Maybe Plan B is the best you can hope for (letting go of the dream that needs to die)

image credit: Allef Vinicius, Unsplash

Listen to me read this post…

Last night, after sunset, I lay in my hammock in the growing darkness of my backyard feeling low. I couldn’t shake the growing melancholy that’s been with me this week, but I couldn’t quite name it either. Why, in the middle of all of the excitement of finally launching the Centre for Holding Space after many months of hard work, was I feeling so much sadness?

Perhaps it was launch hangover? Perhaps it was weariness from holding space for some of my daughters’ crises this week, combined with disappointment in myself when I missed a baseball game and let down my nephew, combined with some vicarious sadness for a daughter’s friend who’s been here a lot this week because of family conflict? Perhaps it was worry over my daughter’s health or concerns over my other daughter’s disappointing job prospects?

I gave up on the hammock last night and came inside to let Netflix put a pause on the overthinking.

And then, some time in the middle of a mediocre TV show, it hit me… today is my anniversary. Twenty-seven years ago, I was a hopeful bride entering a new chapter in my life. Twenty-seven years ago, I was oblivious of the hardships that would bring that chapter to an end. 

And tomorrow is another kind of anniversary. Seventeen years ago – the day after we celebrated our tenth anniversary – my dad was killed in a farm accident.

Suddenly I knew what my body was holding. It was grief over the many losses that this week represents. It was the loss of dreams, the loss of security, the loss of hope, the loss of belonging, and the loss of lineage. It was also the loss of home (my mom left the farm shortly after) and the loss of a grandfather for my kids. 

It was the loss of Plan A.

Earlier this week, my daughter and I watched the movie Interstellar. It’s a too-long sci-fi about a hero who must pass through a worm-hole into another galaxy to find another inhabitable planet on which to relocate humanity (because the earth is dying). Frankly, I’m weary of the hero’s journey trope in movies in which someone (usually a white male) has to make the ultimate sacrifice and abandon his family in order to save the world, but there was at least one thing in the movie’s plot line that I found intriguing.

Finding another planet and relocating humanity is Plan A. It’s what motivates the hero (the only man left who knows how to fly into space) to take the journey because he wants to save his children and create a future for them. Plan B – the fall-back plan if the hero and his crew can’t return to this galaxy and to earth – is to stay in the new galaxy, let the old earth and all her inhabitants die, and colonize another planet with the frozen embryos they’re carrying with them. 

At some point in the movie, (spoiler alert), after the hero and his crew have made multiple sacrifices and are somewhere in the other galaxy, we find out that the scientist who was the mastermind behind the journey knew that Plan A would never work. BUT… he also knew that if the hero didn’t BELIEVE that Plan A was possible (that his sacrifice was worth it in order to save his kids), he would never be motivated to make the journey. Plan A was what got him to the place where Plan B could be implemented.

Sometimes Plan B is the only thing that CAN happen, but we only get there because we commit ourselves to a belief in Plan A.

This morning I rode my bike to the park and sat on a bench with my journal. The tears started to flow as I realized that my body was still holding some of the grief over the loss of Plan A. 

Plan A was what that blushing bride was carrying down the aisle twenty-seven years ago today. It was the dream of a traditional family unit – a home with a mom and a dad with good jobs and a couple of kids with the white picket fence and the annual vacations to interesting places. It was stability and ease and it was raising kids who’d still have grandparents into their adulthood. It was the kind of Big Love and Romance the fairy tales had held out in front of her. 

Plan A didn’t involve divorce and single parenting and a dad killed under a tractor or a mom dying too young of cancer. It didn’t include suicide attempts or psych wards or dead babies. There was no thought of trauma or grief or tear-soaked pillows in the middle of the night. None of that was there, in her thoughts, when she walked down the aisle. They couldn’t be, or she would never have taken those steps into the unknown galaxy.

But maybe Plan A was never anything more than an illusion – the kind of mirage that keeps a person moving forward in a desert even when there is no water to be found. Maybe the belief in Plan A is what motivates us, in the early days when the world seems more black and white and full of clarity and promise and binary belief systems, so that we have the chance to grow and deepen enough to live into an acceptance of Plan B.

Maybe Plan A was never the point, it’s just the path to get us here.

For me, an acceptance of Plan B – the realization that my life wasn’t going to be a fulfillment of the hope that the blushing bride carried down the aisle along with her bouquet of white roses – is what brought me to the Centre for Holding Space. It’s what allowed me to make meaning of my mom’s death and write the blog post that catapulted this work into the world. It’s what was awakened in me when my stillborn son Matthew made his brief sojourn into the world and introduced me to grief and pointed me in the direction of the quest I’ve been on since. 

Plan B is full of grit and grief and resilience and learning to rise, like the Phoenix, from the ashes. Plan B is real and juicy and authentic and sometimes stormy and sometimes full of light. Plan B is learning to have difficult conversations with daughters who’ve been through the storm with you. Plan B is sitting in circle with other real people for deep and honest conversations. It’s shedding tears and learning to laugh through pain and it’s seeing the exquisite beauty that can show up even in the midst of chaos.

No, I wouldn’t have chosen Plan B, but if I hadn’t found my way here, I wouldn’t know the pure joy that this work has brought me. I wouldn’t have found my way into genuine community and the kinds of deep relationships that give life meaning.

I wouldn’t have discovered that life has more purpose and beauty when you let go of the illusion. 

Truthfully? Though I let myself grieve Plan A for a moment in the park this morning, because my body needed me to acknowledge it and not brush it aside, I wouldn’t have it any other way. The loss of Plan A is what brought me to this beautiful life, this beautiful community, and this beautiful work. And next month, it’s what will allow my book to be born into the world.

