It's All About, Like, Duality and Shit

If we’re honest (as I strive to be), we don’t really have many experiences that can easily be labeled with one feeling. Isn’t it strange, then, that we all seem to have a natural urge to declare that we feel one specific way about any given situation? I’ve worked with a whole lot of clients over the years who feel intense guilt that they feel a mix of feelings about a loss, or a change, or a choice they’ve made. So even as we can feel happy and sad at the same time, or grateful and anxious, or relieved and angry, we tend to worry that we’re doing it wrong or that someone else would feel it “correctly”.

Lake Erie Yearly Meeting’s annual gathering, for me, has consisted of a dizzying array of different feelings, coming in twos and threes, pretty much non-stop. Part of that is because of having less energy than usual. Part of it is because a big Quaker event is a new situation for me to be in. And still another part of it is about me naturally being an introvert in the first place. These past two days, I’ve just been in a lot of different situations and have been outside of my comfort zone pretty much all the time.

That makes for a rough overall experience. Not because I don’t like the people who have surrounded me—it’s the opposite! I really enjoy hanging out with other Quakers, and the people at this conference are the coolest group of folks I can ever remember attending an event with (and I’ve gone to a lot of conferences). It’s just that everything feels like it’s too much for me to handle. There’s a lot of time built into the daily schedule to spend time building community with each other, and I’m already so emotionally overwhelmed that I tend to avoid those opportunities.

There’s also a LOT on the schedule. We were warned at the orientation to pace ourselves, and they were right. The first thing I could have opted to attend this morning started at 6:45am, and the last thing I could have stayed for ends at 10:30. And let me remind you that the event started on Thursday, and goes until Sunday. If that doesn’t make you exhausted too, then you have a lot more stamina than me to begin with.

So I’ve been trying to give myself a lot of gaps between stuff, and to allow myself space to rest and rejuvenate between social interactions, and it’s all pretty much worn me down to a nub. I went back to the hotel and slept for two hours this afternoon, and that gave me enough energy to spend another five or six hours at LEYM, but I still had to miss the plenary address because I just didn’t have it in me. I did, however, have an excellent wood-fired pizza.

Tonight was also the grief sharing session, and that was really challenging for me. I’m glad I went to it, because it was good for me to hear a lot of what other folks had to say about their own grief journeys. It was also really hard for me to be a part of a group session and not step in and try to facilitate it—I stayed quiet, but had a challenging time being a participant rather than the person in charge. That’s probably just my many years of experience running a suicide loss support group, but is also likely something to do with wanting to distance myself from my own pain and shield myself with my professionalism. There was a wide array of beliefs and theological perspectives that were expressed in the session, and some of them were really upsetting and triggering for me.

That’s bound to happen if you take any random assortment of people and have them discuss something that you’ve been thinking about nonstop for two months, I bet. Keeping my own thoughts and feelings about Kellie separate from the beliefs some folks talked about was hard, and it was also hard not to want to argue with them about some stuff that I thought could actually have been counter-productive to the grieving process of others in the group besides me. But you should all be proud of me for not speaking up even though I wanted to.

All of that took a huge amount of energy from me, when my storage tanks were already close to empty. So I needed to leave the university and take a walk in a nature preserve while having a conversation with myself, or Kellie, or God, or all three. That was a beautiful experience, and I’m really glad I stepped away and took another break.

I don’t want to leave anyone with the impression that I didn’t have beautiful experiences this weekend, because I did. My main reason for wanting to go was to get to see some of our friends from Ann Arbor who we’ve never met in person, and I have been able to get hugs and compassion and love from them all. Mission accomplished. In fact, the conversation I had with someone in the hall immediately after that grief session was worth my trip all by itself. Being told by more than one person that we are family to our Ann Arbor community was deeply meaningful to me. It’s those small moments of community that have really defined the positive aspects of this conference for me.

I went in early this morning for a worship sharing session, and that essentially looks like a small group of folks reflecting on a central theme and then speaking from our own experience about that theme. Today’s query was related to experiences when you’ve been surprised about the impacts of others extending kindness and compassion to you during difficult times.

That gave me the chance to share that I have experienced a staggering amount of kindness from so many people who love Kellie and who love me since she died. But beyond that, that the greatest kindness I have been faced with for the past two months has been the kindness that Kellie touched so many people with while she was alive. The reminders I get from students, her clients, our families, our friends, and others who have known Kellie about how deeply she cared about them and about the ripples of her kindness which have inspired them to be that in others’ lives, in turn.

Someone else in the worship session built off that and spoke at length about several of the times that Kellie helped her and cared for her and made a difference in her life, in both big and small ways. That was really good for me to hear, though it was tough to cry in front of a group of (mostly) strangers.

Kellie would laugh at me if I told her that she was the most loved and most cared-for person ever. She felt like I was out there in the world more than she was, and so she thought she was sometimes just the “and Kellie” part of Matt and Kellie. She didn’t feel like she could ever do enough to make people stay present in her life, and the times when our orbits would intersect with others’ and then swing away for another season were hard times for Kellie. But even as she wasn’t able to internalize the fact that she was so impactful to so many, she was actually making that love, compassion and kindness felt by everyone around her.

My hope is that we can learn a lesson from that: We don’t have to be confident about the difference we make. We just have to do it anyway, and have faith that we are sowing seeds in the world that will outlive us. She did that, and I want to do it too.

I’ve called myself a pragmatist for a long time. I want to make a tangible difference instead of just thinking about abstract concepts. And I believe that imperfect vessels can still be of use. We can do so much good even if we’re not confident, or if we’re not always convicted that we’re walking the correct path, or if we constantly screw up in both big and small ways. I hear people saying all the time that you have to deal with your stuff first if you’re going to be a good social worker, and I think that’s ridiculous. If we had to be perfect to do good work, nobody would be doing any work at all.

So if you take away anything from this today, it’s all about duality. We can enjoy and not enjoy a thing. We can be anxious and brave at the same time. We can do good and feel bad. Isn’t that just being a person?

Until next time,

Matt