Tag Archives: transformation

It’s Not Your Fault.

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It’s not your fault.

Repeat after me: “It’s not my fault. It’s not my fault.”

The behaviors you carry into your adult life are not your fault. They are simply how you learned to cope with the stresses and strains of being a child in your family and in your culture.

They are not your fault.

They are, however, your responsibility. Once you are aware that your automatic behaviors in stressful situations aren’t serving you, it’s your responsibility to learn new ones.

Here’s what happened. You came into this world with an incredibly malleable, adaptive brain. Events happened in your family that began to shape your brain even before you were born. Every event in your childhood was an opportunity for neurons to connect. Every repetition of an event and your response to that event strengthened that neural connection. Over time, these connections learned to function like superhighways in your brain. Stimulus leads to response without your conscious awareness, producing the same result.

It’s neurobiology, and it’s not your fault.

For example, let’s say one of the adults in your life got mad often, and you frequently got hurt when they got mad. You probably learned that angry adults are scary and your job was to either hide or placate. That was an adaptive, rational response when you were seven. If you’re still responding to angry adults by hiding or placating when you’re 57, that’s a problem. You’re not a child anymore, and you have power now.

Building new habits to replace the old habits that no longer serve us – that’s what coaching is.

We start by learning the cycle: an event produces thoughts, thoughts lead to feelings, feelings lead to actions, and actions produce results. You can interrupt that cycle in only two places. You can change your thoughts, and you can change your actions. Feelings are a result of your thoughts, and the only way to shift them is to shift your thinking.

To heal and to make different choices, you must cultivate awareness of exactly how this cycle is operating in your life. One powerful tool for developing awareness of the cycle is the Awareness Wheel. Grab one here, and read these two previous posts for more information.

Sometimes just shining a light on what’s going on with us will ease our suffering. To really heal ourselves, though, we need to heal our brains. One powerful way to heal our brains is through an inquiry method, such as Byron Katie’s model which she calls “The Work.” (There are other forms of Inquiry. I’ve included links to two of them at the end.)

After you’ve identified a thought that’s not serving you, The Work asks four questions:

  1. Is it true? Yes or no.
  2. Can you absolutely know it’s true? Yes or no.
  3. What happens when you believe this thought?
  4. Who would you be without this thought?

The deeper you go into Questions 3 and 4, the more healing occurs. Take your time here. Katie’s website is full of resources, and I’m always happy to talk you through this process.

The final step is to turn the original thought around, and to find evidence for why it might be as true or truer than the original thought.

The purpose of this process is to find the truth. Inquiry is not about denial. It’s about truth. The truth will set you free.

Here’s how The Work could look for a child growing up with a violent parent. One painful thought learned in this situation might be, “It’s my job to keep people happy.”

  1. Is it true? It sure feels true, so YES.
  2. Can I absolutely know it’s true? Not really, so NO.
  3. What happens when I believe the thought “It’s my job to keep people happy”?

I’m always being nice and going out of my way to accommodate others. I don’t say what I think and I never disagree with anyone. I’m always paying attention to how others feel to the point that I don’t know how I feel anymore. I feel tense in my stomach and my breathing is shallow. My shoulders are a little hunched and my arms are tight.

  1. Who would I be without the thought “It’s my job to keep people happy”?

I’d say what I think. I’d let their anger be their problem. I’d pay attention to what I’m feeling and give myself love. I’d feel so much more free.

Two possible turnarounds:

  1. It’s not my job to keep people happy.

Of course this is true, because I’m not actually in charge of other people’s feelings.

  1. It’s my job to keep me happy.

Who else’s job could it be?

Repeating this process over and over builds new neural pathways. This is how you heal your brain.

Resources:

The Work

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy

Unf*ck Your Brain (This podcast and blog is the work of Kara Loewentheil, a Harvard-trained lawyer turned life coach. I think it’s f*cking brilliant, if you don’t mind swearing. Kara’s method is more streamlined than The Work.)

As always, I offer a free consultation. Please email me or use the contact form to set up a convenient time.

photo credit: Daoudi Aissi on unsplash

The Emergence of Hope, Part Two (Camino Fiction)

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Barb Morris Camino de SantiagoTHIS IS A SCENE FROM MY CAMINO NOVEL-IN-PROCESS. PLEASE SEE THE FIRST EXCERPT, “THE MESSIES,” WHICH INTRODUCES THE NOVEL AND WHY I’M POSTING THIS WRITING IN ITS RAW STATE.

