Swimming/Drowning
Written by Vincenza K. Illiano, a facilitator, doula, and coach who is creating ease in growth and joy in the journey. She is a co-leader, co-conspirator, and master strategist in The Movement Movement, offering clients her visionary leadership skills while guiding them toward alignment. Together, with Leah Williams, we audaciously model collaborative leadership for our clients.
Let’s talk about the muck. The really sticky and uncomfortable part of actually creating change. Looking at the change process through a values lens, the sticky bit is often where two values we hold bump against each other. We either sit in that discomfort or decide which one takes precedence.
As a mom, a woman, a recovering wife, for a long time I held a value of taking care of other people, being selfless. This is what a wonderful Mom looks like! Always putting her needs and wants at the bottom of the list - or better yet! - don’t even have needs! It’s so fulfilling to love and care for the people around you.
Yes, and…
A few months ago I attended a women’s retreat near Maun. On the last day we had a partner exercise where we spoke about a death we had experienced. Surprisingly, what came up for me was not any of the actual deaths of people I loved deeply. It was grief around the death of my marriage, the future I had imagined for myself. Grief for the part of myself who had tried so hard to be that selfless wife and mother, carrying so much more weight than one person should.
I remember feeling like i was drowning, as though my life was quicksand and no matter how I moved, I was becoming deeply entangled in a mess I didn’t know how to get out of. Until I decided to cut a weight off and stop being a wife.
What I told my partner at the retreat that day was “I was drowning, and I knew I could swim.” This man I had linked my life to was drowning and pulling our whole family down. I want to say it was an impossible choice, but it wasn’t. It was an extremely difficult choice, but actually it was the only possible choice.
So I’ve been swimming and I'm no longer drowning, which is a great improvement. Still I have to carry this complicated grief - for the life I imagined, for a person I loved who I thought I would grow old with and for the version of myself who was so adept at caring for everyone around me. To welcome the part of myself who would look at a drowning man and say “I can’t carry you.”
That’s the stickiest bit. Accepting the role I played in the boat falling apart and re-building from scratch. Finding peace and acceptance that growth is not selfish.
Mary Oliver expresses this so beautifully in her poem “The Journey”. I see my path in her words and a gentle forgiveness to the part of myself that was “determined to save the only life I could save.”
To just keep swimming.