For those of you who have Facebook, you may have seen my FB Live Video last week…in my jammies, on top of a mountain, with bedhead, no makeup and one nasty virus. I’m out here in Colorado, getting all messy in “Square One”…again. For those who are wondering what Square One is, I will elaborate in a moment. I’m here, possibly seeming to overshare, but I know part of what I’m here to do on this earth is help. To help fabulous women worldwide navigate through the hard stuff and to introduce them to the most joyful journeys so that they can connect to their most phenomenal selves to do the important work they are meant to do in this world. You or someone you know may be in need of the support, the joy or both. The joy is truly in the journey…even when it’s hard.
Finding Ourselves (Myself) in Square 1
You see, lately I’ve been watching FB posts change from those adorable videos of puppies falling asleep in their food bowl to vile and venomous exchanges that have caused friends and even family to hit the UNFRIEND button. I’ve been having conversations from women all around this globe, and I know that women everywhere have been dealing with some HARD stuff. The world has felt crazy and scary. There have been significant losses. Others have become overwhelmed with fear and anxiety about what their future holds. There has been pain and struggle and thoughts of “WTF just happened to my world?”
Square One is part of a Cycle of Change that we ALL experience, usually numerous times while we are here on this earth. Change happens in two ways…we choose it or we get thrown into it – the latter being like a rag-doll that gets picked up and then slammed head first into the side of a barn by a tornado. Even if we choose it, change can still feel disorienting, confusing, unnerving as we navigate our way through the new territory. Not chosen, Square One can be downright terrifying and immobilizing. Square One is like that because it’s all about letting go of what we know, what we have been accustomed to and that can be very unsettling and even painful. Even if we believe what we are moving toward is better than what we’re leaving behind, we can’t fully envision it yet, and that can be scary.
Learning that there are four Squares in the Cycle of Change was extremely helpful to me because then I knew what to expect…and believe me, I like knowing what to expect. I am a planner. There is comfort in knowing that _____. I thought it was also pretty awesome to learn there is a motto associated which each stage, Square One being:
“I don’t know what the hell is going on…and that’s okay.”
No matter what struggle we go through, it helps to know it’s normal to feel disoriented, scared and not have answers. It also helps to know that in each stage there are specific things we can do that not only make these experiences more tolerable but also help us move through them so we don’t get stuck wandering aimlessly around in the pain and mess of Square One forever.
I will spare you the details but my most recent experience with Square One began the evening of January 16th, MLK Day. Let’s just say, for the unforeseeable future, that on every MLK Day this memory will be branded on my brain. I was SO not choosing this and was not prepared at all for what came my way. I’d JUST come out of Square One after having lost one of my lifelong BFF’s to a wretched liver disease two weeks before Christmas. I will also spare you my response to the news, albeit to say it started with “what the..” and ended with a big UCK.
It was a moment that would have left me mirroring Julia Robert’s on-the-bathroom-floor scene in Liz Gilbert’s “Eat, Pray, Love” if I hadn’t been sitting in a restaurant (and sadly, there was no Javier Bardem in my version of this movie). Thankfully, something kicked in and instead of pitching myself out of the booth and onto the restaurant floor, I remained calm and together, at least until the next day, then the floods came and I am sure my neighbors could hear me wailing through the bricks and across the garden.
