Chapter 12: Accepting my Limitations

Time to Retire

One of the many things I’ve learned on this journey through calamity is accepting that I am not the same as I was before my fall. Two surgeries, working through trauma, grieving the loss of my father, as well as new grief about the prior loss of my mother, have all been very taxing on my aging body.

I had been contemplating for quite a while whether or not to fully retire.   This is something I resisted for a long time, despite my age and health, as so much of my identity has been wrapped up with my job.  I have finally accepted that it is time.

My job as a clinical supervisor for crisis workers at CAHOOTS, Eugene‘s mobile crisis alternative to the police, has brought me great satisfaction and a sense that I was contributing to my community in a meaningful way. Nonetheless, like any job, there were pressures that come with working for and with others. It is simply not the right time of my life to continue to endure those pressures.

My favorite book on life transitions is Transitions:  Making Sense of Life’s Changes, by William Bridges.  Bridges calls the stage I’m now in the “neutral zone” – that space between an ending and a new beginning.  Because the groundless and uncertain space of the neutral zone can be uncomfortable, we tend jump into a new beginning without really considering what we want going forward.   As Bridges explains (p. 112):

One of the difficulties of being in transition in the modern world is that we have lost our appreciation for this gap in the continuity of existence.  For us, emptiness represents only the absence of something.  So, when the something is as important as relatedness and purpose and reality, we try to find ways of replacing those missing elements as quickly as possible.

So, my goal is to spend some time to slow down, letting myself be a human “being” rather than a human “doing”.  I can call on the experience I had while recuperating from my surgeries this year, when I had no choice but to be and not do, and remember how that experience felt in my body.  I can allow myself to take time to experience my feelings around the ending of my career.  And, I can take time to mindfully contemplate how I want to continue to share what I’ve learned from my rich experiences in life in my new beginning.