How do YOU define support? February 24, 2011

sup·port (s-pôrt, -prt)  tr.v. sup·port·ed, sup·port·ing, sup·ports

1. To bear the weight of;  hold in position so as to keep from falling, sinking, or slipping
2. To give moral or psychological support, aid, or courage to
3. To be capable of bearing; withstand
4. To keep from weakening or failing; strengthen
5. To provide aid in battle

How we ask for and receive support in times of trouble is a critical piece in our healing and progression towards a more fully and compassionately lived life. Even taking a closer look at how we refuse help provides clues to what we really need if we bother to pay attention. Learning to identify what is helpful in how we want to be taken care of by ourselves and others, is challenging as we tend to either say YES or NO to help without much other thought. Much deeper soul level healing can be achieved by taking time to investigate what we really want and by being brave enough to ask for and accept it.

Facing a world full of challenges that are enough to take the wind out of even Pollyanna’s sails, we all occasionally need the assistance, care and support of the people around us. Our friends and family have perspectives that enable us to gain an alternative viewpoint than the one that clouds our view when we are feeling weak or troubled. Giving ourselves the chance to rest and let other people take over some of the physical work speeds our healing and gets us back on our feet sooner. Accepting the physical and emotional help of people who are not entrenched in whatever our current drama is gives us assistance, perspective and room to breathe — if it is really the sort of help that feeds our soul.

But sometimes being able to talk to someone, or having loved ones who are trying to be helpful by getting things done, is not conducive to us moving through our current troubles. We are supposed to be (and want to be!) grateful for what is offered to us but we don’t pause to analyze if it serves us or if it just makes our “helpers” feel better because they did something.  Sometimes receiving “support” results in us feeling empty, unfulfilled and misunderstood instead of rejuvenated and loved.

We often try so hard to not be “needy” that we often cannot even identify what would even be superficially helpful – mush less what keys would unlock room for genuine healing for us. We are afraid to ask for what we desire because we fear being seen as selfish or ungrateful for what is offered.  But rather than being selfish, effectively utilizing the resources around us shows respect for the people who are trying to be helpful and respect for ourselves as it enables movement towards healing.

How we individually define support will change – sometimes rapidly – based on what is going on internally and externally. Sometimes support may look like having people call us for a chat or coffee date; other times it will mean being left alone for awhile – knowing that someone will check to make sure we haven’t gotten buried under a pile of old magazines after a week or two. Support could look like a bottle of wine or a movie or a gift certificate for a bookstore or some housecleaning. Sometimes support extends beyond what our loved ones can offer and we must accept their limitations and support our own healing by getting professional help.

Often times the hardest thing is simply saying YES to offers of meals, childcare, a ride someplace or household help. While these things may not have been high on our list of things we knew we needed/wanted, the fact that someone else took care of them will enable us to put our attention elsewhere. Set boundaries about times for visits/help, assign someone else to organize mass assistance offers, respond by emails instead of phone calls so that you can control when and how you communicate, make wish lists of things you would like to do/have accomplished/or need.  Most of all: LET THE PEOPLE WHO LOVE YOU SHOW YOU THAT THEY DO. In allowing the people around us to care for  us, we begin to see ourselves through their more compassionate eyes allowing ourselves to heal inside and out.

Many of us are raised to be fiercely independent and it can be an incredibly hard thing to ask for assistance much less to accept offers of help. Whether we are in need physically or emotionally, paying attention to what would help us feel better and asking for that from our loved ones allows them to feel connected to us. Receiving assistance can enable us to dedicate time and energy to the deeper healing that only we can do for ourselves. Rather than seeing us as a burden, people will surprise us with their wiliness to lend a hand, and ear, and open heart. We all go through times of needing to be set back on our feet.  If you simply cannot take for yourself without guilt, pledge to “pay it forward” and accept what is offered with gratitude and humility knowing you will have an opportunity to help someone in the future.