From this side of the Great Loss, Plan B looks pretty amazing and richly textured. In retrospect, Plan A looks rather two-dimensional.

I’m going to celebrate the beautiful complexity that is Plan B. And I won’t be afraid of the grief over losing Plan A, because that’s what gives the beauty its shadow and texture.

Going down to the bone

I am going down to the bone. A deep cleanse, a stripping away – like a diamond cutter chipping away the grit to reveal the sparkle.

img_6268This week, there was a large dumpster parked in front of my house. In went the old couches whose springs no longer held their shape. Then the detritus collected in our garage over the eighteen years we’ve lived here. Broken broom handles, kept just in case there might be a use for them some day. Bent tools, old bicycle tires, empty cardboard boxes. Next came the branches I’d trimmed from the shrubs and trees in the Spring, a broken bench, a rusted table from the backyard, and old playground toys long abandoned by grown children.

Finally, I stripped the floors in two-thirds of the house and dragged those out onto the growing heap in the dumpster. Each room took a little more effort than the last and each increased effort caused a little more wear and tear on my body. First I pulled out the stained carpet in the living room and hallway, the padding underneath, and the strips of upside-down nails at the edge that held it in place. Then the warped cork floor came out of the bathroom.

img_6273The kitchen, with its subfloor and multiple layers of linoleum increased the challenge, but I was up for it. After watching DIY Youtube videos, I set the circular saw at the right depth, put on safety goggles, and cut it into pieces. Then came the prying, the jockeying of appliances, and the endless nail removal.

The entrance, with parquet wood glued solidly to the floor, is challenging me most and it’s the only room that remained uncompleted when they picked up the full dumpster yesterday.

Why have I done this all alone? Multiple reasons, I suppose. Cost is probably the first factor, but there are more. I wanted to prove to myself that I could – that I was strong enough and capable enough and stubborn enough and fierce enough. And I knew that it would be cathartic – to work out through my body some of the stuff that gets stuck in my mind. I was right on both counts – today, though my body aches, I feel strong and fierce and a little more healthy.

img_6266And there were other reasons – deeper reasons… Like the fact that I had some shame about the state of my house and didn’t want anyone to see the stains on the carpet, the layers of grit under the carpet, or the dried bits of food stuck to the floor under the fridge. Or the fact that I felt like this was my work to do – to cleanse this space of the brokenness of the past so that my daughters and I have a new foundation under our feet for the next part of our lives.

Eighteen years ago this month, we moved into this house with two toddlers. Since then, the floors have taken a lot of wear and tear – spilled milk, spilled wine, spilled tears, spilled blood, spilled lives. We sprayed and scrubbed and sprayed and scrubbed again, but carpets can only take so much, and eventually the stains were so deep it was hard to know the original colour of the carpet.

We didn’t change the carpet, though, because we had hopes for bigger changes. Fourteen years ago, we drew up plans to add a big new kitchen onto the side of the house. There was no point in replacing floors, we told ourselves – we might as well do it all at once. So we put it off until we had the money.

But then we started making choices that pushed the renovation plans further and further into the future. First, Marcel quit his job to go to university and be a stay-at-home dad. Then I took a pay-cut to work in non-profit instead of government. And then I took an even bigger leap (and pay-cut) and became self-employed. The money was just never abundant enough to justify a big expense like a new kitchen.

Instead, we lived with ugly floors and a cramped kitchen. Sadly, though, that changed the way we felt about our house. We put in less and less effort to keep it clean and we invited fewer and fewer people over because the house never looked the way we wanted it to look.

But the floors weren’t the real problem. Perhaps, in fact, they were simply a reflection of the deeper problem. There were stains in our marriage too, and no matter how many times we tried to scrub them out, they kept popping back up again, revealing themselves to us when the light shone through at the right angle. The stains were harder and harder to ignore, and we finally knew that, just like the floors, we had to tear apart our marriage to see whether the foundation beneath it was strong enough to warrant salvaging.

We tried to renovate – visited multiple counsellors over the course of a few years – but finally it was time to make a hard decision. The marriage was too broken to fix. It was better to release ourselves from it so that we each could find our way to growth and healing. Last October, he moved out, and I started decluttering and painting. The flooring, though, had to wait until we’d signed a separation agreement and the house belonged to me.

Now, as I wait for a contractor to install the new flooring (my DIY abilities only take me so far – it’s good to know when to call in the professionals), we walk on bare wooden floors in empty rooms. Our voices echo against the walls in all of this hard space.

It’s all been stripped to the bone – myself, my house, and my marriage. 

Unlike the marriage, the foundation of the house is still sturdy and strong. Only a few places need attention – where it squeaks, new screws will be applied. Soon it will be built upon to create a safe and comfortable home for the family that lives here now – my daughters and me. We’ll begin to fill it with laughter again, and when there are couches with sturdy springs, we’ll welcome friends to sit with us and hear our stories. And when we spill, we’ll mop up the spills and carry on.

We had to let go of dreams along the way – the new kitchen never materialized and the family isn’t the shape we thought it would always be – but we are sturdy enough to survive and resilient enough to adjust and grow new dreams. Despite the dismantling of the marriage, our family still has a solid enough foundation to hold us.

My own foundation is strong too. In fact, it feels stronger than ever. All of this chipping away is bringing me closer and closer to my essence, to the diamond under the grit. I’ve cleared out what didn’t serve me anymore, I’ve put some new screws in place to fix whatever squeaked, and I’ve called in professionals when that seemed wise. I feel fresh and alive and ready to hold space for whatever wants to unfold next in my life.

The liminal space has been hard and painful and I still ache from the effort it’s taken. Some of the tearing away revealed grit and shadow I didn’t want anyone to see, not even myself. But in the end, there is grace and the light is shining through and it is all worth it.

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