Unemployment: My Holy Pause

Today is my first Sunday evening in years where I am not preparing for work the next day (short vacations not included), and I don’t know when my next Sunday evening before work will be. This past Friday I said goodbye to co-workers, clients, and a hospital system that gave me my start as a fledgling therapist. I played Save Tonight by Eagle-Eye Cherry as I drove away. The romantic goodbye storyline didn’t completely fit, but I played it nine years ago as I drove away from my last evening working at Pizza Hut before leaving for college. So, the painfully sentimental part of me had to play the song; it’s just tradition now.

When I finally started to listen to that voice of Knowing inside of me, about a year ago, I realized I needed a break. I could hear the voice as I curled my hair at 6:48am while I got ready for the work day. I need a break. Or, the voice would come as I started nearing the parking lot of the clinic. I need a break. The voice grew louder as my ability to cope with the uncertainty of my client’s safety and frustration with systems mounted. Then, I lost a client to suicide last summer. The voice started to sound more like a plea. I neeed a break. I started to recognize the weight of what I was carrying in my body. I felt electricity run down my arms into my steering as I drove into work and numbness when I drove home. One day the thought spontaneously arose, “This stress is killing me.” My Knowing wasn’t exaggerating; science has told us what stress does to the body. 

I had to set aside everything I was told I should do and listen to what I knew I must do. The Shoulds told me all their fears about not having job security, insurance, and benefits. They told me stories about having value in society only through a job, how my worth depended on my productivity. 

As I mentioned earlier, though, this was around the time I really started to find my voice. I realized the voices of the Shoulds were not mine, and, therefore, completely unhelpful. My voice is never in the Shoulds. No one else knows my unique experience better than me. 

I have always believed in living by seasons. “Hard” work has always flowed for me when I work in seasons. As a runner, I would have a season to focus on high mileage, a season to focus on race-specific pace, a season for racing, and a season for rest. A similar format would follow for school. A season for reading and notes, a season for test taking, a season for application, and a season for rest. I think we must look at nature to be the greatest teacher of this concept; she has always known that a flower does not bloom all year long. In fact, I just read about a cactus that only blooms once every fifty years. I hope that cactus does not live in a Capitalistic ecosystem, otherwise it would have been dug up or given psychiatric diagnosis before her flower even started to think about blooming.

In this style of seasonal living that I am both attracted to and feel psychologically and spiritually designed for, each season is just as valuable as the other. The Shoulds, who are really the voices of our society, culture, or family, do not speak of the value in the season of rest. It is easy to see how rest is not valued in a Capitalistic economy and exploited in our Patriarchal, White Supremacist society. Thus, making a season of rest highly unattractive and unattainable for many. 

I am learning to trust myself by choosing my voice more often than the voice of the Shoulds. Listening to my Knowing has led me to my Selah - a term I recently learned which means a “holy pause.” The Selah is a mark found in the bible to indicate a break in text, noting a point where the reader is invited to pause, reflect, and absorb the preceding text. That is exactly what I wish to do with my first days, maybe weeks, of my Selah - pause, reflect, and absorb. I am feeling guided to share my experience in this space of rest and transition with others, which is what I hope to use this blog for in the immediate future. 

This Sunday evening feels like my Selah within a Selah. I am reflecting on the job I am leaving and the work with clients I am pausing, before I begin my new season of rest and play. Based on this weekend, I also suspect it will be a Holy season of Spindrift and Justin’s peanut butter cups. 

With love and a happy belly,

Kier