I am always on the alert for experiences that throw one into the deep end. I think of them as “deep enders.”
Keeping your cool while caring for a cantankerous relative, dealing with a difficult colleague, figuring out how to finesse an awkward workplace situation, or how to remain loving while saying something difficult to your partner all fit snugly into this “Notes from the Deep End” space. In order to climb out of these depths, one needs patience, diplomacy, self-confidence and abiding love.
But if ever there was a doozy of a “deep ender,” it is joblessness. That’s because unemployment strikes at so many areas of one’s well-being.
First, of course, job loss raises huge questions tied to one’s practical survival, and sounds alarming questions about one’s ability to take care of oneself and one’s loved ones. And just when a strong sense of self is needed the most, joblessness lays waste to one’s emotional foundations, too, chiefly by taking away the sense of identity that comes with one’s work.
Whether one is a lobsterman or a lawyer, a waitress or a writer, work defines life in myriad ways. It directs the environment in which the days, weeks, years, even lifetimes are spent. It throws co-workers together and forms easy and uneasy alliances that become part of the daily round. It provides a sense of challenge day after day, and some self-worth when each challenge is met.
Whether a former employer provides a financial severance package, there is always an emotional “severance package.” It is filled with tears, fear, sleeplessness, supplication, aid applications and a world of unknowns.
Just as it is wise to look over any financial and exit paperwork that a company provides, it is also vitally important to take a good, hard look at the emotional severance package, too. Don’t turn your back on it. Stare it down. Take it in. Take it ON!
This does not mean wallowing in one’s tears, fanning the flames of one’s fears, feeling so frustrated by sleeplessness that rest is utterly impossible. It does not entail feeling like a beggar when seeking financial aid and social services. It does not mean dwelling on the unknowns.
It does require acknowledging the frightening whorl you are in, tipping your hat to it, giving it its due. It means allowing yourself a good cry (or several of them) to release stress. It means getting support when you feel fearful. It means accepting sleeplessness as a normal and even healthy reaction to trauma and using those wakeful midnight hours to some advantage. It means recognizing that you feel like a supplicant, but don’t need to come across as one. And finally, it means remembering that all of those unknowns surely contain something positive, if only you can steady yourself enough to find them.
Take it from this “Notes from the Deep End” columnist. A plunge into life’s depths always offers insights and strength. Always.