Today was treasure box restocking day.

This sounds close to ordinary, however it’s the right sized pocket of joy for practicing play therapists. My colleagues and I playfully ‘tried out’ the requested fidgets, add-ins for slime, and crisp dry erase markers. Our smiles stretch our cheeks, and our lungs reveled in the deep breathes that follow a spell of shooting the shit.
​
I followed up this timestamp with a walk to the dumpster. I felt my shoulders instinctively rise in preparation for the cold to steal my breath. However, warmth tickled my face as the sun shone with pride that it had finally surpassed seventy degrees outside.

Cue the dramatic exhale and another stretch of the cheeks.

Some days my frown lines superseded my smile lines.

My millennial soul is tightly bound by armor at a feeble attempt of perceived safety against the universe’s punches. What will the day bring? More Tylenol conspiracies? A school shooting? A sprinkle of poor luck and bad timing?

Even the most seasoned chaos junkies have their limits.

I took the long way back from the dumpster. I tucked my phone away in my pocket, rolled my shoulders, and nodded my quiet thanks to the sun as I soaked in the warmth. I leaned into gratitude for this moment, as I have been cold for longer than I could remember.

While my toes have been chilly, as has my peace.

Everything feels heavy.
The news. Endless illness. Unanswered questions.
Friend’s untimely accidents. Family health concerns.
My work.

It’s an odd level of separation. A mix of suffering and personhood. Holding space with herculean effort then going home to convince a toddler to finish her dinner. My soul has adapted to this whiplash mostly. I would be a liar if there weren’t nights the horror of what others have experienced dance behind my eyes.

Life is hard and has plenty of cold spells.

That’s why it is imperative we notice any micro doses of peace.

Like moments of sunshine on a brief walk to the trash.
A hot shower with no deadline.
A breathless chuckle when your cat does something silly.
Emergency chocolate.

Micro doses of peace are our tethers to the promise of hope. When we are surrounded by macro grief, micro joys serve as a reminder that other experiences exist. Grief tricks our minds into believing in an endless forever. It makes our big feelings sticky and wears out our central nervous systems.

Micro joys are our radical rebellions.

Our grit and our ‘screw you’ when the universe plays its untimely tricks. While we may not have control over a moment, we have influence over our takeaways. This will all evolve into a memory someday. So today, instead of harboring the coldness of other’s chapters, the muck of bad luck, or the whose-its and what-its of what could have been different, I will pocket the warmth of the sunshine and the smile that stretched my cheeks with some beautiful colleagues. 

Have you ever heard the saying “We make plans and God laughs?”

Well, he must be cackling up a storm recently because Holy Cow Batman, what a time it has been. This week, the first week of February, is the first week of this YEAR that both myself and my toddler have been well.

Don’t worry, I am fully prepared to be a cootie monster again by next week.

Preschool is not for the weak!

Perhaps it’s all the illness disrupting my ‘flow’, but I have been quite blunt at work. Not that I’m typically the queen of smooth or gentle deliveries, but I have evolved in this profession. I used to put so much energy into my deliveries, perseverating on whether the other could or would receive the feedback in the way I was intending. I used to do a lot of things that involved overthinking. Motherhood completely shapeshifted my experience of time. Some people get postpartum anxiety. I am the opposite. Having a baby alleviated much of my overthinking tendencies, largely because I simply do not have the time to invest in such a mindful activity.

Whether it be the influence of motherhood, the disruption of illness, or just the natural evolution of being a practicing clinician, I am not as fearful of a client’s reception of my feedback. It’s quite revealing what stage of change someone is at when you introduce a perspective that hits a little too close to home. People toy with the idea of therapy, yet those who are really ‘ready’ to change, bend, and shift are fewer and far between. 
Folks enter therapy talking about this and that and everything else but the underlying pain point.

It’s FAR easier to hyper-fixate on the dishes in the sink and not the past betrayal.

It’s FAR more tempting to elaborate on your frustrations with your boss than your frustrations with yourself.

It’s FAR easier to blame yourself than to accept that what happened to you isn’t your fault or something you had control over.

The list rolls on for quite a while.

We spend so much of our free time thinking about the wrong thing.

Most of life’s happenings are outside of our grasp of control.

If it’s attached to you, you have control (sometimes), and other than that influence is the farthest your reach can go. Influence is such an underrated talking point.  We all get stuck on the ‘control’ aspect, like perseverating on it will miraculously give us magical powers to manipulate it. Unfortunately, none of us have yet acquired a Pinocchio of control.

We do have the power of influence, however.

Yes, I will agree, it’s not as shiny or tantalizing as control. Control has the promise of absolutes, something us humans drool over. However, influence still carries its fair share of power.
Influence comes with with the price of acceptance. Influence has you sign on the dotted line accepting “I recognize my agency AND accept the gamble and risk of change”.

Yuck. Change.

I smirk at my own eye roll because change has evolved me for the better. Without change I would be stuck in the past of someone who does not serve me any longer. Influence is all the power any of us need, because control denies humility, grace, and opportunity for connection.

Influence accepts the human in us.
Control denies it.

Without control, I have discovered my authentic self. I have witnessed my strength and lived through experiences I never thought I could. I have discovered the transformative beauty of pain and mistakes. I have had opportunities to heal my abilities to trust myself.

So, I will leave you with this.

In between this and that and everything else, remember to loosen your grip on control. It was never meant to be yours. Instead, lean into your influence, and accept the beauty that comes with it.
​
Change. Humility. Resiliency. Connection.