twenty twenty.

Today is the last day of the year.
The last day of the decade.
I have been feeling the ... impulse? ... obligation? to reflect.
So here is my attempt to put some words down.

This decade has seen such low points.
Ten years ago, at the end of a different decade, depression and anxiety felt like the masters of my life. Panic attacks were a common yet terrifyingly unexpected occurrence. I slept all the time because I didn't feel sad when I slept; I didn't panic when I slept--until I did. That year I found myself wondering if it would be better to not be around at all. It was made clear to me that that was not a better option. I'm thankful.

Two years ago I switched masters programs at Fuller after abruptly and heartbreakingly discovering that the plan and vision I had had was not something I could sustainably do. I'm still in the liminal space of finding what it is I should can will do. In the meantime, I can do what is in front of me. I'm thankful.

This decade has seen high points.
Five years ago Sam and I agreed to love, honor, and cherish one another for better or worse,  richer or poorer, in sickness or health. Only five years in and we've already walked through several of these scenarios. I'm thankful.

This decade brought hellos. 
I met seven out of eight nieces (from my siblings) in the past ten years. I met and became part of the Kelly (and Doman and Lovett) family. I started and changed jobs. I moved to a new city where I met new classmates, friends, and church family. I worked with a couple of therapists who have helped me to learn things about myself that I didn't even realize that I didn't know. I found new places and spaces and returned to familiar favorites too. I'm thankful.

This decade has brought goodbyes. 
Some were healthy; some were expected; others were neither. All of them were difficult.

The freshest goodbye is to the house I grew up in. The house my family brought me home to. The house where I had the room with the famously long closet and the swamp cooler. The house where I took my engagement photos and where I later got ready for my wedding day. It was and is a great place to live. Family members are buying the house so I'll still be able to visit. I'm thankful.


This has been a hodgepodge of memories. Lest you think too highly of me, the thankfulness that punctuates each one is found through much effort, and even then I don't always feel it.

As I close this post, and the year, I'll share this poem by Rilke. It's one I keep returning to and that I feel captures my reflections on the past, the work of the present, and my hope for the future.


God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.

These are the words we dimly hear:

You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.

Flare up like flame
and make big shadows I can move in.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don't let yourself lose me.

Nearby us the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.

Give me your hand.

– Rainer Maria Rilke, Book of Hours, I, 59.

2009 to 2019

a letter to my[ten-years-ago]self.

Dear 19-year-old Katy,

You've been on my mind lately. Maybe it's because it's been ten years since I was you. Maybe it's because I'm just a few months away from 30. Maybe it's because it's January and all of the new year reflecting is getting to me. Whatever the reason, you keep coming to mind, and it feels important to sit with you for a moment.

---

It's dark here.
It's really growing now—the anxiety and panic.
My heart is heavy seeing you here, even heavier knowing there's still the worst to come.

I know that words are only so helpful right now.
So many people around you have so many words for you.
I have words for you too. Words of truth. Words of hope.
But it's not time for those yet.

So right now, I'm showing up.
Holding a gentle light of hope into this darkness.
A hope that is rooted in reality: 29-year-old Katy exists.
It's difficult right now. It's so very difficult. It will become almost unbearable.

And you make it. You're still here.

I want to leave you with one more thing.
A poem, specifically.
I know you might not be ready to receive these words just yet.
But you will be.
And I'm already filled with joyful anticipation for the moment you are.


Love (III) by George Herbert

Love bade me welcome. Yet my soul drew back
                              Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
                             From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
                             If I lacked any thing.

A guest, I answered, worthy to be here:
                             Love said, You shall be he.
I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dear,
                             I cannot look on thee.
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
                             Who made the eyes but I?

Truth Lord, but I have marred them: let my shame
                             Go where it doth deserve.
And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?
                             My dear, then I will serve.
You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat:
                             So I did sit and eat.

Source: George Herbert and the Seventeenth-Century Religious Poets (W. W. Norton and Company, 1978).

a good day, 2009

yet.

