About Turn!
At school in South Africa, I was part of the drill team for a year. We would march, throw batons in the air, and shout out commands. While I have very little other memory of it, much less knowing why we marched in the first place (us not having a football team to support), a command came to mind when I thought of writing this story: “About Turn!”
It was a signal that we were about to stop in our tracks, step 1-2-3-4, and make a turn to face the opposite direction. My kids would say, “did a full 180” after a popular song by Dua Lipa, but either way, it’s this feeling of a complete change of direction that I believe we’re experiencing in this current season.
We were all marching full speed towards something, who knows what, but boy were we determined.
We were all marching full speed towards something, who knows what, but boy were we determined. Carpooling here, flying there, meeting here, vacationing there. We complained that life was too busy as we sat on our phones scheduling the next activity. Coffee here, lunch there, dinner at ours, birthday party at yours. Life was full. And connected. And, somehow, disconnected too.
The COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan, China was first just a story about other people in other places. We were too busy to take notice, too far from the impact to be concerned, and too disconnected from the world at large to bother thinking how it might affect us. About turn! All of a sudden, it became our story and will probably be one that is told for generations to come. In fact, my youngest daughter is writing a diary, Anne Frank style, and I’m not discouraging her. It’s unfathomable that this virus has made the world stop in its tracks, step 1-2-3-4, and rethink life completely.
It’s unfathomable that this virus has made the world stop in its tracks, step 1-2-3-4, and rethink life completely.
Take yesterday for example. I woke up without needing to make school lunches, did my boot camp workout via Zoom in my living room, watched my daughter do her first virtual ballet lesson, and dialed in to a meeting with 50 other people staring back at me from my computer screen. All without leaving my home once. Now that’s a change.
As a transition coach, I have a lot to say about change. I am married and have 3 children (which changes things). I have moved countries, changed careers, and come to terms with the changes that occur after someone you love dies. Change is the one thing that is constant in our lives - sometimes we choose it and sometimes it happens to us. Sometimes we expect it and at other times, like our current global situation, it surprises us in sudden and alarming ways. It forces us to stop and pay attention.
Change is the one thing that is constant in our lives - sometimes we choose it and sometimes it happens to us.
What we often forget in the flurry of change and all the external adaptions we need to make, are the internal changes occurring within. This is what we call transition: the inner psychological re-orientation that allows our hearts and minds to process the outward changes. And it’s this that I want to address today.
Externally, we are having to adapt to changes in our work, our social lives, and even in our activities of daily living. School has ended, our routines have been upended, our freedoms curtailed, and our sense of normalcy derailed. There are several endings we are having to come to terms with and with every ending there is loss. Loss of our world as it was, loss of relationships, loss of income, loss of structure, or loss of freedom to name few. Coming to terms with these losses is admitting that they are real and need to be named if we have any hope of moving through them. And how do we do that? By grieving them.
Grief is not the first feeling we think of as we move through our days in quarantine. Frustration, yes. Anxiety, perhaps. Yet, I hazard to guess that if we peel back the layers of our mad and bad, we’ll find sad. Sad about all the things we’ve lost in this change and perhaps even a hopelessness not knowing what to do about it. So how do we grieve these losses you ask?
Give yourself permission to grieve: Don’t undermine the loss by comparing it to someone else’s. Whilst there might be people worse off than you, to grieve your own loss is to acknowledge that it exists and to sit in that feeling until it passes. Avoiding it has the opposite effect as it hangs in your peripheral consciousness and feels large and inaccessible.
Give yourself time to process the loss: We all process things at different speeds and whilst I’m not recommending wallowing in it, allow yourself time to think about what this loss means to you, what other underlying fears it brings up, or how you’ll have to adapt to it.
Give and receive comfort: Share your losses with someone who listens well and who will offer comfort instead of encouragement for your loss. None of us wants to hear, “Cheer up, it’ll get better,” until we’ve first heard a message of empathy: “I hear you, this is hard, let me sit with you in this.” Once you’ve received comfort, freely give it to those who need it, too.
In the writing of these losses lies the beginning of your journey of introspection.
You may have guessed that before we go any further, my recommendation for you is to stop reading, grab a journal, and list your losses big or small. Significant or seemingly insignificant. I believe that in the writing of these losses lies the beginning of your journey of introspection. The world has made its about turn, your body has been forced to follow, now it lies within you to guide your spirit and soul through this transition.