Evolution Vs. Change

Evolution Vs. Change

by | Feb 3, 2024 | Divorce and Separation

“Life is a journey, not a destination.” “Life is beautiful.”

I stare at both mantras daily as I eat dinner with my kids. They stare out at me from placemats my parents gave me for Christmas ten years ago.

I wholeheartedly agree with my placemats, but I haven’t lived my life like a journey, despite that agreement. Instead, I’m always packing my bags to get somewhere, still figuring out what to take with me. Every day I sort through my “stuff” and fret that I’ve forgotten something or packed incorrectly.

But something has shifted this past year.

Defining what has shifted is hard. It’s more of a feeling. What has changed? I can only identify it by noticing what is missing, and what is missing is anxiety, and anxiety’s friend, depression. It is ironic, but I had anxiety that my anxiety was missing for about six months. I felt oddly “flat,” and I wondered if I was depressed for a few more months. I’ve still had many moments of anger, grief, happiness, and boredom over the past few months, but they’ve felt different. The emotions lasted as long as they needed to, then they were gone. The anxiety, depression, and drive that pushed me onward, which usually took over from the first emotional trigger, had disappeared.

What happened?

For a while I kept trying to find an answer to why I felt different. Something clear and concrete must have suddenly caused me to change. The headaches I started to develop, most likely caused by perimenopause, were perhaps a sign of brain cancer, and maybe brain cancer was impacting my emotions  (one thought I had). Or maybe the transition from peri to post-menopause had caused a sudden shift.

I looked for one thing to explain the shift, and I minimized all the subtle changes I’d made over the past ten years. I did not acknowledge that the shift could relate to my work to live in alignment with my values, to slow down, to live in the present. I didn’t recognize the ten years of life experience and daily challenges I’d given myself through day-to-day living as a full-time single parent on a part-time basis, navigating new relationships, and building my own business. I forgot about the ten years of coaching and training, the mistakes I had to address and hold myself accountable for, and the successes that taught me what works and what doesn’t.

Instead, I assumed I had magically changed, or imagined something was wrong.

Our world celebrates social media-worthy, groundbreaking change with fireworks and celebration. Our world treats change like a destination we suddenly arrive at, not an evolution that took years.

Then, when we don’t change, and our world doesn’t change, we give up. We throw up our hands, say it’s impossible, and succumb to anxiety or depression. We carry on as we always have, feeling heavy, assuming nothing will ever change, living to survive and hoping that one day we’ll find that elusive life destination where we’re happy, where everything works as it should, where we’ll finally be done. Where we’ll have accomplished “life.”

Change takes time.

In life, we search for that defining moment, a single catalyst that transforms us into a new version of ourselves. But change isn’t a destination. It’s an evolution, and most of it happens while you’re too busy packing your bags to notice.

The Slowest Way (But Really, It’s Faster)

by | Dec 27, 2023 | Divorce and Separation

The Slow Way (But Really, It’s the Fastest)

There’s a version of my own separation agreement on page five that laid out my plan to get my old job back. It was there because everyone around me- lawyers, family, well-meaning friends- assumed that was obviously the right direction. I assumed it too, for a while. It took me years to notice that plan wasn’t actually mine. It was just the most well-worn path in sight, and I’d stepped onto it without really choosing it.

I think that’s how most people get stuck. Not because they lack options, but because the only paths they can see are the ones everyone else is already walking.

From what I’ve seen, people usually try one of three ways out.

The first is waiting to be rescued, waiting for something outside yourself- a partner, a job, a lucky break- to show up and fix what feels broken. This rarely works, mostly because you’re handing the change itself to something you don’t control. And even when it does work for a while- a new relationship, a new hobby, a fresh distraction- the lift is usually temporary. Eventually you’re back where you started, except now there’s one more person or pursuit tangled up in the mess too.

The second is fixing yourself to match somebody else’s picture of a good life. This was my path. I had a version of my future handed to me, mostly built from other people’s expectations, and I spent real effort trying to make myself fit it, rather than asking whether it fit me. This path can look like real progress from the outside: you’re working hard, achieving things, checking boxes, but it’s often just as unmoored as staying still, because none of it is actually pointed anywhere you chose. The particular cruelty of this path is that even when you reach the destination, you usually find out you’re still unhappy, and now you’ve spent years getting there.