But likewise, support should not be something we ask for, or whine about not getting, because we are too lazy, unwilling or resistant to change to pick ourselves up. We need to clarify our personal definition of support and our motives for claiming need of it in order to accept what is offered in a way that helps us gain strength instead of enabling our difficult situation. We cannot bury our heads in the sand and then cry about how no one cared enough to dig us out. We cannot hold ourselves back from healing and growth because we are scared and then place blame on the people around us that they didn’t do enough for us. We cannot use the fact people are stepping in to help us as an excuse for not stepping up to the plate and taking our turn at bat.

People often think that “support” is like a bra — something that holds you together. Based on this errant belief we may desire support because we want someone else to be in charge or reject it because we think we should be tough and not involve anyone else. While we all may go through a time when we need a friend to help hold us together, support is more like a climbing harness – something to catch us when we fall rather than something that we stay in to keep us from flopping around. It is the backup plan for when things are unpredictable, surrounding us with protection that we have put together for ourselves. Now and then we have put more weight on it in order to make our next move, and sometimes it catch us when we lose strength or the unexpected happens. But it is understood that you can’t keep climbing if you just hangout in it.

Sometimes we claim that we are need of support – or we are angry we are not receiving enough of it – when the reality is that “support” is not what we are really most in need of. One of my best friends was going through a divorce with a someone who claimed he never supported her. The problem wasn’t the lack of support – it was that he held her up so frequently that she no longer had legs of her own to walk on. In his love for her, he allowed her to wallow in her depression, anxiety and self-pity instead of kicking her in the butt. She wanted someone else to take control of her life and for awhile he did, even though he had no way of knowing if that was really right for HER. She cared little about herself and her apathy created barriers to helping herself or receiving real assistance. She was in a hole and wasn’t putting a lot of thought into how to get out herself out – much less how to ask someone to help her find a shovel. She, like all of us sometimes, had to hit bottom to realize it is time to stop hanging in the climbing harness and resume the journey.

Sometimes we simply must fall — it is often at bottom that we suddenly realize how much of ourselves we let go of and how distanced from our hopes and dreams we have gotten.  Hard times give us an opportunity to put some thought into what we really want. We can ask whether the standards we have set for ourselves are good enough – or are too high; if the things we thought brought us joy really do and how we really want to live our lives from this place forward. We can begin to investigate what WE want and need, instead of what we think we need to do or be for other people.

We are not alone in these times….our friends and loved ones are standing in the wings ready to offer a hand once we make the decision that we – and our lives – are worth working on and ultimately saving. This is not about anyone taking over for you for the long term – it is about a lift over a mud puddle-or a chasm-until you get your own wings back. The people who care about us hand us a mirror to see who we have been and the potential of all we really are. They can remind us of what is important – and what is not – providing valuable clues into creating a supportive structure around us that enables us to become the best we can be. But it is not up to them to figure out how to fix things or to save us…we must actively investigate what kind of help will enable us to grow, heal and provide insight into what our next steps must be.

As we take the time to ask ourselves what real support looks like for us we learn more about our own inner life and provide compassionate room for ourselves to heal and incorporate the changes that challenges can bring. We can more effectively take advantage of the generosity of others and use our own experience to better serve our loved ones in the future.  Whether it is an illness, a divorce or other times of trouble, the challenges we face give us an opportunity not only to see how we push through, but how we care for ourselves. Listening to and acting on our own needs – instead of being an act of selfishness – enables us to gain strength to heal and ultimately to give back.

Victim or Survivor? January 17, 2011

I have a cancer survivor friend who has become a victim of the disease.  He has let the diagnosis of several years back claim not only his past, but his future.  Cancer took control of his life without permission, and now even though it is gone, it still rules his world.  In his view his life is ruined and he is perpetually traumatized by all that happened as a result.  The fact that it showed up unannounced “proved” to him how little control he has over things, so why even try? Even when questioned about what he really wants out of life, his attitude is one of “It’s not going to happen so why ask? It just makes it harder to deal with the challenges. I just have to deal with what is in front of me and not expect anything else.”

Survivorship and believing yourself to be victim – or acting as if you are one – are in direct opposition to each other and to life.

