Have you ever painted yourself an image of what you thought something or someone would be like only to experience first hand that the actual person or event did in no way match your imagination?
Do you have an uncanny ability to make lemonade out of lemons?
After moving back to my beloved home town one and a half years ago, I’ve been on quite the ride filled with great certainty and great uncertainty. When I chose to leave Davis and retire that chapter of my life, I also knew that teaching profession was something I was ready to retire as well. My book was near completion and publication. It was my Taj Mahal that I planned to share with the world in order to save other souls going through estrangement. My creative brain wanted to combine mountain nature, the book with its healing examples and advice to help others climb out of the depth of estrangement/divorce hell while generating a livelihood.
Last fall I was looking through the local newspaper and found a help wanted ad for a bilingual counseling position working at the local domestic violence center. I thought, What a perfect job that would be! Although I was never physically abused, I understood what living with toxicity was and the scars it leaves on your soul rather than your skin. Something encouraged me to apply and all the while I assumed it was “meant to be” why else would I find the ad?
Humbling was the interview. I didn’t get the job nor did I receive any communications afterwards. However, while I was waiting for a response I came to the same conclusion, this wasn’t the right position for me nor was it the career I should pursue. You see at that interview I was given some cold, hard and surprising facts. First, few of the clients receiving services from the domestic violence center were ready or would be willing to want to learn, grow and change. They were there to regroup before going back into abuse. The truth was many would lie, cheat and steal to get their needs met.
Since I don’t operate or that way it came to me as an incredibly huge shock. I appreciated the interviewers being completely transparent with me. They opened my eyes to what I could never have conceived of being true yet I needed that brutality to check in with myself. Could I really do this? Is this where my freshly healing soul from the traumas of my own life could show up each day?
As with my marriage and as with many events and people in my life I paint a picture in mind—so beautifully and so lovingly—of what I want the situation or person to be. Like a child I fall into the painting I have skillfully created and see things from an entirely different perspective than what is actually real or true. With this job I was about to do the same had the women who ran that office not been so entirely honest.
Even during the interview I was on the verge of crying. I heard their stories (the counselor and administrator) about the clients who sought refuge at their center. This was not my vision at all. Mine was one where I would be making my teacher’s salary. I would conduct healing sessions in a circle of chairs in a sterile room centered on healing. My vision was to help these women by sharing all the tools and resources that had helped me climb out of my black tunnel.
I would heal others! All of my pain could be channeled towards others so they wouldn’t make the same mistakes I had. I had healed and healed people help heal. Right? This job as a counselor was to be my new purpose, the reason to get up in the morning and further make sense of my estrangement.
I wouldn’t be teaching sixth graders academics and social/emotional learning at a Spanish immersion school any longer. Now I would move on to others with different needs—ones that I myself had survived. The pattern? I want to save. I want to rescue. I want to help.
Well, this position was not at all like the painting in my mind. Instead of being a counselor, the position paid minimum wage to drive clients to appointments, help them open bank accounts and open lines of credit. The advertisement for a bilingual counselor was actually being offered. The interviewers apologized because the position was something they felt was well below what I was qualified to do. And politely without as much saying it, they inferred I should go back to teaching. The environment was kinder, better paying and more within my sphere of skills.
Stubbornly I kept painting my own version of the portrait I wanted. How could I make this job work for me and adapt to my future dreams and goals? “This could be a fit,” I told myself. I could get the training I needed, the experience I needed before I start my own business helping those who had been through estrangement. I make my book available for those who needed encouragement. I could…This could…What if…I wanted it to work because I decided in my mind that it should work. The signs led me there. This is what I should do!…Clearly not.
Over the course of the next few days, awaiting a phone call from my interviewers to formally invite me on board or send me in another job direction, I came to my own conclusions. My heart cannot open up to others unable to take courageous steps forward to make change happen. Unlike my imaginary role as a life coach facilitator in a room with chairs placed in a circle, the role offered was sitting behind a circular steering driving clients to appointments.
I never heard back from the Domestic Violence Center nor did I reach out. It wasn’t the right position. They knew it and I knew it. Sometimes when you have to perform mental gymnastics to make a situation become what you want it to be, it’s an indication that you should drop the imagery and leave that half painted canvas alone. So I did abandon my painting and I have not regretted it since. The bigger question was, “Can I work in small groups helping others rebuild their lives after an estrangement from their child? Do I have the emotional strength to hear those stories resonate with my own traumas?” I’m still asking myself those questions as I figure out what next step to take in rebuilding my own life. What direction do you want to go with your career, where you live or your dreams?