Looking back

so we can look forward

I was born a summer. I have an August birthday, I lived two blocks from the beach in my childhood, I love the feel of warm sun on my skin, and there are fresh tomatoes and peaches. Summer is no school and flip-flops and sunroof open. How could I be anything other than summer?

This summer was full of sunshine and green pastures

and a bunch of silly calves who are afraid of everything

and walks on the shady path around the lake

and mullein growing wild all over the farm

and grandchildren playing on next winter’s hay bales

and child-picked bouquets of flowers that filled all the mugs.

It was lovely in so many special ways.

But I’m finding as I get older (shhh) that I maybe don’t love it like I once did. Those few days in mid-August when the humidity disappears and the temperature dips into the low 60s at night are such a relief from the unrelenting heat. And I can’t lie on the beach all day like I did in my teens because wrinkles and age spots, you know. But as God says,

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven . . .
(Ecclesiastes 3:1)

These are the days of wearing a hat to shade my face and wishing for the air conditioned house while I’m sweating in the garden.

I’m also more aware of the need to reflect on my life so I can learn from it, something that literally never happened at age 17 when I was surrounded by friends on the same beach day after day with our transistor radios blaring WABC out of New York City.

So. Here we are, having lived through another summer and on the precipice of autumn. It would be easy to rush headlong into the cooler fall days and gladly leave the downsides of the last season behind, but let’s not be so hasty. Weren’t there some good things? What can we savor from the space we are walking out of before we close the door and forget it completely?

Whenever there is a change in life, it’s an opportunity to pause and look back. I’m learning this from my friend Emily Freeman, who encourages us to consider three questions for reflection during our pause. Here are mine.

1. What is one thing I learned in this season that I am carrying with me into the next?

2. What is one thing I’m looking forward to in the season to come?

3. What is a life-giving practice I began that I want to continue?

I hope you’ll take a moment to answer these questions for yourself, even if only in your mind. I’ll answer them here, in case you’re interested in what this practice looks like.

One thing I learned that I will carry with me into autumn

It’s no secret that I go to therapy, and I often share the things I’m learning about myself and why I do what I do. It’s a fascinating journey that I highly recommend to everyone, even if you think you’ve got your stuff all together.

One day in August, Ellie and I were talking about an event from my childhood that was traumatic to me. We were using EMDR, but doing it a little differently than we usually do. Feelings and thoughts came up as they always do in this process, and suddenly I understood in a profound way why I have been hypervigilant all my life. It was like seeing clearly for the first time a picture that has been blurry for decades. The sheer clarity of it made me stop and break down in tears.

I’ve known for several years that hypervigilance (always being on alert, expecting the next traumatic thing to happen) is a result of trauma, but on this day my head knowledge became deeply felt heart knowledge. I knew it with my whole being. I felt it down to my toes and I sat in stunned silence, finally understanding such a huge piece of who I am.

This knowledge and understanding have given me the freedom to be aware of when I am feeling on alert without feeling guilt or shame over it. There is a perfectly good reason I am this way, and now I can move on to convincing my nervous system that, although that was an appropriate response back then, it’s not needed anymore. Hypervigilance has outgrown its usefulness and can be put on the shelf.

What a relief.

One thing I’m looking forward to in the season to come

Eight months ago I announced that I had signed up for a six-month book coaching program. In the first meeting of the 70 or so writers in the class, our coach, Ally Fallon, said that statistically about 80% of us would finish our first-draft manuscripts in the six months of the course. As soon as the words were out of her mouth, I knew I would be in the other 20%, not because I view myself as a failure, but because I knew my idea needed an enormous amount of refining. I wasn’t ready to start the actual writing yet. Also, my daddy passed away four days before the program began and then Mommy had a lot of issues during those six months. It’s been quite a year.

But I did come out of the class with a solid outline and a renewed will to get the thing written. I’m looking forward to making time for it now (and hopefully I won’t be back here in eight months with more reasons why I didn’t).

A life-giving practice I want to continue

For an awful lot of my life I have not admitted my feelings—not to myself nor to anyone else. I have basically acted like I don’t have feelings other than the culturally acceptable ones. This varies with the culture you happen to be in at the time, but it’s still quite limiting. As you can imagine, a great build-up of tension occurs when you live like this.

As I’ve journeyed through therapy and self-discovery, I learned to pay attention to my feelings and just allow them to be what they are. But that kind-of-opposite-end-of-the-spectrum brings its own distress. It’s like living on a roller coaster when you are not a roller coaster lover. It can feel overwhelming.

So I am developing a practice of noticing the feeling and simply being curious about it. I am less quick to jump on board the feeling train, instead taking a moment to ask where it’s coming from and what it’s trying to say. What is the thought behind the feeling? Life is more nuanced and deeper than the first feeling that pops up, and if we want to learn to regulate our emotional lives, we need to slow down and look a little deeper. I am practicing that.

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Beyond these reflective questions, I leave you with a book recommendation. I got through a long list of books over the summer, a couple of which I did not finish because if you can’t hook me in the first 50 pages, I’m probably not sticking with you. I say that carefully, knowing my own manuscript is in the works. But one that has stuck with me is I Shouldn’t Feel This Way by Dr. Alison Cook.

I have spent my entire adulthood thinking that very thing about so many situations and wondering why I never seemed to be able to fix it. My favorite quote from the book is this:

“Should” statements are a form of guilt-messaging yourself. When you notice a “should” statement repeatedly popping up in your mind, name it. Then name the expectation that statement represents. Is it one you want to keep? Or is it time to create a holy reframe?

When you recognize and name your thinking traps, you take a giant step toward freedom.

Dr. Cook walks you through the process of naming what’s hard, framing your reality (“developing a clearer understanding of your situation”), and then braving a new path. It is not only enlightening, it is practically helpful, and one I will recommend for a long time.

What about you? What’s one thing you want to take from summer and carry into the sweet autumn months? What’s the best book you read over the summer? I’d love to hear about it.