Navigating Your Way Through Difficult Times

Excerpted from
Tough Transitions; Navigating Your Way Through Difficult Times
By Elizabeth Harper Neeld, Ph.D.

My dictionary tells me that to transit is to pass over, across, or through. I read into this definition that there is some kind of barrier present, maybe a high granite mountain to climb over, a rushing river to lord. Or at least a distance to travel where you are neither at the place you left nor the place you are going to.

And when my friend says to me while we're having a cup of coffee on her back porch, "During a time of transit it's natural for everything to seem foreign and weird," she means these words as comfort. What she is suggesting is that a tough transition is a process ... just as my dictionary also confirms: transit (noun): the process of passing from one form, state, or stage to another. A passage.

And it only stands to reason that when something-or someone-is in process, going from one form, state, or stage to another, things will be pretty much a mess. Formless, changing by the moment. Like that amoeba we used to watch under the microscope in high school biology-a blob of squirming protoplasm that kept shape-shifting, extending what my science teacher used to call a "finger" of protoplasm here, a "false foot" there.

To make matters more difficult, we are expected to be brilliant at work, have fun at our cousin's wedding party, and keep the household running smoothly through all this upheaval. "Regular life" marches right on. We may be ricocheting like a silver shot in a kid's pinball game, but we still have to catch the bus at 9:04 and decide whether or not to sign the kids up for summer camp by the fifteenth. No matter that we are dealing with a situation that has knocked us winding-the "world out there" will cut us no slack.

And I'm afraid-in spite of the fact that we are transiting in another country, a country that is an undefined, empty place-there are no signs that say, "Go this way." There is nothing that looks familiar. What we need is some kind of map of the terrain. But who has been into this territory-' and lived to tell a coherent tale?

Well, it does happen in the movies. As a metaphor at least. Remember the heroine Nicole Kidman plays in Cold Mountain who goes through all kinds of travails as she waits for her beloved to return from fighting in the War between the States? Though there are pains and dangers, upheavals and despairs, we see her in the last frames of the movie, out under the trees playing with her little daughter, enjoying a meal with family and friends. If you like the classics, you'll probably remember Jeremiah Johnson. The Robert Redford character, who came to be called the Mountain Man, goes into the Rockies shortly after the Civil War and lives to come out a dozen years later knowing how to navigate the roaring rivers and to make a fire in a blowing snow. "You've come a far piece, pilgrim," the old trapper tells him near the end of the movie. "Feels like far," answers Jeremiah Johnson.

And Lewis and Clark-with a lot of help from Sacagawea - did finally make it to Astoria, where they could stand on the cliff and see the Pacific Ocean. They went south sometimes when they should have gone north; carried their boats on their heads across the rocks to a river that then turned out to be missing: ran into black bears and lost their compasses. But they did finally traverse the unknown continent. And we have their maps and journals to prove it.

So Many Tough Transitions

Life gives all of us a curriculum. What we glean from our experiences with this curriculum may be called common sense, accumulated wisdom, or just barn raising and quilt making in the village. But regardless of what we call the learning, when individual experiences amass from enough of us, they become a wellspring of knowledge. And sharing this knowledge is what makes us a community.

I learned this personally a number of years ago when my young husband, in perfect health, dropped dead one late July afternoon. I found my way out of that undefined, empty country only because of the generosity of people around me who told me their stories and gave me their clues. From these others' experiences, I made my own map for moving through and out of the territory; and I've spent my time ever since trying to add my contribution to the wellspring of knowledge. Isn't that the best way any of us can say "thank you"?

Like everyone else, I didn't get just one chance to learn about tough transitions. They do seem to come in all shapes and sizes. And we seem never to get to the end of them. There's changing careers, moving to another city (or another country), losing a job, taking care of (and then losing) parents, being left by someone we had committed to or ourselves doing the leaving. There's the kids moving out (or back in), our own aging, the retirement account crashing, rebel cells that act up and wreak havoc in the body. There's changing careers, having a baby, blending two families, and retiring. There's the loss of memory of flexibility, of patience. There's the shock from betrayal, the anger from unprovoked attack, the confusion that comes when what we had always been able to count on in a moment disappears. There's death, disaster, and despair. Yes, I'm afraid we all know what it is like to live in what seems like at times nothing but a series of-or worse, a set of simultaneous-tough transitions.

Drawing a Map of the Terrain of Tough Transitions

Over the years I've tried to understand as much as possible about these tough transitions. I've wanted to survive, of course; but I've wanted to do more than that. I've wanted to survive with well-being. Since on any given day I-like you-am likely to find myself in the beginning of yet another tough transition, is there anything that, if I could know it, would guide me through the undefined country ? Anything that would say, not "Here is what you are supposed to do," not "Here are the 1-2-3 clear and simple steps," but "Here is some accumulated wisdom from people who have traversed this terrain and reflected upon it. Here are offerings of experiences from people who have paid attention."? I wanted those experiences culled into one usable implement. . . but none existed.

So, after reflecting on the challenges of tough transitions for more than twenty years, I sat down with a talented friend of mine and said, "Help me draw a map of the terrain of tough transitions." I had in mind something like what Aristotle used when he wrote his how-to manual for students preparing to give public speeches. He covered subjects such as how to make emotional yet ethical appeals to the listeners and how to deliver a speech most effectively. In addition to giving sensible and useful advice on organization and presentation of these public orations, Aristotle also offered guidance on how to find something to say, or finding the "best" thing to say.

Aristotle's advice went something like this:

Picture your mind as a land with several kinds of places or regions or haunts in it. These places (called topoi in Greek; "topics" for a loose translation) stand for different kinds of ways to view or think about a subject. Just as each part of the country-desert or mountain-would have a climate of its own, Aristotle said, so each area of the mind has its characteristic way of thinking.