Last week I opened a large, flat envelope at my parents’ house to find my diploma from Fuller. A couple of weeks ago, I had seen some excited and celebratory posts from some of my classmates who had received theirs, which made me anxious to see my own. However, when I opened that envelope and carefully removed the piece of paper confirming the completion of my master’s degree, I cried — not tears of joy or gratitude (I feel guilty just typing that out) but tears of grief, frustration, and shame.

Because in that moment, that piece of paper did not represent the time, work, growth, and discovery of the past two years. It represented unrealized plans, unmet expectations — my failure. It held all of the shame, anxiety, and anguish of the decision to leave the MS MFT program and switch to an MA degree in family studies — a degree that I had not planned to get nor had a clear picture of how to use. It amplified the unknown and the uncertainty of the past two months of being back in Fresno.

I know my last posts present the opposing and perhaps more rational and reasonable perspectives: the hope found in the unknown, the peace from “just enough light,” and the constant learning process of freely accepting grace. I still believe those are true and valid. They are what I strive for. However, it also feels important to share this true and valid part of my story, because while there is hope in what’s to come, there are also feelings of loss and grief from what I let go, from what could have been.

While I realize that personality categorizations and assessments, especially when self-assessed, should be taken with a grain of salt, I have found learning about the Enneagram to be a helpful and healing resource in this season. David Daniels and Virginia Price’s description of the Type One in The Essential Enneagram is overwhelmingly relatable.

Reading this made sense of the tearful reaction to my diploma. It explained the shaming inner monologue that keeps making an appearance in my mind:

“I’ve been back in Fresno for just over two months. I don’t have a job. I don’t have any actionable ideas of how I want to use my degree or pursue involvement in member care. I don’t have our apartment fully unpacked or decorated. We haven’t joined a church community.”

And it’s helping me to add a little word to the end of each of those sentences: Yet.

I don’t have a job yet. I don’t have any actionable ideas of how I want to use my degree or pursue involvement in member care yet. I don’t have our apartment fully unpacked or decorated yet. We haven’t joined a church community yet.

What a difference that little three-letter word can make.

Predictably, Nouwen again has words to encourage and challenge me. This time from Can You Drink the Cup?:

We have to live our life, not someone else’s. We have to hold our own cup. We have to dare to say: “This is my life, the life that is given to me, and it is this life that I have to live, as well as I can. My life is unique. Nobody else will ever live it. I have my own history, my own family, my own body, my own character, my own friends, my own way of thinking, speaking, and acting—yes, I have my own life to live. No one else has the same challenge. I am alone, because I am unique. Many people can help me to live my life, but after all is said and done, I have to make my own choices about how to live.”

Finding hope in the “yet,”

Kate

present today.

As of today, I have closed my time at my practicum site. That might seem a bit abrupt, but the past few weeks have been a whirlwind. Here's what you may have missed:

Six weeks ago, I started Spring quarter feeling exhausted. Winter quarter had been extremely demanding and draining in almost every area of my life, and the week between the two quarters felt overwhelmingly insufficient.

Five weeks ago I began practicum. It felt like taking a drink from a firehose. Everyone at the site was so kind, but I came home from my first day of supervision and training feeling overstimulated, underprepared, and even more exhausted.

Five weeks ago, I also received my first client referral and subsequently experienced a panic attack—the first in several years. I was terrified.

The two weeks that followed are a blur. I went to class, went to practicum, and (eventually) completed my homework, but the most prominent things I noticed were the red flags I had come to know so well from my previous struggles with anxiety and depression. I knew I was not doing well.

Three weeks ago, we went home for the weekend to attend a wedding and for the first time in . . . well, it felt like months, but at least since the start of this quarter, I felt peace. I enjoyed time surrounded by family and friends. I went on a bike ride in the foothills of my childhood neighborhood. I leisurely worked on homework in my favorite tea shop while sipping on lavender creme earl grey. Time seemed to stop for a bit, and I finally felt like I could breathe. I did not want to come back to Pasadena.

Also three weeks ago, on our drive back, I received a voicemail from my practicum site that I was not expecting or prepared for. The time-stopping bubble of peace and rest instantly burst and I was thrown into panic mode again. All I could say was, "I want to go home."