Martha is sitting in a field of poppies with a frozen child in her lap. She notices that although poppies are soporific in stories, on the Camino she hears them say “Wake up!” She croons to the child, strokes her, puts her cheek to the little girl’s cold face, listens to the Meseta wind and watches the poppies sway, for what seems like hours. Softly holding this frozen girl – waiting for signs of life.

She sees peregrinos walking in the distance – they’re far enough away that she can’t tell them apart – occasionally one will notice her and wave. She waves back so they know she’s okay. A woman leaves the road and walks through the poppies toward them. Martha watches the expressions cross the woman’s face as she gets nearer. She sees surprise, concern, comprehension, and finally immense kindness.

“Hola,” she says. “How can I help?” They recognize each other’s American-ness by all the nonverbal cues – North Face and Osprey, smiles and eye contact.

“She’s frozen. I’m thawing her.”

“You must be tired. Let me take a turn.” Martha realizes that, yes, she is indeed tired. The woman takes her towel from her backpack and spreads it on the ground, then sits on it and reaches her arms to Martha. Martha gently hands her the curled up girl child.

The woman asks, “Where did you find her?”

“In my chest,” says Martha.

“Ah,” says the woman, and she looks at Martha with deep brown eyes. “I understand.”

Martha knows those eyes. She’s looking into her mother’s eyes. As their eyes fill with tears, the girl child stirs. Martha reaches out a hand to the girl’s face. It’s warm, and she catches a tear softly falling down the girl’s cheek. Thawing is happening rapidly now – the little girl is breathing and stretching and making little noises as she wakes up – Martha sees that this child is younger than she thought – maybe 4 or 5 – red rubber toed sneakers, little jeans, a pink shirt, fine brown hair cut like a bowl on her head like the Beatles used to have – and deep brown eyes looking up at her and her mom.

“Hello, sweetheart,” says Martha.

This is weird, she thinks. I’m sitting in a field of Spanish poppies with my mom, who’s been dead for twenty years, and a little girl I found in a freezer in my chest. Okay, then. Smiling, she lies down in the sun in the poppies, looks at her mom cradling the smiling child, and closes her eyes. She feels the rocks beneath her and knows she’s getting dirty and damp, and she doesn’t care. It’s totally worth it to feel the Earth along her entire body. Ground below; air and sky above. Poppies all around. She reaches out her hand to the woman sitting next to her, places it on the woman’s nylon-clad leg, and relaxes. As she falls asleep she wonders – will they be here when I wake up?

They are. They are deeper in the poppies, holding hands, the little girl bending to smell each flower and laughing as they sway in the breeze. The sun was halfway between noon and the horizon. Martha is hungry. She sits there watching the two dear creatures, listening to her daughter’s tinkling laughter that sounded like a creek in the summer and her mother’s low murmurs in response.

That’s surprising, she thought. That’s who she is to me. Martha stands up, brushes the dirt off her legs with a swish, and says, “Hey, you two. Let’s go find supper and a bed.”

They turn and start toward her. Her daughter lets go of the older woman’s hand and runs toward Martha. “Mommy! (That settles that, thought Martha.) You’re awake! Grandma and I were looking at the pretty flowers. She says they’re poppies! Let’s go to that town over there!”

She pointed her little finger toward the town they could see beyond the trees – a large church and monastery at the base of a terraced hill with a ruined castle plopped on top. Who does that? wonders Martha. Who’s designing these quintessential Camino vistas?

She shoulders her backpack and takes her daughter’s hand. Her mom folds up her towel, wipes off Martha’s pants with it to get the last of the dirt, stows it in her backpack and puts it on, straps on her poles, and heads through the poppies back to the road.  There are just a few pilgrims still walking as Martha and her girl follow the older woman to the road, holding hands.

Martha understands that her Way just got a lot more complicated. And more companionable.

I don’t know how long I’ll have my mom with me, and my daughter probably isn’t real either, she thought. This is so interesting, and I’ll ride this wave as long as it lasts.

