How are you coping?
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This month I read a new book and have reacquainted myself with a past favorite. The main purpose of today’s blog is to share those two resources with you, as I have found them deeply helpful in reconciling a fundamental contradiction that exists in my work as a transitions specialist. The time between what was and what will be is one of great learning, activity, exploration, and experimentation. And, transitions are a time for retreating, reflection and rest. I’m realizing that this polarity presents a dynamic tension that embraces the spectrum of ways in which people are coping during COVID.
I’m noticing that three dominant narratives for ‘coping’ have started to emerge and converge.
1) Meaning making. COVID has to be happening for a reason. “If we have to live through this, then we’d better learn something from it and come out better on the other side.” “If it hadn’t been for COVID, I would never have...” “COVID has reminded me how much I …” For meaning makers (and I am generalizing of course) living through the time of COVID is to some degree distinct from ordinary existence, an unusual window of time to leverage. They may generatate enough energy to externalize their learnings and even take action to make lasting changes in their lives. Is this you?
2) It’s meaningless. Living through the time of COVID is just part of the ebb and flow of life. It’s totally random. “It is what it is”. “I’m just taking one day at a time.” “It’s out of my control.” These people may turn inwards, adapting their behaviors and daily actions in small ways to manage. They may step back, slow down, reflect. Is this you?
3) That both 1 and 2 are true, valid, and helpful. One day you are energized, generating plans and ideas, and the next day you are in bed with little or no motivation to get out of it. Is this you?
What’s unfortunate is that society is much more likely to notice, accept and reward the meaning makers. ‘Good for you!” We label this behavior as resilient, courageous, strong. And don’t get me wrong, it is all of those things. However, we are much less likely to be comfortable, let alone celebrate, the need or choice to retreat. We don’t live in a culture where inviting grief and sadness in is accepted as necessary and productive.
My first resource suggestion is the work of Pauline Boss, author of Ambiguous Loss – Learning to live with unresolved grief. I first heard her interviewed by On Being host Krista Tippett in 2016 in an episode called “Navigating Loss without Closure”. This groundbreaking work named the experience of grieving when a loved one is not dead but missing, or absent through an illness such as dementia, or alive but no longer in your life, like a former spouse, or estranged sibling. Under these circumstances, we are denied the opportunity to resolve the loss by performing the traditional rituals. Instead, sufferers of a missing loved one for example live with the ambiguity of ‘they might come back, or they might not.’
(In the West) we don’t like suffering. It’s a more Eastern idea that suffering is part of life. Our idea is that suffering is something you should get over… or fix it or find some solution for it… But here’s the crux: Now and then, there’s a problem that has no solution. Now and then, there are problems that don’t have a perfect fix. And then this idea of holding two opposing ideas in your mind at the same time (they might come back and they might not) is very useful for stress reduction. (Boss)
In regard to coping with COVID, life might return to the way it was, and it might not. We might finally be able to visit family in the summer, and we might not. Yes, it’s incredible that a vaccine was generated so quickly, but we know that the vaccine is not a cure. There is no known solution. Meanwhile, the losses, in every sense of the word, are piling up and we are grieving while coping.
I am ultimately a meaning maker but this past year I learned to put my armor down, (thanks Brene Brown) finally registering that my self-worth is not predicated on how busy or stressed I am. When my job ended unexpectedly and painfully pre-COVID, I made some travel plans (which never happened) with the intent of returning to launch an active job search in the summer of 2020. If it weren’t for COVID, LJN Advisory, my coaching and consulting firm would not have had the time to take root, to render some results from my months of networking and marketing. To be around long enough for it to look more like a hard turn rather than a temporary plug in my career.
AND, If it weren’t for COVID, I would never have allotted 10 months to rest, reflect, to take the time to deeply consider what I wanted and needed. I could easily have rushed back to what felt familiar and safe. I had plenty of days when I didn’t open my computer, felt the loss of my security and identity keenly, and struggled with motivation. I had a steadily ascending career trajectory for nearly 20 years. How am I here? How is this my life? It made no sense, but in my heart, I knew that sitting with that truth was part of my coping.
If something is nonsensical, totally without logic, without meaning, as many of these terrible events are, then I think we have to leave it there. But I think we have to label it as “It’s meaningless.” I can live with something meaningless, someone might say, but what I’ve found is, as long as I have something else in my life that is meaningful. (Boss)
The second resource, Wintering – The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by English author Katherine May, has kind of blown my mind to be honest. You know that experience when you feel that a book was written for you and that you happened to stumble upon it at exactly the time you needed it? Again, I first listened to May interviewed by Krista Tippett in January. I ordered the book which I devoured in a single sitting.
May focuses on how treating the space between two worlds as a time of nourishment is absolutely essential to our human experience. She defines Wintering as “A season in the cold… A fallow period in life when you’re cut off from the world, feeling rejected, sidelined, blocked from progress, or cast into the role of outsider.” May reminds us that most animals in seasonal countries prepare for several months for the onset of winter, for an extended period of darkness and cold when resources are scant. Humans don’t just lack preparation for winter, we fight to keep it at bay, chasing the sun and worrying that we will be seen differently or even weak if we show how lost, sad and unmotivated we are.
In our relentlessly busy contemporary world, we are forever trying to defer the onset of winter… An occasional sharp wintering would do us good. We must stop believing that these times in our lives are somehow silly, a failure of nerve, a lack of willpower. We must stop trying to dispose of them. They are real, and they are asking something of us. We must learn to invite the winter in. We may never choose to winter, but we can choose how.
And here in this final quote from May, is our polarity again, the value of holding up and living with two seemingly opposing truths.
In our winter, a transformation happened. We read and worked and problem-solved and found new solutions. We changed our focus away from pushing through with normal life and towards making a new one. When everything is broken, everything is also up for grabs. That’s the gift of winter. Change will happen in its wake whether we like it or not. We come out of it wearing a different coat.
I think it was Pauline Boss who said that no matter how you are choosing to cope, the most important question to ask yourself is “What are you learning about yourself and what you need?” The simple power of this question is at the heart of both women’s work. I hope you find these two interviews as revelatory and comforting as I did. If so, pass them on to your loved ones.