My Journey Through Square 1
But the Universe being so very loving and abundant, I was gifted a friend’s empty cabin on a lake in Michigan for “as long as I needed it”. I piled Marvin the basset (and way too much “stuff”) in the car and headed north. For a week, I was in complete silence and snow; no TV, no radio, no computer, no Facebook, no phone calls. The first two days, all I did was pretty much sleep wherever I collapsed, which was mostly on the couch. I would wake to look at the frozen lake and the changing color of the sky and go back to sleep. Every cell in my body was exhausted and depleted and that was all I could muster. By day 3, still in my pajamas, I bundled up and put on my boots and took Marvin for a walk. Who knew bassets loved snow? He was so excited he almost fell off the sea wall (basset hounds, I’ve learned, have very poor sense of proprioception, or their bodies in space). After defrosting from our little outing, I made a cup of tea and read, and wrote in my journal, cried and then slept some more. The next day, I woke up to a beautiful sunrise over the frosty white lake. I sat on a pillow in front of the glass doors and meditated on the snow and the peace that I felt in all that silent space. I actually felt grateful. Not for what had happened but for how the Universe was taking care of me. My heart began to thaw. I hadn’t even realized it had frozen solid from all the sadness and hurt of the past months. It was such a welcome feeling to actually experience the opening of my heart; that softness and warmth…I hadn’t even realized it had gone. I’d just been getting through each day. By the 5th day, I picked up my magazines that I’d brought for collaging, and without thinking too much about it, began tearing out images and words that delighted and “spoke” to me. I had brought my art journal and I spent that entire day cutting, gluing, painting, writing; using art to make sense of what had happened and letting out all the pain that had led to this need to cocoon. I began to feel grateful even for what had thrown me into Square 1 because I realized that there was something I’d been avoiding dealing with for years and this was going to make me deal with it.
I would no longer be sitting on the fence in this part of my life. By Day 6, I was ready to come back and face my life. I no longer felt victimized and was beginning to sense the direction my soul wanted me to follow. While I still didn’t have the answers or know how things would ultimately turn out, I felt ready and able to take the next steps, to move into the next stages of the Change Cycle. I began the process of packing up the house and preparing for the long drive back to Cincinnati.
When in Square One, this is a time for melting down. Like a caterpillar cocooning, it may feel like the end of the world, but in that melting down, we are reforming and becoming something we could never before imagine. If we don’t allow ourselves to melt down, instead repressing or pushing away the pain, it will pop back up to greet us later, much like whack-a-mole…usually at a most inconvenient time like when all the relatives are gathered around the table for a festive family dinner and one snarky comment from Uncle Bob about your side dish sends you into a tizzy. Bob never knew what hit him – and it so wasn’t about the side dish.
So I’ve learned, it’s better to just let it happen and make space for it.
We can’t all just take off for the snows of Michigan, I get that. There have been many times in my life when I didn’t have that luxury. We can still do Square One without totally retreating to the wild. Here’s how you do it:
How to Work Through Square One
Do ONLY the essentials. Only those things you MUST do to get by and nothing more. If you can take time off, do that. If you can’t, go to work, but then come home and do nothing more. Put in “the basics” at work…you don’t have to be stellar right now.
Enlist your supports. Yes, I know that can be hard to do. We don’t want to put anyone OUT, create extra worry for anyone else, we may feel shame about the situation or believe that strong women shouldn’t need help. But sister, I’m here to tell you, if you don’t let someone help you carry the load for a little bit, you will be struggling for a LOT longer. Think about it this way, if your friends were going through something really hard and they didn’t ask for your support, how would you feel? You wouldn’t be happy with them would you? Because we WANT to be there for our friends and loved ones when they need us. Don’t take that away from your friends to be there for you. You will always have the opportunity to return the favor and you know it.
Allow yourself to do what you need without judgment. Feel like sleeping all day? Feel like crying but are afraid once you start you won’t stop? Believe me, our bodies are pretty amazing when we actually listen to them. We won’t sleep for a month or not be able to stop crying. I’ve done this enough and supported women through the same process to KNOW that we do get out of bed again, and the tears DO stop. If we allow what we need instead of fighting it, we heal quicker.
