"You need to change how you cope with transition."
This is what one of our supervisors told me as we were readying to leave the field. At first I was taken aback and more than a little bit insulted. How dare she tell me that I don't cope well with transition. The nerve!
But the truth was I didn't cope well with transition. In fact, I didn't cope. I hid, buried my head, cried under the covers, put off the packing, escaped the cleaning, and pretty much just distanced myself as much as I could from the process. And it was still painful. And change still happened. Putting up a fight and refusing to participate just made the transition worse, and left me feeling lost and alone.
So with those words from my supervisor still ringing (and stinging) in my ears, I returned to the States and began our year(s) of transition looking for a different perspective.
I'm hoping that in this next week I can share with you some of the ways I've learnt to cope with transition. No big surprise here, but the most ready and obvious coping mechanism for all things hard and strange is to really, truly, purposefully live. Though that sounds all nice and hokey, there are some tangible, accessible, and daily things anyone can do to "live with intention while permanently living in transition."
At least, that's what I'm counting on.
No comments:
Post a Comment