Graduating from 2020

The title of the final episode of the Grace for Impact series which got me through the spring and summer.

Make this change you.

How have you allowed yourself to be changed this year?

How have you resisted change? Numbed yourself?

What future are you moving towards?

What past will you never return to?

Last week, as a part of a Dare to Lead book club, I was asked to pick my top two values from the list provided in the book. “Love” and “Well-being” immediately caught my eye and I knew they were my top values.

Then it hit me.

I was officially unrecognizable to my past self.

The Caroline of 10 years ago (or even 5 or 2 years ago), would have chosen “Excellence” and “Service.” She would have rolled her eyes at the hippie, granola values of love and well-being.

She was so beholden to the ideals of self-sacrifice and meeting some unattainable standard in order to feel valued. But she never really did feel valued, not all the way, at least. Mainly because she never valued herself or felt worthy of love.

Completing the Hoffman Process in 2019 was a major catalyst in unraveling these feelings of unworthiness and reprogramming not so effective patterns of behavior.

I felt like I got a one year head start on the massive upheaval and self-reflection that so many have faced this year.

With my new values now entrenched and 2020 coming a close, I feel as though I’m graduating. It’s a mix of pride, nostalgia, and uncertainty. Just like it was time to leave high school, then college, then PT school, it is now time for me to leave behind overachieving and self-sacrifice. It is time for me to enter into the much unknown world of love and well-being. I am sitting with both hope and grief as I weather the transition.

What are you leaving behind?

What unknown are you entering into?

What conflicting emotions arise?

One of my professors in PT school described graduations as the middle. He reminded us that our paths to becoming physical therapists started long before school. We got the idea, did our prerequisite coursework, and completed our internships. We took the GRE and asked for letters of recommendation. We applied to schools and got in the first time, or not. We did our coursework, skills labs, and clinical internships. We graduated. Then we took our board exams and entered the workforce. We developed proficiency in our chosen area. We developed our careers. The graduation was the middle.

What are you in the middle of?

In what ways did you ask for this?

How will you apply the lessons in 2021 and beyond?

Now is an especially potent time to reflect on these questions as we are in the depths of the winter solstice in the northern hemisphere. The energy is inward and the earth is at rest.

Can you grant yourself the gift of turning inward and resting?

This year is an even more potent solstice with Jupiter and Saturn occupying the same space in the sky, appearing as a brilliant star. Referred to as the Bethlehem Star, this conjunction is thought to be the new star that the wise men saw upon Jesus’s birth. It happens every 20 years and marks the beginning of a new cycle.