The third is blowing it all up. Something dramatic, a sudden decision made out of built-up anger or exhaustion from the first two paths not working. It does get you moving. But you rarely get to choose what happens next, and the fallout from that kind of change can take years to clean up, sometimes longer than it would have taken to walk away from the wrong path more carefully in the first place.

There’s a fourth way, though it’s harder to spot, because from the outside it looks exactly like standing still. Mostly because it is, for long stretches. The difference is what’s happening underneath: one decision at a time, so gradual you can’t actually see the path forming until you’re already partway down it.

Standing still is uncomfortable. It doesn’t feel like progress, and everything in you wants to grab the next visible direction just to feel like you’re moving again. But trust the stillness long enough, and something shifts. You notice you’re already closer to your own path than you thought, not because you found it somewhere out there, but because you finally stopped long enough to see it was already forming underneath you.

I eventually got off my own version of path two. Not through any dramatic reckoning, just an ordinary Tuesday where I finally looked at the life I was building and realized none of it was mine. I hadn’t chosen the job, hadn’t chosen the version of “fine” I was aiming for, hadn’t chosen most of what I was working so hard to become. Once I saw that clearly, I couldn’t unsee it.

The other three paths feel faster. They rarely are. Path one costs you the time spent waiting, however long that turns out to be. Path two costs you years spent becoming someone you weren’t. Path three costs you however long it takes to clean up whatever the explosion left behind. None of them show you the bill upfront.

The slow way is the opposite. It feels like it’s taking forever precisely because you can feel it happening in real time. The cost is visible from the start instead of arriving later, all at once, disguised as something else.

Zip, Zero, Nada

by | Nov 20, 2023 | Divorce and Separation, Parenting & Co-Parenting

Zip, Zero, Nada

Does salary level determine a job’s worth, or a person’s?

Most of us would say “no way,” including myself, yet actions and behaviour speak louder than words.

When I was earning a decent salary, some might have called it indecent for my age; people treated me differently. They seemed to respect me automatically, and I never felt I had to justify my actions. I was making a lot of money, so my work was worthy, and by default, so was I.

Then I became a stay-at-home mom, and we all know how much stay-at-home parents get paid. That amount is zip, zero, nada.

Nobody questioned my decision when I first decided to become a stay-at-home parent. I had some savings from work and was expecting my second child. I had worked enough to be guaranteed parental leave benefits when my second child was born.

Now that I think about it, it’s fascinating how many people had opinions on my new status.

Most people told me I was making a good decision. They said, “Your children are only young once; you’re lucky to spend time with them when they’re young.”

And I agree. I was fortunate to spend time with my kids when they were young.

But the other message I internalized from this comment was that I wasn’t genuinely working, or that I was working at a job that benefited anyone other than me.

As time went by and my kids got older, four and two, my justification for staying home became more and more of a topic of conversation, and I became more internally defensive. I started keeping a mental list of how I was contributing to our household, one I began obsessing over almost daily.

The first question out of my spouse’s mouth when he got home from work was, “What did you do today?” He probably wasn’t looking for proof I’d worked, but I had my list ready anyway, just in case, to show I hadn’t spent the day surfing the web. My husband never had to justify his actions. He brought home a paycheque every two weeks that did it for him.

To feel more justified in what I was doing, I decided I could live with less “fun” money than my husband. I cut my leisure spending to one-third of his.

It’s telling what that pay cut did to our family dynamic. I didn’t need the extra money, but in a sense I’d taken a notional pay cut, which further minimized my sense of worth. My relationship with my spouse became more unbalanced. We were no longer equal, not in my eyes, and not in his.

At that point, my husband and I had monetary proof that my job wasn’t as worthy as his.

This concept carried into our divorce process. We barely discussed how I’d contributed to the household. My contribution was glossed over, and the main conversation revolved around when I would start “work.” We didn’t discuss the fact that I had effectively lost my job, because being a stay-at-home parent is not recognized as a job. I’d been on a lark, apparently, and now I had to get down to business and find something worthy.

What was the difference between my job and my now-ex’s? His was paid. Mine wasn’t.

