Four months ago, I began to fiercely protect the sanctuary of my being space. Yes, it was 9 months ago that I left my job to set out on this path to being. But for the first 2 months, I was spending the summer with my kids. Then, what being looked like to me was being in the company of others…friends who are also colleagues in the field of adult development. We’re an international crew, so this takes a virtual form most of the time. My calendar was filled with zoom video chats. My husband would say I was the busiest non-working person he knew.
Somewhere around November, I began to realize that what I was pretending was “being” was actually a whole bunch of doing, just in a different form. I wasn’t getting to the hard work of leaving my schedule open, not having those relational boosts to my ego, allowing the quiet…the quiet that at times felt deafening as I attempted to listen for what would make my soul sing. I also began to notice that there were things that I suddenly knew (remembered?) my heart desired – like writing my book – that I was too scheduled to devote time to. I began to become fiercely protective of me, of the luxury of this opportunity to discover me, of the nourishing space that held me in the midst of my joy when I was in flow and my fear when I was listless and uncertain. I called this space my cocoon. As, I began to clear my calendar, I told people I was cocooning. My soliloquy about cocooning came with choreography, as I would sweep my arms out and then in toward my heart as I bowed my head and came into myself.
Last weekend, my friend and colleague in the adult development space, Gideon, messaged me about my experience with group fallback. I immediately assumed he was designing a program for his executive coaching clients and offered my full technical expertise in return. When I asked what prompted his question, he responded with one word – Coronavirus.
In that moment, the layers of my own personal onion were revealed to me. I realized that for the past two weeks, I had been pretending to live at the surface…where those wispy, papery levels tear, and flake, and disperse, and just generally make a mess all over my kitchen floor. But, I hadn’t realized that I had been so wispy and papery and messy. Not much had been on my mind in the two weeks prior but Coronavirus, but my attention had been given to the external effects of Coronavirus on the world, my world. It was my interior world that I had been ignoring.
This neglected interior world (not tending to the deeper layers of the onion) had resulted in me showing up to my external world in all sorts of fallback. But, I had been so self-oriented – though not self-reflective – I couldn’t see it.
Boy that hit me. I study this thing, this phenomenon called fallback. In fallback, our biggest self is hijacked. We are unable to show up with our normal (ideal) full capacities in our feelings, our actions, our thoughts, for a period of time. We lose options. We hunker down. We circle the wagons. We become smaller.
I’m writing a book on fallback. And, in the midst of this global crisis, I hadn’t stopped to notice that with each passing moment, with each updated case count, with each news report, and with each methodical removal of the structures that support how I know my life to be, I was becoming smaller.
Gideon asked me to talk about my research…and my lived experience of fallback on a podcast he had just created to help people deal with the many levels of uncertainty and ambiguity that this pandemic has created. He thought what I know could be incredibly helpful to people in the world who were more than ever in the throes of their own fallback, which was heightened by the force of our collective fallback in the face of the unknown. I immediately said yes.
Then, I immediately realized that I may have a role to play at this time that I am not ready to play. I have been shedding…taking off these pieces of my identity…all aspects of my identity, but particularly my professional identity. For 9 months, I have practiced saying no to professional opportunities to which I so wanted to say yes. At first, it truly was a practice. It was hard. An internal battle. Who I have known myself to be and who I like to be seen as on one side. Blind trust in the stranger I am becoming on the other. Then, it became easier. The muscle memory was forming around this new me that was not externally oriented…that was cocooning. And, I had become fiercely protective of it.
Gideon invited me to record a podcast. Full stop. But, I knew there was more that I could offer to help people – and in truth, to help myself – to come to know and accept the fullness of themselves, both big and small. Yet, I selfishly didn’t want to leave the comfort of my cocoon. I had negotiated another 9 months of exploring the territory of becoming, of writing the book that I had most of the material for. I wasn’t ready to give this up.
And, if I’m really being honest, I wasn’t sure that my egoic self was ready. After a lifetime of chasing achievement, of accruing the degrees and titles that verified that I had something meaningful to contribute, of hanging my identity on my achievements (because that’s how I got loved growing up), I had finally begun to come back to my essence. I could see me as valuable, and worthy and deserving of love in this world – not because of what I produced, or how I contributed, or the letters after my name, or the title on my business card (or that I even had a business card). But, because I.am. Now, reclaiming the trappings of knowledge and performance and taking up a certain role is scary to me. I don’t know how to be the stranger I have become in this land.
But, I cannot let my fear hold me back. I undertook this sabbatical, this period of shedding with faith that I would discover my gifts and figure out how to best offer them to the world. Because I am me (and because at some point…sooner than later…I do have to start contributing financially to our family), I set a timeframe. I have 9 more months on the cocooning clock.
Yet, perhaps the time is now.
As I began to entertain the possibility of leaving my cocoon, and I started to share it with others, I realized that I wasn’t even sure if the terminology I was using was correct. This is the sucky thing about having a Ph.D.. (I assume) People expect that I’m going to be an expert on everything. Spelling. Grammar. APA formatting. Basic math. Science and biology. I have some data to back up this assumption…primarily in the form of the frequent look on the face of my husband when I ask him a question and his non-spoken response says something along the lines of “Didn’t you learn that in high school?” (He’s smart enough…usually…not to say this out loud.) I digress.
Now, not only am I freaked out about reclaiming my professional self, I don’t even know if my metaphors match up. If I’m cocooning, am I a butterfly waiting to emerge, transformed? Or will I be a moth? Moth doesn’t sound near as poetic. So, I looked it up on the interwebs so I could get my metaphors straight and not damage the reputation of the title of Ph.D., and sure enough, a moth emerges from a cocoon. It’s a chrysalis from which a butterfly reveals itself. But, all this time I’ve been saying (and doing the accompanying arm motions for) cocooning. I can’t very well all of a sudden shift to “I’m chrysalis-ing.” There are many challenges with this shift in messaging: lack of consistency, turning a noun into a verb incorrectly, plus it doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. So, I guess I just have to stick with cocoon, and that means I am now appearing in the form of a moth. Lock your cashmere away, folks!
Anywho, finally to the name of this post…I walked outside yesterday as a beautiful, winged creature landed on the lavender by our front porch. Was this a sign? Was this the universe telling me that it is time? I even drew nearer, looked into its beady, black eyes and asked, “Friend, are you here to guide me? What do you have to say?” Of course, it didn’t reply. I don’t live in Wonderland, folks. But, I’m taking it as a sign (that I wish would wear an actual sign with clear directions) that this…me…I, in my premature, unfinished, fragile form, am meant to emerge.
I could end there, but of course you’re wondering, as was I, and my children, and our neighbors who we called over to look at it, was this a butterfly or a moth? Of course, my husband, who has fewer degrees than I but is one of the smartest people I know, knew immediately – insert “didn’t you learn this in high school?” look. A moth’s wings point down. A butterfly’s wings point up. I just take his word as truth.
So it is. A moth I have become.
One Reply to “Signs that don’t wear signs”