An hour later they walk up the cobbled street through the old gate into Castrojeriz. Martha and her mom have taken turns carrying their little girl, whose name it turns out is Esperanza, almost always called “Hope,” most of the way. As she explained, “I’m tired. After all, I a little girl, and I just woke up after being frozen for a really long time.” Martha suspects she also wanted to feel her mothers’ arms around her, holding her, singing to her, telling her how glad they were that she woke up.

It was like that, that this one, now three, arrived at the door of El Hospital del Alma. And how it is that they are the fortunate pilgrims who find themselves sitting in front of a warm wood stove, drinking chamomile tea with honey, eating cookies and chocolate-covered strawberries off flowered china plates, asking the hospitalera where to stay, and are invited to stay in her one guest room that just happens to be empty that night.

“I will cook for you dinner,” says María, “and you will tell to me your story.”

Camino fiction

The Little Door (Camino Fiction)

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Barb Morris Camino de SantiagoThis is a scene from my Camino novel-in-process. Please see the first excerpt, “The Messies,” which introduces the novel and why I’m posting this writing in its raw state.

Two massive wooden doors block the cathedral entrance– they’re at least twenty feet high and ten feet wide, each. They’re made of slabs of oak six inches thick joined together, carved with birds and flowers and creatures and vignettes from the lives of the saints, with enormous latches and locks. Martha doesn’t have a prayer of opening these doors. But then she notices, in the right corner of the right hand door, a little door. It’s about five feet tall and two feet wide, carved to blend in with the massive cathedral door of which it is a part. She tries the human-sized handle. The door creaks on its hinges. She pulls the small door toward her and steps onto the bottom piece of oak over which the door swings. She perfectly fits this little door. She stands on the threshold, peering into the darkness beyond, and stops.

She thinks, I’m no longer who I was, and I’m not yet who I’m going to be. If I go in, I’m no longer out. But backing out doesn’t seem to be an option. Neither is staying put. I seem to have lost part of myself.

This inner darkness will change me. Do I want to be changed?

After some moments, Martha steps onto the stone floor of the cathedral. She feels the rough stone through the sole of her shoe. It’s cold and hard. She sets her backpack down on one of the hundreds of rush-seated wooden chairs, takes off her shoes and socks, and begins walking through the dark cathedral. She feels every hill and valley of the cold hard floor with her sore tired blistered bare feet. One foot in front of the other, one step at a time, arms outstretched, hands wide open, she walks, eyes looking up and around as the dark begins to be cut with dust-filled shafts of light from clerestory windows so high she can’t see them, only the sunlight they admit into this filmy cavernous space. She breathes the old cold air stirred by currents of incense and lilies. In the north transept is a shrine to St. Agatha, who’s proudly holding her platter of breasts. Martha sits on the wooden pew in front of the altar. One lone candle burns at the saint’s feet

I should be MOVING. Yet here I sit, inside this quiet cold dusty ancient space that seems to be abandoned and empty. I have crossed the threshold. I’ve entered the unknown space. I’ve answered the invitation.

 Now what?

A hymn tune wafts through her mind: “Immortal, invisible, God only wise, in light inaccessible hid from our eyes. Un___ing, unchanging, the ancient of days la la la la la la thy great name we praise.”

Martha hears those words as if for the first time. How rude. If God doesn’t change, and being unchanging is the ideal, now can little in-process me ever hope to be holy? Did the Desert Mothers strive for unchangingness? Was that their goal, with their fasting and praying and body-denying life?

 I don’t want to do that. I want to make peace with being a woman in process. And not only make peace, but celebrate. Affirm. HONOR. Honor my yearning and striving and efforting and growing – HONOR my fits and starts and dead ends. Because they are all part of the process. Even the years I’ve spent stuck were part of my journey. What a load of bullshit – that there’s only one way to be and my job is to find it and be it and never change it. God the Father will never be an affirming God for me. Never.

So here Martha sits, inside this Spanish church, having entered through the little door. She’s getting better at waiting for the next step to show up. She’s learning not to rush. It’s taking awhile to learn not to rush. Some days she’s only walked ten kilometers. It may take her three months to get to Santiago. Maybe longer. But she’s so tired of going in a straight line from point A to point B, never deviating, focused on the goal, covering the material with > 80% success as determined by weekly benchmarks, quarterly testing, and annual achievement scores. She just wants to sit and wait and be a human woman who sits and waits when waiting is called for, and who moves with purpose and strength when movement is called for.