If you’re considering becoming a stay-at-home parent, I’d encourage you to set up your finances like this:

Take your spouse’s salary, divide it by two, and automatically transfer half into your own bank account every pay period. Then you and your spouse each pay half of the joint family expenses, and cover your personal spending from what’s left over.

If you’re about to become a stay-at-home parent, talk through a financial arrangement like this with your spouse before the baby is born. If your spouse doesn’t support a proposal like this, that’s worth talking through further before you give up a career for a job with no paycheque attached.

If your spouse does support it, you’ll know they consider the work a worthy endeavour, worthy enough that they’re willing to pay for it. Because, despite the saying, money does define the worthiness of jobs and people, at least in how we treat each other. Actions and behaviour speak louder than words.

Sustainable Decisions

by | Nov 21, 2021 | Divorce and Separation, Money

Sustainable Decisions

Recently, I spoke with a friend going through major life transitions. Like many of us, she and her family are stressed.

My friend is in her late 40s with two children under 11. Her husband, also in his late 40s, recently quit his job. He realized it wasn’t the right fit, and he knew his employers would soon start looking for someone who was. He wanted to take control of his life.

While he quit his job to maintain positive mental health, his search for a new job is ongoing, and he is having a hard time not getting discouraged. Their youngest child just started at a new school and needs more support. Their oldest daughter is gifted and attends an expensive private school.

My friend spent the last year training for a new profession, only to discover the expected job market isn’t there.

With all this happening, they have used up their emergency funds. Now they have to decide whether to take on more debt or start withdrawing from their retirement fund.

My friend started our conversation by stating her husband is sleeping a lot.

Oversleeping is a classic sign of depression.

It all sounds stressful

After getting rejected day after day by potential employers for jobs he’s convinced himself would be exciting, he’s now applying for jobs in other provinces. Adding a cross-country move into the mix will add even more stress to their lives. And what if the job didn’t work out?

Meanwhile, the family has been focused on getting through their days, with little thought to planning or aligning goals with values, because that is hard to do under the extreme pressure they’re under.

My friend asked what I thought.

I acknowledged that yes, they did indeed seem to have an unfair share of stress in their lives right now.

I asked her what she thought about making such life-changing decisions when they are suffering from stress.

She got quiet and said, “I think it’s going to get worse before it gets better.”

I sat with my friend, and we pondered her rather bleak comment.

Was it only by hitting the proverbial wall that she and her husband would find the fortitude to push through to a way forward? What if crashing into that wall meant they couldn’t move forward at all?

I asked my friend if there was a way to get some breathing room into their lives so they could slow down their decision-making and find a more sustainable path forward.

She just looked at me and said,

“Well, we may be able to dip into retirement savings. That might buy us some time.”

I think she expected me to argue with her. Dip into retirement savings! What kind of financial planner would support that strategy?

Instead, I said, ” Let’s look at your big-picture financial situation. Maybe there is a way, after all.

Getting out of Limbo

by | Apr 2, 2020 | Divorce and Separation

Getting out of limbo

 

It is C+16 since my world changed, and I find myself in limbo.

Pardon me if you don’t understand my lingo. Coincidentally, I am reading “Seveneves” by Neal Stephenson, a story about a BIG world change: the destruction of Earth because an agent breaks up the moon into little pieces. The science is over my head, but everyone has time to prepare for the end of the world because there is a lag between the moon breakup and the Earth’s destruction. The characters decide it’s time to establish a new calendar, and AD and CE are gone, replaced by A (for Agent), plus the number of days since the Agent hit the moon.

Today is March 29, 2020, 16 days after my kids were ordered not to go to school and we were all instructed not to leave our homes unless absolutely necessary. So it’s C+16 (C for COVID) since the Global Pandemic changed my world and the world of most of us. At C+16, it feels like the significant impact has happened, and I am living my new normal.

That…was…fast. As I stood in line at my local grocery store yesterday, two metres apart as the stickers on the floor guided me, I had an out-of-body experience. Suddenly I was a character from one of the endless dystopian books I have read and continue to read.

When I got up to the cashier, I smiled at her. She looked utterly frazzled. I asked how she was doing. “Not as good as thirty minutes ago when I started my shift.” She was an older woman who told me she had just returned to work after being off for four months due to a shoulder injury. Her grown children were mad at her for coming back, but as she explained, she had no choice. I packed my own bags so she wouldn’t have to and tried to channel calm to her, but I knew my chest was tight, so I was probably channelling stress instead. I thanked her and left.