This is not just a cancer issue, cancer just happens to be my obvious example.  Survivorship and its impending challenges, joys  and difficulties, happens after financial devastation, unexpected career shifts and  divorce.  Becoming a survivor is a process in which you choose to make decisions that support forward movement instead of wallowing in the events that have drug you down.  It can be an immediate state of mind, it can come long after the event, or it can be an elusive state that is desired but never embodied. Like my friend, we can physically survive an event, but that does not mean that we have re-engaged in living.

The opportunity to be a survivor may be thrust upon us but we have a choice to take it on or ignore it.  We may make it through the series of traumatic events that landed us here, but how whole we emerge from it in depends on us. To be a survivor requires making a choice to take your life into your hands and to own it.

In his book Deep Survival, Laurence Gonzales explores the science and facts behind who survives a traumatic experience and who becomes a victim of it.  Writing primarily about wilderness accidents, he says “psychologists who study survival say that people who are rule followers don’t do as well as those who are of independent mind and spirit.”   (pg85)  He goes on to explore why outdoor adventurers  who have planned thoroughly , are highly trained, experienced and most of all consciously prepared for danger, make terrible deadly decisions that run counter to everything they should have known.

His research shows how some people are so connected to the “plan” that when faced with all evidence pointing to why the plan should change, they continue to push onwards.  They cannot revise their vision of what they want to match their current reality. Rethinking their situation and goals would allow for new avenues of possibility -and survival – but  instead they keep moving forward based on information that is no longer relevant to their current situation.  The mechanism of the mind that keeps saying  that if you just keep looking you will find the trail gets you more and more lost  - the reality is that you are alone in the dark and need to conserve your resources and come up with a new plan.

Our original life plan is full of goals, hopes and dreams …then a major traumatic event interrupts.  We just want to get through it alive and in one piece. For cancer survivors, other people step in during diagnosis and treatment and take control telling you what needs to be done,  keeping  you moving through necessary procedures and boosting  you along emotionally on the river of treatment like a life-raft.   While you are fighting the disease you are focused and have a definite idea of what outcome you want. The path is clear in front of you and there is a definite course of action. The parts of the fight for your life that are uncomfortable are tinged in a rosy glow of purpose.  There is a plan, and, if you are one of the lucky ones, in the end, the plan works and you are disease free. You are surrounded by people who help you along the path and you clearly intend to return to the real world at the end of it and rejoin your well-planned life.

One would think that in living through a life threatening disease this is where the battle ends, but it is only the beginning.  Not preparing for post-trauma survivorship is like climbing to the top of Everest thinking that the real work is done and now “all you have to do” is get back down.  There is great danger in not realizing that the journey home is as equally fraught with risk, and perhaps more so as now that the goal has been met and we surround ourselves in thoughts about returning to the real world.

If you are reading  this, unlike the explorers in Gonzales book,  your  initial “plan” worked out – and you like me,  have survived the initial traumatic event . But we are now entering into a whole different survival adventure that requires of us fresh perspective and new choices. Killing cancer cells, getting the divorce, or spending months without a job was not the battle.  These were only the events that got us to the point of having to show up in the moment and  revise our plans.  Survivorship is what happens AFTER.  Our work as survivors begins when we actively chose to reengage in a different life than we had before  – moving forward instead of staying stuck in the event or in what we used to be.  The airplane has crashed  –   but how we live on the island is actually the piece that is the most important  and the most interesting.

We cannot return to the way things were. We cannot waste our precious time wishing things were otherwise.  We cannot stay stuck in the trauma that we have been through.  In order to survive we must re-create our reality. We must remain flexible and alert to signs of possibility.  We are still in a critical state of action that requires our intention to be clear, just as when we were fighting the battle.

At the end of Deep Survival Gonzales has an appendix called “Rules of Adventure”  in which he lists 12 points that seem to be universal in  “how survivors think and behave in the midst of a difficult situation”.  Some of them include the obvious like keeping calm; others are more unusual like playing and seeing the beauty around you even in the middle of a dire situation.

The last point stands out:  “Never give up – let nothing break your spirit”.