This time, in this dark church, is a time for waiting. She’s given up questioning these seemingly strange impulses that seize her unpredictably. She’s becoming an instinctual being – following a deeper, more rooted guidance system than the map in her backpack and her frenzied brain. She’s becoming feral – a creature following her gut and her heart and her nose, rather than Brierley’s* stages. Sometimes her body throms, like at the track to Eunate*. And she’s learned to pay attention to salivating as a sign of portents.

Martha’s been seeing drawings and paintings in her mind for awhile now, on the Camino. She sees the ink and water colors she’d use to paint THIS place. The clerestories far above, where the sun shines in straight lines, illuminating the swirling dust – the windows would be ink drawn in strong lines. The shaft of sun is yellow watercolor. The stone of the church is blueblackgrey wash. And the dust is droplets of some dark color, splashed over it all with a fine spray from a toothbrush.

And what does the shaft of sunlight illumine? For the sun has climbed higher in the sky so the shaft reaches further down into the sanctuary, the heart of this dark cavernous space. Martha sits and watches the sun as it moves lower and deeper into the darkness — slowly, inexorably illuminating a gilded altar, upon which are a cloth, two vases with plastic flowers, two unlit candles, and a crucifix.

She’d hoped for more – a sign, a symbol, a portent. What she got was more of the same.

Perhaps the waiting – the responding and the waiting – was the point.

She heaves herself up onto her hurting feet, feeling the stiffness and the cold that’s seeped into her bones from this tired cold place, and walks back through the dark church to where her shoes and backpack wait beside the little door inside the big door. She heaves it open and steps over the threshold back into the bright, hot Rioja sun.

Time to find a bar, have a café con leche* and something sweet, she thinks, then walk a few more miles before finding tonight’s albergue*. A little time sitting in the sun would feel so good. I’m tired of feeling cold. Maybe Cola Cao* instead of café? Mas calories y menos caffeine.

Martha walks to the bar across the plaza from the church. She hadn’t noticed it an hour earlier when she’d crossed this plaza, feeling pulled toward that little door and wanting to know what was on the other side of it. Now, sitting in the sun with a cup of hot milk, a packet of Cola Cao, and a slice of tortilla*, she rests her feet on the plastic chair opposite her and looks critically at the church. Templar* architecture, she now sees. All thick walls and fortress lines. It fairly bristles with animosity – full of the self-righteousness of those men who built her a thousand years ago. Of course there was nothing there for her. Why had she expected otherwise?

The Camino, she realizes, is the same. Or could be, depending on how a peregrina* walked it. It could be a straight line from Point A (SJPP)* to Point B (Santiago), walked with focus and no tolerance for deviation from the goal, following Brierley’s* stages religiously. One could learn something about one’s self that way, she supposed – that’s how education is set up, after all. A linear progression from Point A (preschool) to Point B (grad school). Or, she thinks, the Camino could be a jumping-off point for exploration and return. It could be organic, although the pilgrim who walked it that way would definitely be swimming against the prevailing current. A pilgrim could use the Camino for general direction, swirling away and coming back as inspiration and yearning struck.

So why doesn’t anybody walk it that way? And why couldn’t I walk it that way?

 Maybe I got meaning from that cold hard church after all.

*Camino places, names, and things which Will need to be defined, or perhaps I’ll include a camino lexicon.

The Messies (Camino Fiction)

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Barb Morris Camino de Santiago

I walked the Camino de Santiago with my husband in 2014. Last year I had a vivid Camino dream about a small door within a large door that opened into a Templar church. From that dream emerged a series of scenes that have become the bare bones of a novel. I’m posting some of the scenes in their raw form, starting with “The Messies.” I’ve done some revising for readability; however, in the spirit of Martha’s messies, what you have here is pretty much how this scene emerged onto the page. It’s not perfect, and I’m letting it out anyway. I invite you to share your reactions in the comments.

The hero of my story is Martha, a newly-retired school teacher walking the Camino de Santiago by herself. This scene happens about ten days into her Camino, a journey which will take her about six weeks altogether.

I am a mess, Martha thinks. I am just a mess. Maybe I’ll always be a mess. Maybe being messy is just how I am.

Of what does this mess consist? Memories, dreams that never saw the light of day, abandoned goals and desires – What do I do with all this mess?