I’ve set up a routine to deal with my new normal. It’s not one I would “normally” choose, but it gets me through the day so that I can do it again the next one. My youngest wakes up, feeds the cat, empties the dishwasher, begs for the Switch, gets told to read instead. My teenager drifts in, gets breakfast, negotiates Switch time with his brother. At 11:15 sharp, someone announces they’re hungry. We eat, we argue about what to do next, we get outside somewhere between one and four. Then it’s happy hour, dinner, more Switch, storytime, bed at 9- Groundhog Day style. Yes, I still make my teenager sit through storytime. We’re making our way through Narnia again. It’s one of the highlights of my day, and I’ve told him plainly: if he wants Switch time, he has to do storytime and outside time first. He is almost convinced.

That’s been my day for the last 16 days, minus the days my kids were with their dad. Hallelujah.

Some of you might think, ” Must be nice.” Others might think, “I don’t think I could do that for 16 days straight.” That’s because it’s my schedule. I built it after knowing all my constraints and what I was and wasn’t willing to live with.

Building it reminded me of my separation. I’ve lived through the end of a world before.

When I was newly separated, I had a schedule that got me through the interim period, that stretch between deciding to separate and actually having two new lives in two homes. I was on mom auto-pilot. My kids were seven and four. I took care of them, and when they were with their dad, I cried, took long baths, and phoned my friend Barb for therapy, because I thought I couldn’t afford the real thing. I cursed the world, and I cursed my spouse for throwing me into an interim period I had no control over.

I drifted for a year, blown around like a leaf, at the whims of family law, my emotions, my spouse, and my kids. Then I began my new normal as a divorced mom of a seven- and four-year-old. I still had day-long cry fests after drop-offs. I still had conflicts with my ex. I dragged myself out of bed to survive the day and to make sure my kids did too, but I was miserable.

About six months post-divorce, I had a breakdown, or maybe it was an epiphany. I decided I wasn’t going to keep going about my days the way I had been.

It took longer the first time. But I built a new normal. I learned how to deal with my constraints, the biggest one being my own emotional state. I realized my thoughts about the unaffordability of therapy were costing me more than therapy actually would, so I hired a coach, someone else’s help, not mine, and we started co-creating something new.

I was building resilience and learning to adapt to hard things and come out the other side still standing.

The separation days were horrid. I was being blown around by a force I couldn’t control. The C+ days are horrid too, and I have no control over them.

And I’m going to be okay.

Living Apart Together and Personal Finances

by | Sep 2, 2019 | Divorce and Separation, Parenting & Co-Parenting

We’re Basically a LAT Couple

Living Apart Together, LAT for short, is a relatively new acronym for couples who are romantically involved but choose not to move in together. Along with yuppies and DINKs, we have LATs.

I sometimes wonder why this wasn’t a thing when I was young and just assumed moving in with a boyfriend was the next obvious step. My wasband, that’s the past tense of husband, and I might still be married if we’d never combined a household in the first place.

And have you noticed? Divorced co-parents are already living a version of a LAT relationship, minus the romance. My wasband and I have weekly meetings about the kids, their homework, their schedules. We have more genuinely constructive conversations now than we ever managed while married. We coordinate, we collaborate, and we show up for the same goals and events from two separate addresses.

Actual LAT couples, the romantic kind, tend to be people who’ve already been divorced once and know exactly what they’re avoiding. Living apart cuts out most of the friction that comes from sharing space, the toilet seat, the shoes colonizing the closet, whoever never loads the dishwasher, but it usually comes at a real cost. It’s expensive to be a single adult, and combining two incomes under one roof is often the only way to actually get ahead financially. In a city like Vancouver, that math isn’t optional for most people. So most couples eventually move in anyway, not because they want to, but because staying apart is a luxury.

Which is exactly why the co-parenting version is worth noticing. My ex and I get the real benefits of LAT: low-friction collaboration, real partnership on the things that matter, without ever having to solve that financial math, because we were never trying to be a couple. We’re just two people who figured out how to run a shared project well from a distance.

Turns out you don’t need romance to make LAT work. You just need a good reason to stay coordinated, and enough distance to skip the toilet seat argument entirely.