While we are fighting the battle surrounded by support staying on the forward moving track may be relatively easy, but afterwards  - when we really embody survivorship – are  our spirits intact?  As we have had to revise our plans (maybe multiple times) ; now that the world and our lives are different than what we counted on,  are we our best person?  As we deal with all the changes, feel more alone and  people no longer seem as actively supportive as they were when we were in crisis, are we still our own hero?  Have we been able to let go of all that we wanted, and instead adapt to all that is?  Are we still dreaming big and making plans for our new lives instead of wishing that we could return to how it was before?

Survivorship is rising above and beyond what happened to us.  It is about taking the reins and dealing with EVERYTHING that happened to us – especially our actions after situations that were thrust on us and  seem to be beyond our control.  Survivorship  is about looking at where we were and where we are now and choosing to move beyond both. Though it may seem unjust that we are presented with the challenges we face, we are being tested and given an opportunity to rise above.  How far we rise depends on each of us.

( For more information please read: Deep Survival: Who lives, Who Dies and Why, Laurence Gonzales, 2003, W.W.Norton)

Dear Friend….. October 6, 2010

Dear Friend,

You recently asked me, in anguish, if pursing the dream of true love was unrealistic.  You are going through such a hard time and I have thought of you and your question every day. I believe that I told you that following where your heart leads is always worth the trouble…but I wanted to say so much more.

Maybe you, like me, married because you were supposed to when a good man asked you. He was deeply in love with you  — maybe he thought you were the most amazing thing in the world. And you wondered what else should you ever expect of a relationship than to have a man that thinks you are a goddess?  Maybe after a time, after you found out more about yourself, or maybe in the effort to discover what lies beneath your tumultuous surface, you realized that the person he loved was not all that you suspected you were. Was he was willing to do anything but you knew that there was nothing that would change how you feel?  Maybe you felt like you were on a pedestal that you did not want – or feel that you deserved – and  it really felt like a cage to you.  Then came the day you could see the blue sky through the window and you realized that you wanted oh so much more.

Or were you  like me and married because you thought there was no other choice?  Maybe you thought you could not do it alone. Or you didn’t know how strong you really were yet and he scared you into staying. Maybe you stayed because you were afraid that you were nothing without him.  Did  you think that you could change the bad in him because he could also be charming and fun? Were you afraid to leave because by doing so it would show that you were not any good at relationships? Or did you believe that you should stay because you promised, and you should just try harder?  Did you think if you were skinnier, richer, or more beautiful, he would love you more and you would be happy and everything would be fine? Maybe a day came when you realized, like me, that you would rather die than stay, but the way out was full of darkness and difficulty.

Or did you just lay awake at night wondering “what if”?  Was everything in life “okay” but you yearned for AMAZING?   Did you simply know deep down inside that you deserved more? Or did you feel your sparkle start to dim as you settled for a life that was never really what you wanted? .

The day came when you asked me if you were being silly for searching for something more.  And when you asked me, I knew you had already started a journey in which you would find great beauty and sorrow.  You asked “why, if this is the right thing, do I feel so sad?”  And I did not answer.  Because I knew that you cry in sorrow, and in great joy, and maybe the two are intimately mixed right now.

You are not at the beginning of a quest for love, although that is what you think now. You are at the beginning of a great creative adventure. The canvas is wide open, the colors wait to mix and blend, to define and smear, to tell stories of hope, joy, pain and heartache.  There is excitement in the air when you make the leap to finding out what makes your heart sing.  There is terror as well – but it is the roller coaster, nervous laughter type…you chose the ride after watching others laugh and scream and raise their hands in the air while their plummeted down the track.  And you wanted to be like them – fearless.

Ah, but this journey is not about being fearless…..it IS about fear.  The fear that somehow, we will have wasted the time we have.  The fear that we will not know what we were really capable of.  The fear that we will never really know who we are….and ultimately, be loved for all of it and more.

