And so I type...
I've never been good with change, but as the saying goes, it is the only constant. This has been a year of huge life changes all rolled together: family, health, employment, location, and lifestyle. Bam! As a family we are still settling after the shock of it all and are in a period of adjustment, learning who we are now that our clothes of familiarity have been stripped away.
Everyone has their own way of dealing with change. Some people (like my husband) prefer to just start where they are and keep moving forward, leaving the past behind. Although I respect and admire this strategy, I am not one of these people. The anxiety that accompanies change sends me into an uneasy state of not knowing; my mind runs through constant scenarios (often negative) of an uncertain future. If I don't recognize and halt the spiral of anxiety, I become deeply unhappy. I stop caring for myself, stop filling my emotional well, and stop creating. I lose my equilibrium of self. Usually (and thankfully) big changes in my life have happened one at a time and even when they have come in small clusters I can clear the emotional and cognitive turbidity after a bit of quiet reflective time and journaling. But there hasn't been time for that this year. It has been a year of trying to rise above, to get through the day and do our best to meet everyone's immediate needs -- survival mode. I'm not going to share the details, because everyone has life changes and challenges they are dealing with, but the past six months have definitely wreaked havoc on our entire family. It is a time we are eager to put behind us. Fortunately, although there is still much that is uncertain, we have currently reached a plateau of relative calm. I can finally take a breath and start the process of resetting myself. As I was constructing this website and delving into the past, searching for examples of published work, I found an article I wrote in 2012 for Tiny Buddha - "Learning to Embrace Change as Opportunity, Not Loss." I can't help but chuckle at the difference in gravity between the changes I describe in the article and what we are currently experiencing. What I wrote about now seems so trivial (although I need to remember that everything is relative). Despite the differing situations, the insights I shared about re-framing change are definitely things I need to remember now. Somewhere in the recent chaos and exhaustion I forgot my own advice. Once I re-frame some of our recent changes as opportunity, I can feel the anxiety lessen. I remember what I am grateful for -- all of the lucky things that have happened amidst the challenges. The gratitude jar is back on the counter and I am slowly tapping into what brings me joy. Through the uncertain haze I see the outer edges of goals starting to take on definition. We all have different ways of dealing with life. In my case, now more than ever, looking back to the past is helping me to move forward.
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Kelly McQuillan
Musings on creativity, productivity, and how to juggle it all with family life... Archives
December 2019
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