convocation speech at community college and I have been thinking a lot about the beginning of the academic school year—which has always felt like the true ‘New Year’s’ to me: where you celebrate with new notebooks – full of blank pages and possibility.

This year the act of beginning is different somehow. There was a break, a pause, a disruption in the way we got to do our work and our learning in the past two years. So, we are not just beginning—we are getting reacquainted with the territory we left—we are meeting ourselves in old places and new places again. We are starting, but in many ways, we are also picking up pieces we left behind as we move forward.

I have talked to many people who have returned to their offices recently and told stories about walking into their office or seeing their desks—as shrines of the day that they left in March of 2020. The cups still had coffee in them, the plants had died, their sweater was still on their chair. The papers on their desks were the projects that existed then. Their lives moved forward and yet some part of their old life stayed still—waiting for them. Returning to work is a beginning. But it is also time travel.

And now as we begin again—as the school year begins and as more and more companies are moving into a more rhythmic schedule—the term beginning feels too small. It feels too small because it’s not just a beginning—it’s a reunion. We aren’t just beginning—we are also assimilating—integrating—the past two years of experience. The past two years of adaptation. We are meeting the selves we were –even as we begin our year visioning who we want to be.

As we begin this year with more freedom of movement, we are confronted by the past two years of beginnings that didn’t happen the way we wanted—the school years that began and ended differently. And the beginnings of things we might not have imagined—beginning different habits—allowing yourself to live out different values.

You come to your beginnings this year with a heightened sense of what you want and what you may have lost. You have a heightened sense of what is important to you and what you are willing, or even eager, to let go of. And depending upon how the last two years have impacted you, you have more or less energy to bring to building new year.

But all of this – the integration, the re-emergence, the assimilation, the emotions—and even, perhaps, the exhaustion—may actually help us adults meet the beginning and be more open to growth and change than we usually are. I have observed adults to be impatient beginners. They run into areas of growth and development that are awkward or difficult – feeling the challenge of their learning edge and they misinterpret the feeling. They feel uncomfortable and think that signals that they are doing something wrong. When actually, that place of difficulty, of frustration, or awkwardness is precisely the place that growth is made of. A place of learning—of true beginning.

This summer, as folks have been heading back into their work and school lives, I keep getting the image of the child’s game Pin the Tail on the Donkey. On the wall is a picture of a donkey—the new year. In your hand is the tail, with tape on the top— hopes and plans you have for your beginning. And then you are blindfolded and spun around—a pretty apt metaphor for the past two years. You wobble in your best guess of the right direction to pin your tail on the donkey—where will you land?

The fun part of that game, of course, is that getting it wrong, and laughing about it, is exactly what makes it fun. When the tail is on the head, or even more hilariously, feet away on the lamp shade. So, you don’t win the game, but you actually do, by adding to the joy. The game points to an important way to hold lightly where we are starting.

So as we all take off our blindfolds this fall after being spun around, can we hold our beginnings lightly? Can we not take too seriously where we are beginning, but instead have joy that we can begin. That we get to play? And can we bring awareness to our starting place—so we can start wherever we are—in whatever state we are in—and allow ourselves to really be the beginners we need to be in order to grow.

© 2022 Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD