You're Not Lost. You're Just in the Middle.

There's a particular kind of uncomfortable that nobody puts on a vision board. It's not rock bottom...and it's not "the other side." It's the in-between...the not-yet. The Tuesday of your healing journey when you're too far along to go back but not far enough to see what's ahead.

It's the middle. And honestly? It kind of gets a bad rap.

I speak with authority on this as a job layoff recently landed me deep in my own middle.

Here's what I've been learning: it's not wasted time. It just looks that way from the outside...if I am honest, it looks like that from the inside too sometimes...

The real story is that time spent in transition is a privilege and...it can actually be quite healing. Not dramatic. Not "I've arrived." The slow, unglamorous, surprisingly necessary work of just...standing back up and into the next chapter.

So what does that look like? For me, lately, it looks like this:

Going on walks. Not power walks. Not podcast walks. Not walking to lose weight or get stronger. Just walking. I think humans may be wired to process while moving in a way that we do not when sitting still...

Being in nature. Even a little. Even a park. Even standing outside for five minutes and looking at a tree. A friend reminded me recently to go outside and get some sun on my face and I have taken that advice to heart. I live in Washington state where we pay for state park passes, I renewed my pass and have made good use of it in recent weeks.

Spending time with good people. Not everyone. The middle is not the time for anything that drains your battery. But the people who make you feel like yourself? That time is good medicine.

Hugging a dog. I cannot stress this enough. It doesn't have to be your dog. Dogs are extraordinarily generous about this. Disclaimer: on second thought...don't hug strange dogs. That might get you in trouble.

Wearing yellow. A 90's Meg Ryan said something memorable about daisies and the color yellow. Google tells me she called daisies the "happiest flower," and said that the color yellow, "reminded her of spring." We may not need a Rom-Com to remind us that there are certain colors that help prop us up...wear them!!

The tricky part of the middle (for me) is that it doesn't feel productive. I have begrudgingly resigned myself to this. What if (gasp!) there is no meaning to be made of this time? What if I don't have anything to show for it? What if I don't use my time well?

It turns out that healing and transition don't really do progress bars. They do: one day you realize you laughed without thinking about it. One day a song comes on and it just sounds like a song again. One day you wake up and the first feeling isn't dread...it's something close to optimism.

That's the middle working. Quietly, while you were busy taking walks and hugging dogs.

I want to say something directly, in case you need to hear it: you don't have to be all the way healed to be okay right now. Those are two different things. You can be mid-process and still be a person who laughs, contributes, makes dinner, makes someone else's day. The middle doesn't disqualify you from any of it.

You're not behind. You're not broken. You're not failing at recovery because recovery is taking time.

You're just in the middle. Which means, by definition, you already made it through the beginning.

That counts for more than you think.

XOXO

EV

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