Letter from a Friend: On Transitions
Written by Danielle Levanas, MA, LCAT, RDT/BCT
Relationship Coach and Drama Therapist
While it’s still hitting triple digits here in LA, most of the country is embracing fall. It’s the season of transition, the season of letting go, but here I am stuck: sleep deprived, hormonal, and cranky. It’s hot. My children are early risers, and I greet the dawn with a groan and a wince. My sciatica is acting up, and I’m running on fumes.
Two steps forward. Two steps back. That’s what motherhood feels like sometimes. With an 18-month-old and a 7-year-old, we are deep in the throes of back-to-school. I have an intimate and ongoing relationship with the dishes and ants, with dirty diapers and Pokémon characters. I miss being able to prioritize my own needs. I miss the self I used to be.
Grief hits me heavy this time of year. As a child, I remember having deep existential feelings around all sorts of transitions. The saddest time of the day was dusk, that fading in-between time, where we released the day and made space for the darker unknowns of night. Now decades later, I work as a drama therapist on how to move through transitions in a more intentional way.
Yes, I am both: A Stuck Mother, and a Wise(ish?) Therapist. And, yes, we each are many.
In drama therapy we work on the assumption that each of us contains many roles. These roles combine to create who we are, and often they exist in contradiction to each other. Tolerating transitions between these roles is a sign of health, well-being, and creative problem solving.
Transitions in life can be destabilizing. Often, we encounter them without choice: losing (or not getting) a job, ageing, moving up a grade, or dealing with loss. But even transitions that we chose can challenge us in unexpected ways: having a baby, moving, a new friendship, or a new position. Transitions between roles that we play in our lives can also be difficult. I avoided writing this blog post for over a month because I wasn’t sure how to hold the deep contradiction between The Stuck Mother and The Wise Therapist. Will clients want to work with me less if I expose how little I have figured out in my personal life too?
Ultimately, transitions take us from two states of being: what-we-know and what-we-don’t-know-yet. We often feel pressure to “figure it out,” to “make a decision,” or to “take the leap!” The task of tolerating a less exciting space between what-we-know and what-we-don’t-know-yet doesn’t get a lot of practice in our world today. And yet, it feels like it holds the key to so many questions of our time.
What would it mean to slow down and intentionally process the contradictions that we are holding? Can I still be successful, strong, powerful, wise, desired, and safe while being transparent about a vulnerable transition I am going through? What are the ways that we can be held in this moment of unknown?
“Good Mother” and “Playing Through Transitions” are two offerings from Spaces Therapy that explore these questions. Both groups ask participants to take a brief period out of their lives and show up for themselves and each other in the moment. You are invited! Even if you don’t know what you are processing or what you are in for, follow that spark of curiosity that has kept you reading this far and join us.
I first met Morgan Dixon as a participant in the Good Mother monthly meet-up, and I quickly came to rely on the mellow, inclusive space where I felt safe to be both messy and a mess. We then went on to develop Playing Through Transitions together as a way to engage more fully with embodiment and creativity, using techniques from drama therapy and psychodrama. The groups are separate, but the underlying values are the same.
As Ram Dass said, we are all just walking each other home. Even when we don’t feel like we are making any progress, we know that things will eventually change. In the meantime, I hope you will show up as you are, in all your complex glory. Answers and solutions are the byproduct of the process, not the point. The point is something else entirely. In my Bluey-addled brain, I don't know what it is, but maybe we can figure it out together.