Walking by myself I can’t be distracted. The lid wiggles loose and the messies start to crawl out. Am I big enough to contain my messies? There are so many of them! They seem vaguely malevolent. They’re wild and angry, exulting in their newfound freedom and room to roam. They surge out of the jar and crawl all over my insides. I can feel them clinging to my chest wall and hanging on my heart. They’re crawling all around inside me. They crawl up into my arms and down to my hands. They gleefully grab my organs and skitter down my legs. They’re so glad to be free – these messies. They’re blue and black and red and green, with wild fur and eight legs and googly eyes and fangs. I’m afraid of them. They’re a little crazed, a little frantic.

I really am going a little crazy, Martha thinks. But let’s go with this: I’ve taken the lid off – the lid has wobbled loose on the Camino. Day after day of walking has jostled the lid loose. Day after day of being a stranger in a strange land has jostled the lid loose, and the messies have taken their chance. They’ve rushed up and out. They’re now crawling around my insides – around my chest between my lungs and chest wall, around my heart, up to my shoulders and down my arms. They like the bones for traction.  

Martha’s mind is going crazy with dismay and worry.

It feels good to have the lid off. It took so much energy and effort to keep them hidden. Oh. They’re different things – some of them are dreams. Many of them are emotions. Some of them are memories. Some of them are joy, too.

 I can see some of the ways I’ve kept the messies bottled up: other-focus, codependence, addiction, busyness, distraction, rule-following, being nice, staying quiet.

 I have to loosen the lid if I need to stuff another messie into the jar. They resist, and they try to escape whenever I open it. I’m pretty good at keeping them contained. But now, here on the Camino, as I walk mile after mile, the lid has loosened enough that they’ve popped it off and they’ve escaped.

 Tonight, in the albergue, someone will say, “Hola, Martha! How was your Way today?”

 My answer, if I wanted to tell the truth, would be, “Today on the Camino I discovered that in my heart I keep a jar full of everything I don’t want to know – the messy things – the inconvenient truths of my life. The sadness I don’t want to feel. The unkept promises and failures. The losses and the rage. The dreams I’ve let languish. The pain and the betrayals I didn’t want to see. All the stuff I didn’t want to do but I did anyway. All the things that didn’t fit with being perfect. And the joy it wasn’t safe to express. Now they’re out. And they’re crawling all over me, inside and out. And I can’t put them back in.

Martha walks, smiling and weeping. She’s beginning to suspect there will be many tears on this Camino. Every pilgrim she meets, she sees their jar of messies. We all have them, she sees. We all have our sequestered messies.

The jar is very old. It was given to me when I was a little girl: “Here’s your jar. Please put into it everything about you that we don’t like. Don’t ask questions. Just do it. No messies allowed. Or aloud. Either one. Your job is to sequester your messies so they don’t bother us. We only want to see the smart, pretty, nice bits. Thank you in advance for your cooperation in this matter. We’ll teach you how to identify, capture, and contain said messies, since you’re just a girl. Before you know it, you’ll be so good at it you can do it without thinking. Expect to feel listless and depressed at times. That just means you’re doing it right. Anytime you want to do something irrational or have a feeling we don’t like – catch that messy and STUFF IT INTO YOUR JAR. And NEVER let them out.”

 “Oh, and by the way, a little joy goes into the jar with each messy. That’s normal. Pay no attention. Not a cause for concern.”

 It takes a lot of energy to keep the lid on. That’s why I can’t commit to anything else. I have to hold back some energy at all times so I can contain the messies. Don’t ask too much of me. I have to keep the messies in. “Don’t let loose, don’t let down your guard, or the messies will get out.” So no going flat out and giving something all I’ve got. Never let myself get too hungry or tired or enthusiastic or passionate, or carried away with ANYTHING. If I do, the messies will erupt.

For additional Camino information, please click here. 🙂

©barbmorris.com

Let’s Stop Comparing Ourselves to Trees.

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It’s fall in the Northern Hemisphere.

You know what that means, right?

Yup, pumpkin spiced everything.

And also blog post after blog post about letting go. Relaxing into the dark. Transformation. Transition. Change. About how we should be like trees and gracefully let the dead things fall away.

I’ve been guilty of it myself. (See header image.)

And yet. We’re not trees.

Please stop comparing yourself to a tree.

