Transitioning and Healing
Yesterday I felt depleted. Not typical for me, my energy dropped to just about nothing and I ended up going to bed at 8pm. I think the gravity of living amidst a global pandemic combined with working all weekend to finish a project wiped me out. I didn’t try to fight it yesterday, I just surrendered, went to bed, and woke up this morning ready to take on the work I set aside. I don’t have to tell you — these are challenging times.
It got me thinking and reflecting on three other times in my adult life when I’ve been faced with trying experiences of varying degrees, and how I’ve handled them.
When I was 18, I lost my dad to cancer a month before I went off to college. Amidst a new environment full of excitement and creating new bonds, it didn’t feel like a convenient time to express my grief. It was complicated: entering a transition known as one of life’s most exciting rites of passage, while simultaneously bearing the grief of perhaps life’s most painful ones — losing someone close to you. I kept so much of my emotion inside. I spent a lot of time during college wondering if the birds flying around outside the library were my dad’s signal that he was with me, and journaling, a lot. I really didn’t seek too much support from the outside. I look back at my 18–22-year-old self with a lot of compassion for her and all she carried, largely alone for a long time. I know now holding so much in prolonged much of the pain.
Many beautiful things happened throughout college and afterward including the gifts I’m most grateful for coming into my life — my husband and three children. Just months before my third child, now 8, came into the world, my CEO told me my position was going to be eliminated — only mine, because, he said, my department was no longer needed. I was shocked and overwhelmed, having just trained my staff who would remain in their jobs, to carry on my responsibilities while I was on maternity leave. Sparing the details here, there was an injustice happening, and I could not stand idly by. I made a decision to stand up for the sake of all women including myself who have been discriminated against and filed a pregnancy discrimination suit. Two years later, after much testimony, depositions, and endlessly reviewing HR and legal documents, my case settled in my favor. It’s not a process I want to repeat again nor do I wish it on anyone, though I don’t doubt it was the right thing to do. It was traumatic. I didn’t do enough to acknowledge the emotional toll of it, or to be compassionate to myself during the process, yet once it ended, I sought support in a variety of ways including therapy and meditation, and as a result of both of those, a good amount of healthy self-reflection. Through this work I learned a great deal about myself and witnessed positive changes in my relationship with myself and others. Through this inner work, I was invited to be more curious, more kind, and more true to myself.
I made some significant changes, my business started growing, and I was setting more goals which led to setting bigger goals — with my family, for my business, and physically. A former collegiate rower, then marathoner and triathlete who slowed down after having kids, I was excited to test my physical limits after a while in a “Dri-tri” at my favorite gym, Orange Theory. I ended up pushing hard and taking home the women’s win. Meanwhile, I was in the midst of some pretty stressful work projects that absorbed the majority of my working hours and then some. Days after the competition and weeks before the big event I was working tirelessly on, my back gave out. Out of nowhere, except I can’t help but think the stress of the tri and the project had an impact. I couldn’t pinpoint it to anything (except later, the stress). In and out of the hospital for tests, with strange-looking MRIs, and consideration of a rare and serious infection — it became clear that this was likely stress manifesting itself in an area of my body already weak from years of rowing. I spent a good part of the year laying on my back while working and just resting. I had to really surrender. I stopped running for the first time in 30 years, and I walked a lot. I started listening to lots of podcasts which lead me to read lots of nonfiction. More self-reflection and deep work to come back to myself. It was humbling. And it exercised new muscles — this time, in my mind.
We find ourselves amidst an unprecedented global pandemic. There’s a lot of pressure out there to create new things, make the most of the time at home, do an amazing job homeschooling…and on and on and on. And going into this after last year’s back injury and two traumas before, here’s what I know to be true.
Closing up and keeping the struggle inside doesn’t work — the pain will not go away and will always manifest itself in other ways
Feeling anger, resentment, and feeling at war with others will not work — it will leave you bitter and feeling scarred
Slowing down and surrendering — that’s something I can get behind. Contrary to my former belief, it’s anything but wimpy.
Being real, and receiving what’s coming to you — that’s trusting and part of my new definition of strength.
I’ve found being honest with myself about how I’m feeling to be incredibly productive to my mental health during times like these. And in the slowing down, I’m receiving the messages from my intuition about how to proceed with family and with work right now. It’s quite liberating. It’s taken some very real experiences to get here but I’m ever so grateful for now feeling peace amidst the challenge.