Turbulence

Hey,

Two things:

1) I love you.

2) Listen to this song:

If this isn’t the story of my life as of late.

Lately, it feels like I’ve been plowing through the dense nature of rough skies, the pilot already commanding us to keep our seatbelts on tight. We’re white-knuckling onto the armrests, onto each other. The plane is bouncing around the sky — we can almost feel the crash.

I’m holding on for dear life at the moment. Two breakdowns last week — one lasting all day, only interrupted by sessions with clients where five minutes before the meeting, I wiped away my ugly-cry tears, soothed my puffy face, blew the snot out of my nose, and chiseled on a smile to put my own shit away for 45 minutes.

Shame is mounting, particularly as I go to write this little blog post. Its saying, “Don’t share your story. Don’t talk about it. You’re supposed to help people. You’re supposed to have it all together. Stop talking about yourself, and just do better. Put your head down and run.”

But it’s important to share our stories, especially when we are “going through it” and when they can be of service to others.

We’re all in this life-thing together, during the good times and during the rough.

Socially, we often talk about mental health advocacy, saying “it’s okay to not be okay.” Yet, often, when someone actually says, “I’m not okay,” we don’t know how to respond. We freeze and become deer in headlights, and then we resume back to our socially-defined default — we don’t talk about that.

Well, I hope to start bulldozing that down because:

1) saying we’re okay when we’re not isn’t true, authentic, genuine, or reflective of the human experience

2) we all need support

3) the more we cover up what we’re going through and the more we disguise it, the stronger shame becomes and the less we talk about it

Breakdown 1 of 2 — but i’m still drinking my water :) #hydration

As a mental health professional, I feel it’s my obligation and duty to share parts of my story with you — how can I expect you to feel safe sharing your story with me if I don’t do the same?

To me, this is a fundamental component of leadership and trust-building.

So, yeah — indeed, life is fucking turbulent right now. And I’m not quite sure how I’m going to get by tomorrow, but I’ll worry about that then, and I’ll just focus on today instead. I can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. I’m having a hard time of seeing it get better.

But, I have to trust that it will. And I have to trust that one day, someday, the weather will change, the turbulence will soften, the skies will clear, the storm will produce a rainbow, and we’ll be able to look out the window at 30,000 feet and say, “Damn, what a beautiful ride.”

Until then, one foot in front of the other. One step at a time.

Bit by bit, piece by piece, moment by moment.

We march on, authentically, as humans with stories of shame, scars of triumph, and hearts of resilience.

My challenge to you (and myself): let’s find one way to smile — or laugh — in the turbulence. If this is what our reality is at the moment, let’s own the hell out of it. Embrace it. It is what it is.

We can hold on for dear life while we smile gratitudes toward each other.

Yours in the shit soup,
Kevin