best transition ever: grandparenting
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with Natalie caine


Let’s Try Again

September 13, 2014 | by Natalie Caine | No Comments

Sky_n_FieldTransitions can bring forward your worst and best parts of you.  What helps is to EXPECT BOTH.

At one of my presentations, a woman stood and asked, “I don’t know why I get so angry quickly. It is embarrassing and I just can’t seem to stop myself.”  She bravely shared more about her current change. The details aren’t that important. What is valuable is she was in over load.  What she came to discover that day of sharing was that her anger was her automatic response. She hadn’t learned, safely, to be vulnerable. Under her quick anger were hidden tears. She figured this out herself partially because she felt safe and because she heard other people sharing and felt like it was OK for her to speak as well. She felt a common thread and not like the odd woman in the room.

Another younger woman shared that she likes to have an outline in her head before she starts writing but these days, nothing is helping her get the words on paper.  Her inner critic froze her flow.  “You just write boring words and you go on and on.”  She listened too often to that critical voice, which fed another part of her that thought success would only come if she planned it in her head first. Plans make it better, is what she kept hearing in her sweet head.

For support and fun, I suggested each of us take five minutes to write, right now, starting with these words, “in the midst of….” I wanted this woman to feel supported and hear how it was for others to spontaneously write.  When some stood to read and share, responses were funny, tearful, blank, surprised, “in the midst of the chicken soup bubbling on the stove, I answered the phone and dashed out the door because the store clerk called to say they were closing in fifteen minutes and I hadn’t picked up the ring.”  I asked if that was fiction or non-fiction and she said, “I had no idea I was going to write that and I made the whole thing up.  So fun for me, she said.  I never just make things up.”   I told the writer she could email me on Monday, her first three lines and I would add to them, just for some creative juice.  She did.

“I have no idea what I want to do with my life now that I am not needed as much as Mom.”  She was the last to share and told us it took her courage to tell people she was clueless about what was next for her.  I asked how people view her, “they think I am such a go getter and pulled together.”  “Are you,” I asked.  “Well, NO, she easily said, and her tears fell.  What she discovered was yes she is a go getter and pulled together and she is also immobile and confused.  During this transition, the go getter and pulled together part of her is unavailable right now.  GOOD news is the part of her that has been waiting to be the opposite, has emerged.  The struggle has been that she judges this new, unfamiliar part.  When you can hold OPPOSITES, you open more windows to fresh ideas.

Let’s try again and again, to see beyond our SHOULD and AUTOMATIC responses to who we are and who we are not.  Open to POSSIBILITIES that you don’t have to struggle to discover and you do allow being visible.   Maybe ask for a night dream.

Take good care,
Natalie

Natalie Caine M.A.

Life In Transition, What’s Next?
Empty Nest Support Services
(800) 446-3310 or (310) 454-0040
Los Angeles

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