Humans and trees diverged very early in life’s evolutionary journey. Humans went on to evolve a large brain, with a cerebral cortex that knows it’s housed in a body that will die, and so the mind fears. A lot.

Maybe trees have fears, too, when fall comes and they feel their dead leaves drop away. Maybe they resist, too, just like we do.

I’ve been exploring ways to navigate transitions more kindly. My kids are self-sufficient adults, so I’m transitioning from active parenting to empty nester. I’m actively exploring nature-based spirituality, so I’m transitioning from Episcopalian to who knows what. I’m an entrepreneur, so I’m transitioning from fitting into a defined job to being in charge of my own work. My body continues to age, so I’m transitioning from young-ish woman to juicy crone.

Dying and rising and doing it all over again comes pre-installed in Earthlings. All Earthlings. Trees. Rocks. Water. Ravens. Humans. Change is not optional.

I’m finding that knowing who I am, having a sense of my core identity, the essence of “me,” is helpful. Knowing and staying in touch with my heart is one key to sane cycling and changing.

Just as a tree’s identity remains when it stands bare to the winter winds, I will still be “me” when outer identitifiers (mom, teacher, Christian, young …) fall away.

My heart identity lives in my body.  It makes sense to me, then, that deeply knowing myself and living from my core starts with loving and paying attention to my body.

Who you are lives in your body. Deeply knowing yourself and living from your core starts with loving and paying attention to your body, in whatever form that takes for you. I suggest regular body scans, baths, movement, sweaty work, long walks – whatever feels delicious. “Let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.” (Mary Oliver)

Be warned, though. Your body is wild. Paying attention to your body means feeling your feelings. It means sitting with your pain and your joy. Giving yourself the gift of self-compassion.

We are not trees. For humans, with these brains that scream fears night and day, it helps so much to know and trust our hearts. To know that our bodies tell the truth, while our minds often don’t.

When we know who we are, the stuff we cling to that isn’t ours anymore, perhaps never was ours, can fall away like last year’s leaves.

(Would you like to explore navigating the changes and seasons of your life with kindness? I offer a free discovery call. Click here for details.)

 

I Want Transformation and I Want It NOW.

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The waiting part of transformation is HARD, at least for me. I want to just do the change, and do it quick. Unfortunately, that’s just not how transformation works. Unlike our get ‘er done culture, what happens in that chrysalis can’t be rushed. (See this previous post for more about change, transformation, and the difference between them. Today’s post goes deeper into #5, about the predictable pattern of change.)

My hypothesis is that the obligatory waiting phase is why I resist necessary transformations. I hate that in-between thing so much. (And if I haven’t done the grieving I need to do with any change, transformation pretty much stops.) All those messy feelings, when we just want to feel bright and shiny and good at life, right?

I’ve been finding these words helpful when I feel myself resisting the necessary waiting phase of transformation. It’s an excerpt from John O’Donohue’s blessing “For the Interim Time.”

As far as you can, hold your confidence.

Do not allow your confusion to squander

This call which is loosening

Your roots in false ground,

That you might become free

From all you have outgrown.

 

What is being transfigured here is your mind,

And it is difficult and slow to become new,

The more faithfully you can endure here,

The more refined your heart will become

For your arrival in the new dawn.

 

I love that the poet speaks of enduring faithfully. I love that he speaks of loosening roots and becoming free, and how he acknowledges that it’s a difficult and slow process to become new. Mostly I love that he describes the interim time as a time when our minds are being transfigured.

Stay present here and now, in your body. Spend time in nature, and pay attention to how this amazing Creation in which we are embedded actually works. A flower blossoms when it’s ready, and not a minute before. Hold your confidence. Allow your roots to loosen. Faithfully endure and allow your mind to be transfigured. You are becoming new, which is a holy enterprise.

Be faithful to your metamorphosis.

if you’d like to explore how I can help you navigate change and transformation, I offer a free 60-minute consultation. Fill out this form and we’ll set up a time.

Seven Things I Wish I’d Known about Change Fifty Years Ago

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Swallowtail on thistleI’m 59 years old. Maybe I’m just a slow learner, and everyone else knows this stuff already. But, just in case, here are seven things I’ve recently learned about change that I wish I’d known fifty years ago

1. Change is normal.

Childhood is not an assembly line from which we emerge ready to roll at 21 years old. I know. This seems obvious, right? But this mechanistic model of human development pervades our culture. The idea that we should have our shit together and our ducks in a row by our early twenties is pervasive and harmful and everywhere. In this model, change feels like brokenness rather than aliveness. And women, because our bodies change more way than men’s, pay a steeper price.

