Change - The Only True Constant
2020. My husband and I have jokingly termed it the “Year of the Dumpster Fire” in our house. It feels like it came out of nowhere and has consumed everything as we know it.
I know we aren’t the only ones that feel this way. Many of you have shared the weights you have been carrying in the treatment room. For some the heavy burdens of the current economic, social and physical consequences of COVID-19 feel at times like too much to carry. As the virus marches on, especially here in Florida; it has left many of us pondering job uncertainty, relationships that are shifting or ending, and what happens when we get ill? Furthermore, anxiety or depression that has been amplified by the loneliness of quarantine, a seemingly forceful reckoning of our attitudes about the greater good with a resistance to all of the changes that feel as though they have been thrust upon us all at once.
And some of you have even shared what I would call survivors guilt, keeping you up at night. You know you are one of the lucky ones, perhaps spared at work or able to quit your job all together in order to be home with your kids and yet you feel like you shouldn’t be happy because the world around you is seemingly on fire.
It is a lot. Can we just admit it? It’s a f*ck ton to carry.
And like all things that are a burden to carry, in typical human fashion, we resist it or at least some aspect of it because our brains are hard wired to move away from suffering. This resistance to it gives us a temporary feeling of control in a world that feels very much out of control. But when we resist, we don't show up as our best version of us. Instead, we can fall into non-nourishing thought patterns, lose our motivation, and feel as if we no longer have agency over our lives because external influences have become too overwhelming. The other thing this does, is prolong our pain by not accepting what is and deciding to move through it. We become stuck in the very thing we are avoiding.
When we get lost in the emotional swirl of pain, suffering and discomfort, we forget that these experiences are temporary. Did you know that science has recently discovered that the amount of biochemical stress that shows up in a person’s body as a reaction to a stressor is directly associated with our perception of time? Reminding yourself that everything is temporary, though it may be different, can and will help your health!
The upside of the dumpster fire of 2020 is like that any other fire, though. It reminds us of the necessity of change to grow something new in it’s place. In the art of alchemy, fire is the final process of purification, burning away all that no longer serves us even if we were emotionally attached to it.
How often do we get a planetary pattern interrupt like this??! Thankfully not often, but let’s not squander this opportunity!
This is your time to really get clear on what you want your future to look like, who you want to show up as, and how you are going to sashay your way back into the world when the smoke clears. One of our own, Christina Bickley Didyk, has decided to just that. She is going on sabbatical so that she can spend more precious moments with her kids and to reflect on how she wants to practice medicine when she feels the time is right for her to pick up her needles again. Of course, we wanted to resist her leaving. But deep down, we couldn’t be more proud that she is a living example of what she teaches. We are honored to still be in the business that she helped to shape for 8 years even if she is no longer with us in the day to day operations. Emily Armstrong has graciously stepped up as an operating partner to help keep Art of Acupuncture serving the community in its time of need.
Keep trusting and recognizing change is the only constant and flow with it my friends. And if you get stuck, we are here for you to shine the light on the way out.