This morning, I opened my notebook for the first time in more than two weeks, a lapse created by the intensity of preparing for a move to a new apartment, then living among the boxes as we tried to make sense of fitting ourselves and our lives into a smaller space once again. My pen felt awkward in my hand, and for a few minutes, I wrote aimlessly, without, it seemed, direction or meaningful content, before I paused, the wrote, I have missed my routine of writing–the space and quiet of solitude, hearing myself think, sorting out what I feel and stumbling in to a new insight or discovery.
When our lives are in upheaval, no matter the precipitating event, it’s not uncommon that the routines or daily rituals that we find calming and that help keep us centered, fall by the wayside. Whether cancer or other serious health issues, job loss, aging and retirement or, as we have done in the past week, changing residences, we’re thrown off-balance, into a maelstrom of confusion, stunned, ill-prepared and questioning ourselves and our lives. As one poet put it, it’s a bit like living atop a fault line…
passing underneath your living room:
A place in which your life is lived in meeting
and in separating, wondering
and telling, unaware that just beneath
you is the unseen seam of great plates
that strain through time? And that your life,
already spilling over the brim, could be invaded,
sent off in a new direction, turned
aside by forces you were warned about
but not prepared for?
(From: “Fault Line” by Robert Walsh, In: Noisy Stones: A Meditation Manual, 1992)
Our moves, first from California back to Canada just one year ago, and now to a more convenient but somewhat smaller apartment in Toronto, have been welcomed, yet more challenging than either my husband or I anticipated. It’s been much more than simply changing domiciles. It’s the realization, coupled with the necessary downsizing, letting go of old mementos and boxes of belongings that tell the stories of our younger and different lives, that we are growing older, just as our parents did before us.
Like it or not, life for all of us keeps changing, and many times the changes are ones we don’t expect or underestimate the impact they have on us. I ended my morning write, briefly describing what turned into an ordeal of moving, even though it was only nine minutes from our old apartment, writing Life continues to change and requires that we, too, adapt. Change is the human experience.” It’s true for all of us. We think we’ve “arrived,” settled into a place, a career, and then something unexpected happens. I recall Joan Didion’s first words her memoir of loss and life change, “Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends. ― In: The Year of Magical Thinking, 2007
Life, whether we like it or not, hands us events we have little or no control over: life-threatening illness, significant loss, tragedy, suffering, aging. As sociologist and cancer survivor Arthur Frank stated, “…by the time we have lived through it, we are living differently” (from: At the Will of the Body, 1991). Who we are, truly, may become more apparent how we choose to deal with our illness or loss. This is what makes us uniquely human–our spirit, determination, resilience—and they are never more apparent than when we are faced with the unexpected, even the inevitability of our lives changing.
Any life threatening illness, significant loss or tragedy changes us. As Professor Emeritus of Sociology (U. of Calgary) and cancer survivor Arthur Frank stated, “…by the time we have lived through it, we are living differently” (in At the Will of the Body, 1991). Who we are, truly, may become more apparent in how we choose to deal with the unexpected and inevitable changes we experience. This is what makes us uniquely human–our spirit, determination, resilience—and they are never more apparent than when illness or loss strips all pretenses away.
Life will sometimes wallop us, brings us to our knees, to tears, and yet it is our greatest teacher too. It says, “Listen up,” and teaches us something about ourselves. All we know for certain is that life will change again–and again. We will be affected, perhaps multiple times, by a triggering event, whether tragedy, illness, empty nests, unimaginable loss or awakening to the reality that we are moving toward the winter of our lives. It is the realization Linda Pastan describes in her poem, “Elegy:”
Our final dogwood leans
over the forest floor…
It’s a relic
of the days when dogwoods
flourished…
When I took for granted
that the world would remain
as it was, and I
would remain with it.
(In: Insomnia, 2015)
We all can be lulled into taking life for granted…that the world would remain/as it was, and I/would remain with it. No matter what the actual event may be that brings us to our knees, we are forced to acknowledge and accept that our lives will change, not once, but many times.
How can you navigate life’s changes more successfully? Transition has been written extensively about, and there are things you can do to lessen the upheaval and stress that comes with it. Carol Berman, MD, writing in The Huffington Post, offers a few common sense suggestions for navigating through life transition and change:
- Instead of being passive, try being active, anticipating outcomes, strategies you can employ to make the process of change better.
- Take the time to acknowledge the past, the present, and what you believe is the future.
- If you experience strong emotions, such as anger or sadness, acknowledge them.Don’t stuff them down deep inside. Our emotions are pathways to a deeper and intuitive part of ourselves.
- Breaking your transition into smaller steps can help you deal better with them. When a major change is broken down in this way, it is not so overwhelming.
- Reinforce and celebrate the positive steps you take towards navigating your transition.Give yourself a pat on the back!
- Learn what a particular change or transition may mean for you.There are many resources on the major life events that affect our lives, whether cancer, parenting, retirement, job loss or many others. Read, talk to others who’ve experienced what you are going through. It can help.
- Reframe what change is to you. Change your perspective. Life happens, and it changes constantly. If you don’t like what’s happening to you now or even if you do, the one certainty we all have is that it will change.
It’s taken me much longer to write a post this morning after a two week hiatus, and it was (I’ll admit) difficult for my perfectionist self to refer you, my readers, to the archived and previously published posts while my husband and I were consumed by our moving process the second year in a row. The good news is that the entire experience forced me to be a little more self-forgiving, to slow down and deal with the mountain of details and boxes that cluttered up my life for the past many days. Change may be unsettling, but it is, after all, a great teacher if we let ourselves learn from it. In the end, we discover that the resources for navigating through the ups and downs of life reside in us– not always easy, but necessary. I turn to a favorite passage from the poet Wendell Berry as a reminder:
…And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye
clear. What we need is here.
(From: “The Wild Geese,” In: Selected Poems of Wendell Berry, 1998)
Writing Suggestion:
- Before you write a longer piece, brainstorm: List the different/most memorable events that triggered significant life change for you, e.g., breast cancer, father’s death, loss of a dear friend, losing house to fire (earthquake, flooding, etc.)… Then, without spending too much time on each, start a another list, only this time, for each event, complete two sentences: “Before _____________, I was____________. After _______________ I was _____________.
- From your list, choose the change/event that was most difficult for you to experience. Tell its story. What was the triggering event? How did you react? What were the emotions you experienced? How did you navigate through the change? What or who helped? What hindered? What did you learn?