This Life Is A Series of Silver Linings Strung Together Like Prayer Beads

10/12/23

This Life is a series of optional silver linings strung together like prayer beads. 

We meet again, once again in darkness, this time chasing the moon.  It’s 5 am on the east coast and I’m headed home to the Utah’s first snow, an 8th grade cello concert, and hopefully a significant stretch of sleep. 

I spent the week working my way through a conference with my new company in my old world. I’ve never mixed worlds well.  Compartmentalization is an under-rated art form, in my questionably humble opinion and when pushed, I don’t so much compartmentalize as… amputate.  

Spending the week as ‘This Julie’ surrounded by 20 years of contacts who only know ‘That Julie’ creates a good amount of holistic dissonance.  The dissociated panic attacks, “Hmm. How strange that I’m sitting here on the couch reading this lovely book, drinking this herbal tea, and am unable to breathe. Fascinating.” started about 2 weeks ago, though the gnawing anxiety began nibbling long before the flights were booked. 

I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking and talking about coping skills lately, recognizing them when they appear, understanding why they appear, which one corresponds with which type of situation, and determining if they are helpful or perhaps a bit rogue.  I’ve identified things like anger, exhaustion, dissociation, fawning, and flying and practicing when to use the gas and when to use the brake. One I had not yet identified is gratitude. 

I have decided that gratitude is a super power. I found myself standing in the lobby, having just run into a former co-worker and receiving a reception about as comfortable as a blanket of dry ice and being completely submerged in gratitude.  It was not the “thank God, that’s out of the way.” kind of gratitude but genuine moments of reflection on the life “This Julie” is living. It’s amazing looking back, how often I’ve confused a brick for a life preserver and clung to that weight all the way to the bottom of the ocean floor, still oblivious that I’ve wrapped myself around a brick. Learning the difference between those two things is perhaps one of the things I’m most grateful for. That’s not to say I’m brick-free… but at least I’m able to call a brick a brick, ya know? 

Last bizarre little thought. Weirdly, last night at dinner, a colleague was talking about Sodom and Gomorra (I think he had the story confused with Noah, he was mostly focused on the salacious aspects, but that’s really neither here nor there).  I thought the timing was pretty serendipitous. Turns out, with the right tools, we might be able to look back and not be trapped in frozen salinic hell for eternity and instead stand in power, turn and take that sacred pause and assess the situation for what it is and know that there is life beyond the collapse.