My name is Valerie Livesay. Not so long ago, I left my job as full-time faculty teaching in a graduate program in organizational leadership at a university. I left my job…to attempt to be. To sink into not doing (doing being a favorite compulsion of mine). To find myself anew. To shed the many parts of my identity that I had spent a lifetime creating; the parts that had been created on my behalf; the parts that had certainly served me well to that point. And, to see if I could still be loved…by myself…by others. This was to be a year-long sabbatical. A time during which I let go of my professional roles, let go of many of my personal affiliations, released myself (pried myself!) from the habits of my life, in order to let come. In order to surrender to myself. In order to be able to hear what my heart desired. It took a while for me to get there, but eventually I found myself turning inward without much desire at all to turn outward. I settled into my cocoon. I loved snuzzling into its compact, insular, warm, fuzziness. I felt I might finally be figuring out how to be.
Then, COVID-19.
I study human development; specifically, adult development; specifically, fallback in adult development. Fallback is the complete loss of options, of capacity, of access to feel, to behave, to think at the developmental level which you are ideally capable. You may consider fallback your small self…a departure from your Big Self.
As the world is being forced to isolate, I feel called to emerge from my self-imposed, self-created isolation…in order to share the things that I know, the things that I think that I know, and the myriad things that I am sure that I do not know. I’ll admit that I was too much in the throes of my own fallback…and the coziness of my cocoon…to notice the calling myself. It took me literally being called by a friend and colleague telling me that he thought my research and practice might be super-helpful to some people right about now and how about I come on out to share it. He was right. How could I say no?
So, “who am I?” is an active question for me. Who is the world calling for me to be? What makes my soul sing? I’m only beginning to experiment with it. It may still be experimenting with me. But, I have made a decision. I extend a wing outside of my cocoon to you. I invite you to discover with me the stranger I am becoming*. My hope is that you will come to know yourself more truly, too.
*David Whyte, Consolations: The solace, nourishment and underlying meaning of everyday words