Change is a big deal, and it can rock our world. We need to find ways to support and help ourselves through it, rather than beating ourselves up when we don’t navigate it smoothly.

We were not taught, most of us, how to do this.

Change is encoded into the DNA of the world. Even nonliving Earthly entities are constantly changing. Planets circle. Tides go in and out. Water cycles. Rocks become dirt.

 

2. Every change is loss.

Every change is a death and rebirth. Even the happy changes involve loss. “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end,” sing Semisonic in “Closing Time.” In this season of graduations and weddings, let’s acknowledge that even changes we’ve longed for and dreamed of require the death of something. Maybe it’s not much of anything, but there’s always something we leave behind that we value.

 

3. Change does not equal transformation.

Change is inevitable, but transformation is optional. And it’s transformation that we need to undergo in order to move forward. We need to acknowledge, and grieve, the death and loss inherent in any change so we can make room for new life. Yes, again, even the happy changes. (See William Bridges’ Transitions for a lot more on this topic. What he calls “transition” I’m labeling “transformation.”)

We can opt out of transformation, though. We can just let our physical realities shift while refusing to acknowledge and deal with the grief inherent in change. This refusal will bite us in the butt, eventually. Refusing to consciously transform, even when a change is unwanted, will leave us with a burden of bitterness, regret, and stuckness that will eventually require attention.

 

4. Change has resonance.

We tend to do change the same way over and over, unless we bring our patterns to conscious awareness. This is fine if we’re ninja change masters and we handle transformation with grace and ease.

The first big change I remember is when my family fell apart. My dad’s drinking and my parents’ fighting; violence in the house; my dad moving out followed by divorce; my big brother going to live with my dad; losing our house in the woods, our horses, and our dog –  all from 6th to 8th grade. I felt completely out of control, because I was. So I learned that I wasn’t in charge of my life. I learned to just close my eyes, keep my head down, and hang on, because there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about any of it.

Since then, I’ve left multiple homes and jobs I loved because my husband was pursuing his career. I did this willingly. I behaved as though I didn’t have a choice, and I didn’t thoroughly grieve those losses. I didn’t consciously refuse to transform, I just didn’t know any better.

 

5. Change has a predictable pattern.

A common metaphor for this pattern is a butterfly’s life cycle. It’s a really good metaphor.

First, the caterpillar has no choice. She simply runs out of steam and has to stop. Then she creates a chrysalis for herself, inside which she COMPLETELY MELTS DOWN. Next, she has to wait, be goo, and let the imaginal cells do their work of remaking her. This stage cannot be rushed, for butterflies or for people. Because we’re conscious beings, we’re aware of how uncomfortable and counter-cultural this waiting is. It’s an unknown territory, not-this-anymore-but-not-yet-that, and we often panic. Rushing is a mistake. This is where faith comes in. Finally, when it’s time and the work of the chrysalis is done, we are reborn.

This pattern of transformation is everywhere.

 

6. Change is cycles within cycles.

Change isn’t linear. See number one. We will almost certainly be in the dying phase of one cycle and be feeling reborn in another area of our lives. For example, I’m coming to terms with being almost sixty, entering the final decades of my life. I’m grieving the loss of my young body and the physical resilience I’ve taken for granted. At the same time, I’m experiencing a profound rebirth of purpose as I commit to my life coaching practice and to writing.

Cell turnover, cell death and rebirth, is going on at a furious clip within my aging body, just as the day cycles within the moon cycles within the cycles of the seasons, all within the context of Earth’s life and death, which is in turn embedded in a Universe with a beginning and an end.

If you believe there’s solid ground somewhere and all you have to do is find it, good luck with that.

 

7. We’re never done.

Simple as that. We’re never done changing, not until we die. Not even after we die, probably, because the atoms and molecules that made up US are entangled with each other even after our bodies decompose and return to Earth. They are reborn as something or someone else, which is always part of us in some mysterious way. So even after we die, we continue as part of the dance.

And isn’t that wonderful?

If you’d like to continue the conversation, please leave a comment below. If you’re interested in coaching, I offer a free one-hour consultation. Follow this link for details!