Give yourself the good stuff. Feed yourself what you crave. If you feel like eating ice cream, eat ice cream. I am not saying eat a gallon in a sitting because that would not be really listening to what your body is asking for but rather what your emotions want. And our desire with emotions is often to want to numb. But, if we get very still and ask our bodies what it most craves and then we allow ourselves to give it what it really asks for, slowly and intentionally, we won’t inhale a box of Krispy Kreme while standing at the pantry door. We will give ourselves what we need. And if you start out eating 7 donuts in an emotional flurry, don’t judge or punish. Just become aware and slow yourself down. Realize that from peace and self-compassion we can hear our bodies asking for other kinds of comfort foods that nourish both our body and soul. And food isn’t the only good stuff we can give ourselves. Get a massage, Reiki, or an energy session (if you are on a tight budget, contact a training program nearby…students are always looking to gain experience, providing their services for free or significantly reduced rates). Light scented candles, wrap yourself in your softest blanket, use delicious smelling shower gel, take a long hot shower or bath and follow up with some luxurious lotion. (I highly recommend creating a SOS Kit for Hard Days…cover an old box with pretty paper, put in your favorite colored tissue paper and fill with goodies that you will save for just this occasion. You will thank yourself later,)
Wrap yourself in love and self-compassion. For me, this often involves soft, thick blankets, a good smelling candle, maybe my favorite music or a favorite movie…or an entire day of favorite movies. Again, we are so used to our lizard brains telling us that we must be productive that we scare ourselves silly that if we follow our instincts we will be lost in HGTV forever. We won’t. Eventually, we will be ready to move on.
Observe your thoughts. This is really important because this is what can make the difference between moving through change and getting hijacked and stuck. The very old and reptilian part of our brains were designed to keep us safe in danger. But since there are no sabertooth tigers lurking around these days, this part of our brain tends to create other possible dangers…and it does this through thoughts that come into our head such as, “you are just being lazy” or “just get over it, otherwise people will think you are weak” or “you can’t impose on your friends, they have their own problems; don’t be so selfish”. But these thoughts aren’t the truth. How do we know? One of the best ways I’ve found to test my beliefs is to see if they hold true to “the love test.” I ask myself, if someone that I love more than ANYTHING told me this was their belief, would I tell them it was true? Would I say, “you’re so right, Shari, you are being totally lazy, weak, or selfish?” (Occasionally, I will run across women who will actually answer yes to that and in those cases, we have to look at where in their life they learned that beating up on themselves was the way to motivate). With our thoughts, we can choose to not listen to them. We can notice them, as if we are observers, watching them come into our mind. And instead of attaching to them and focusing on them (remember the adage, “that which you focus on grows”), we can simply observe them and say, “hmmm. that’s interesting. I wonder where that is coming from?” You can choose to figure that out (see Byron Katie’s “The Work”) or play the game, “What if I didn’t believe this, even for a few seconds?” which is often immensely freeing.
Allow yourself to BE. Meditate (or if you’re like me, sit on the floor or ground and just stare at something beautiful), listen to guided meditations or music that soothes your soul…whether that be classical, jazz, pop; allow your body to move with the music or go for a walk in nature; take a long shower or bath; journal, paint, read. Practice listening to your breath and following your pulse. When in square 1, reach out for emotional support. Even though I’m a coach and a therapist, when I’m in square 1, I pretty much always reach out to one of my coaches to hold space for me; to be that objective and comforting voice (yes, I have my own coaches and I am grateful to the moon that I learned early on that I didn’t have to do the hard stuff alone or figure it out by myself…working with another facilitates my movement through pain and hard times SO much faster and easier, plus I don’t feel alone which is one of the toughest things about being in square 1).
The last thing to remember, is that in this life, we go in and out of the four parts of the Change Cycle many times. I’ve had clients who have told me, “I can’t wait to get out of square 1!” as if they intended to never experience THAT again. The good news about when we allow ourselves to go THROUGH it rather than resisting it (remember, “what we resist, persists”), each subsequent time we go into square 1, we realize that we do it easier and more quickly than before. We have learned to listen to our deepest and truest self and by doing so, we heal and move on.
These days, when I am needing to take a break (maybe not go all the way to Michigan), I have an awesome door hanger that says “Do Not Disturb: Phenomenal Woman Taking A Break”. This works really well for letting those around me know that I’m taking some much needed time – even if it’s just 15 minutes to take some deep breaths. If you’d like one of these, just message me here and I’ll gift you one!
Sending you huge hugs and great love for whatever you have been or are facing. You are NOT alone.
Love,
Ann
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