Monthly Archives: August 2023

Blessed

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A photograph of an engraved glass apple and a bouquet of flowers on a desk

Today was probably my last convocation as a CSU Long Beach faculty member.

It’s one of those things that I knew but I didn’t really feel until my colleague Lindsay mentioned it, and then all of the sudden, I thought, “Yes, this is one of the first of the lasts of this semester, of this leg of my professional journey.”

There has been a part of me that has held this last convocation with a deep pang of sadness. It is the sadness of transition, of a chapter of my professional life coming to a close soon. It is the sadness of leaving the proximity of community that I have built over 11 years, that has nurtured me, and that loved me and continues to love me even as I grow and will soon leave it.

The pang of sadness is there because there has been so much joy. The joy of seeing staff and faculty colleagues that are friends and even chosen family, the joy of being together in the beautiful sunshine, the joy of belonging, of feeling seen and loved and honored.

Institutions are what they are and there are challenges to all of them. My son often tells me that universities are just collections of buildings where the learning takes place, but I know that this place has been more than that for me. People and communities have made this place my professional home. The many years, many challenges, many fights, some losses, other victories, the work and walk alongside so many people I cherish. That is what makes any place home.

While there has been sadness and joy, what has most profoundly been with me today is peace and gratitude. I have given with my whole heart to the people and programs that I’ve been involved with in the last 11 years. I will continue to give with my whole heart this semester. I will stay close to many cherished friends and colleagues that I have met here. I will drift away from others, after having passed a beautiful season together.

Not everyone finds a professional home. Not everyone feels seen and loved and joyful where they work. Not everyone gets the privilege of deep connection with brilliant, committed souls.

But I am blessed, even in transition, to have a forever family at CSULB.

Pause

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It’s been a week.

I am adjusting to the flow of this period of transition. It is both hard and emotional.

In the past, I would have just buried the hard and emotional in the flow of the constant work there is to do. (There is always more that can be done in this work.)

But I am practicing humanization (including towards myself which I often find most challenging).

In being with my full humanity, instead of pushing through to do one more thing, I am pausing. I am feeling. I am reflecting.

It is a lot.

Transitions involve grief. Even the best transitions and even those which are gradual require a process of grieving. It is certainly a different form of grief than many others I have been through, but it is a grief process nonetheless. It is a letting go of what was, a being with what is, and an uncertainty of what will be. (I’ve been thinking a lot about expanded notions of grief since listening to the “Hella Healing Grief” episode of the Black Gaze Podcast and want to express my deep gratitude to Dr. Farima Pour-Khorshid and Yaribel Mercedes for their perspectives on this which have helped me approach myself more gently in this time.)

I am sharing this here, publicly, because I am great at masking grief, at being effective and high achieving, at being happy, when I am also holding a lot of emotions. I have a sticker on my water bottle that reminds me, “It’s ok to feel many things at the same time.” I am reminding myself, reminding you who read this, we deserve pause, we deserve our own gentleness, we deserve the space to hold many things at the same time, to be however we are, even when that can feel confusing and inarticulable, even as we continue to press on and survive when we wanted to be thriving by now.

Sometimes we will have weeks like this week.

It will be a lot.

And that is a part of our humanity.

Feeling Transitions

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Photo of a sign that says, "Last First Day (I'm a Senior) and still humoring my mom. Please get that lady some Kleenex. August 9, 2023."

Today was my son’s last first day of his K-12 (primary/ secondary) schooling career.

Throughout this “rising senior” summer, I’ve had moments of fleeting awareness that this day was coming, that this benchmark would arrive, sooner than I was ready for it, and today, it did.

I did not need many Kleenex, as I predicted I might. Although a few (just a few!) tears were shed, mostly I did okay sitting in the passenger seat as he drove himself to school. I didn’t break down into heaping sobs after he left, like I did the first time I dropped him off to daycare as an infant. I know he’s going to be great and that we will navigate his senior year together which brings a lot of calm in my heart, even as change is hard.

Today, though, marked the first time I felt in my body the transitions we are going through this year. My son is off to his senior year. I am no longer department chair. I am transitioning roles and institutions, preparing for a move, cycling off important service roles, proposing new projects. There is a lot of motion.

People have been asking me for months how I’m feeling about all of these transitions. I have simply replied, “I don’t know. They don’t feel real to me yet….” until today, when they all feel real and immense and a little overwhelming.

This is a place I know well. Change has been a constant in my life for a long time, one I used to spend much energy running from. I am practicing, instead, what it means to be with all the things, to breathe deeply, to hold boundaries, to claim rest, to cultivate joy, in times of upheaval, in times of change, in times of transition.

I see my imperfections reflected in broken boundaries, in insecurities, in a tendency to continue doing too much for too many, but I am learning to give myself grace, to return to myself and my breath, and to see my imperfections as growing edges, staying present to the love and joy that is around me if I just pause to let it in.

I am also drawing from deep wells of community and dipping my toes into a growing pool of self-affirmation that I am beginning to fill. In holding space for myself to choose work and a walk that is generative, in learning to trust the choices I make that are aligned with the energy and commitments I have, I am making progress, slowly, but surely towards the better world that I believe in.