The Many Facets of Us

How many sides are there to each of us? As I have turned time and attention to creative writing this past year, I have been asking myself this question. We are all such unique and complex creatures. What makes us who we are? What helps each of us to feel whole?

Just last night I gathered with a group of friends and colleagues from around the world on zoom. We heard stories from a friend working in home health with black elders in Philadelphia, hearing the most fascinating and powerful stories of personal accomplishment and fortitude in the face of redlining and racist policy violence. While she helps to heal bodies she holds space for life review, bearing witness to the sacredness of the individual and to history. We heard from folks innovating as they are finding ways to use online platforms to continue providing therapeutic engagement to those living in senior communities, now closed to guests due to the Covid virus. We heard from folks who exhausted by work in healthcare, are spending time immersed in making music as their world has become smaller. We heard from a writer who has used her big, beautiful, neuroscience filled brain to educate the world about the human side of living with neurological illnesses. She is now and tuning in to the fear and shame she sees in our culture around memory to normalize how and what we remember. Together we grieved the loss of a friend and role model, who actively demonstrated to us all how to have more empathy and engage in experiential learning as not just an educational tool, but as a way of life. We shared, encouraged, held space, laughed and grew together from this shared space and time in our little Brady Bunch squares across the screen. Yet there are so many facets to each of us that a square of screen and two hours could not begin to scratch the surface. As the friend and colleague who gathered us together said in closing, “Let us leave wanting more.” And so we did.

What parts of you want to be explored? What facets of you stay quietly under the surface, but could benefit from light? What facets of you might shine a light for others if you chose to share them?

Writing now is giving me the opportunity to explore the unexpressed and often under explored facets of my own self. My professional muscle is strong. While giving so much to that area, I have neglected, or at least not had the energy to develop, so many other facets of myself. Over the years I have written countless emails, educational materials, client assessments, workshops, website text and had thousands of conversations with folks on so many aspects of dementia, aging, end-of-life, navigating healthcare, and care giving. All the while I was concentrating on career and work, I have been doing the personal work of healing, developing self-compassion, growing into an emotionally grounded adult as I shed the learned behaviors of child and young adulthood that did not serve or protect me. For decades this work has been slowly, steady, and sometimes, persistently painful. Now, in the midst of a global pandemic, when life has shifted so dramatically, I am taking this opportunity to dig in. It’s time to distill the internal work, the evolution of those other assets of myself.

There will be folks who know and love me who will be surprised, possibly shocked or at times put off by what or how I write here in this space. I had to decide to accept and respect those responses before I began. It was not an easy decision, but a healing one. Others will be inspired to find their own voice, continue their own healing journey, reach out for support or be gentler with themselves.  I have spent my entire life contributing to community, serving others and taking good care of those around me. I will continue to do those things. But for now, and for a while, it’s time to explore those other muscles, those other facets, those other spaces inside that have not been given daylight or voice. Each of us has our own stories, to be told, if we choose to tell them, in our own time, in our way. I have spent decades of my personal and professional life holding space for others to tell their stories. I am now holding this space for myself.