The path to finding true love is not about looking for that in another person, although that may indeed come about. To find true love, you will need to get out your microscope and examine the tiniest details of YOU.  You will get out the dress up clothes and try on every possible combination of selves and will create a huge “THROW AWAY” pile, and a smaller, more beautiful and colorful “KEEP” pile.  You will make new friends, talk, cry, laugh and play your way into creation.  You will discover who you are without anyone else. You will find out that you are messy, or that you really like to get up later than you thought; that you like cheesy romance novels, or that you HATE scrambled eggs.  You will do things you never thought possible and you will stop doing things that you would have sworn were important to you.  You will take long bathes and longer hikes.  You will work harder than you ever thought possible and it will feel effortless because it is for YOU. You will change jobs, locations, friends and clothing. You will feel like you are going kinda crazy and that is GOOD!  Society doesn’t appreciate challenges to their dark suited, big worded serious norm….they call crazy the woman with the flower in her hat and the mismatched bright colored socks who hands out the most wonderful cookies on the street corner in the morning.  Which do you really want to be?

Along the way, while you are loving and exploring that person who is uniquely YOU, maybe someone will come along that appreciates your kind of craziness. The song you are singing will resonate in them but they will think the lyrics are a little different. They will see the triple rainbow in the sky that you see, but you will argue over its colors. They will walk left foot first and you  will walk right foot first, but somehow you manage to make it all work. And, because you know how you like your eggs  - you make theirs scrambled and yours sunnyside up. They will not ask you to be other than who you are. They will not blindly follow your lead. They will challenge you and be hard on you and hold you to a truth that IS you and so much more. You will be their hero, but not their savior. They will still get mad at you and think that your feet stink and get moody and out of sorts and you will realize that you don’t have to fix any of that. You will give them the space to be uniquely themselves – as they give you the space to be uniquely you.

Or maybe, you will not find THE ONE person.  Maybe you will find that you are okay without a partner, and instead surround yourself with friends, family and loved ones of all sorts who are only a phone call, or Facebook message away.  Maybe for awhile you will find relief in not feeling like you have to put someone else’s needs about your own. Maybe you will be free to change selves like you change your underwear. Maybe you will just be glad of the solace to heal the wounds that have surfaced in your life randomly like potholes in the road.

I hope that you, like me, will not come to the realization that you are worth the effort because your life has been threatened. Or because you were surprised by a disease that was trying to kill you as you went about your way doing your best to fit in somewhere. I don’t want you to find out, in the middle of a tragedy, when you most need love and support, that there is none for you when you have given away so much.

And so I say to you, with a huge hug and great love and tears in my eyes that YES love is worth all the trouble. LOVING YOURSELF, more than anyone else. Loving you enough that you  make tough choices. It means that you may sleep on a floor, or spend many nights alone, or eat more Top Ramen than you ever thought possible. You might be begged to come back, you might beg to go back. You might wonder if you did the right thing over and over and over again. It might mean that you have to give up some of what made you so falsely comfortable.  It might mean that you learn to fight for what is yours or to fight for a life you weren’t sure was ever really worth the bother.  And yes, it is worth it.  YOU are worth it.

Dream big.  Believe that all things are possible. Know that you are capable of so much more than you ever thought. You are far stronger than you know. You are surrounded by people who love you , who have been waiting for you to come out of your shell. Who will lend a hand (or a Kleenex) or a shoulder or a word of encouragement. You are never alone. There is a bottom to the deep deep ocean and there is beautiful, amazing and totally unique knowledge that comes from having seen what is there. Wake each morning with great curiosity about the day instead of dread. Forgive yourself for needing to be selfish. And be compassionate as you make mistakes.  Treat yourself as if you were your best friend. OPEN, OPEN, OPEN….You cannot receive a gift with closed hands. Remember that everyone around you possesses a piece of The Truth…and listen for it.  And maybe you, like me will start to see the possibility of all that we can be. Maybe you – like me -will find a special person, who marches to their own bizarre little drummer, to walk this rutted path with you.  Maybe you, like me will find that you are surrounded by people who have always known who you are and were just waiting for you to figure it out for yourself.  And maybe you will see that I am one of them.

With much love,

Me