The next day, I was ready to go home. I think I had known that this was not a sustainable way to live and that second anxiety attack seemed to block any last hope of making it through the rest of the quarter, let alone the program. I realized that the "home" I longed for was not only the familiar, family-filled fields of Central Valley, but also a sense peace, safety, and stability.

That Tuesday, I had long talks with a trusted friend in my cohort, my integration formation group, some of my closest friends, my therapist, my pastor, and, of course, my husband. I received supportive, nonjudgmental listening, prudent and practical questions, and prayer. My own prayers were more along the lines of, "Help. Help. Help."

The following Tuesday—my 28th birthday—I met with the clinical director of training with every intention of leaving the program and Pasadena. I expected to feel shame and her disappointment but was willing to face that for the relief of freedom. What I received was beyond what I could have imagined. She listened patiently, helped me sort out the decisions and options I actually had, and affirmed her support of me. I had not realized it was possible to delay practicum even though I had already started. I could take a step back to have the time and energy I needed to get the overbearing monster of anxiety under control so that I could make a more informed decision about the future. She helped me to realize that it is almost impossible to make the kind of researched and meticulous decision I was wanting to make (something she caught onto when I mentioned it took me five years to even decide to apply for grad school) when anxiety is in control and safety outranks any other goal or objective. I was not only consumed with anxiety, I was also burnt out. I had an epiphany moment when I realized that this kind of experience is the very one I came to grad school to learn how to help with. When you're feeling completely drained and then pile on stressors, or trauma, or fill in the blank, of course you feel like you just want to quit, get away, and go home.

So for now I am pausing. I am resting. I am healing.

I don't know what the future holds, I may still end up going home before finishing the program. I may delay practicum until finishing classes. I may start up practicum again in June. I don't know, and for the first time in a while, I am (mostly) okay with that.

Sam has been reading The Lord of the Rings to me, often times to help me sleep, and the following quote grabbed my attention a few weeks ago as I was drifting off. I made him go back so I could write it down, feeling like there would be a time and place for me to come back to it. Seems like now is the time.

"The future, good or ill, was not forgotten, but ceased to have any power over the present."

-John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

deja vu.

I should be working other things. Like the paper that's due later this week or the endless reading that will end with the quarter and not a moment sooner. But I think this is important enough for me to take the time to do. Well, I guess I'm making it that important.

Today was difficult. The kind of difficult I haven't seen (or felt) in quite a while. It was a terrible kind of deja vu or like being trapped in an all too familiar dream I couldn't wake up from.

I knew that this struggle was possible to reappear as I went back to school because the first time I encountered it was in undergrad. What I did not expect was how fearful I would be, of even the slightest inkling of its return. All of a sudden my mind was stuck showing reruns of undergrad and I began to despair of the impending chaos that was due to follow.

I did make it through the rest of the day without completely falling apart, until I got to my therapy session.

Thank Jesus for therapy. I guess you could say I'm a bit biased because that what I'm studying now, but really, I can't adequately express the value of having that space of being seen and heard. As my professor said today, it's a sacred space.

A takeaway: Instead of defining my success in grad school as "Doing well without any anxiety"
I can try out, "Success means doing well, acknowledging I will have times of anxiety, and managing it well when it presents itself."

Finally, I can always count on Henri Nouwen to speak the words of my soul. From The Inner Voice of Love in a section titled "Keep Returning to the Road of Freedom":

"When suddenly you seem to lose all you thought you had gained, do not despair. Your healing is not a straight line. You must expect setbacks and regressions. Don't say to yourself, 'All is lost. I have to start all over again." This is not true. What you have gained, you have gained...When you return to the road, you return to the place where you left it, not to where you started...It is important not to dwell on the small moments when you feel pulled away from your progeess...In everything, keep trusting that God is with you, that God has given you companions on the journey. Keep returning to the road to freedom?"

There is hope, friends. Tomorrow's a new day.

And now back to regularly scheduled programming...