Leaning into the Pause

It's been just over a year since I started my blog and just over a month since I moved to St. Louis, so I figured it was time to publish another blog post.

So to start off: school is going well. It's challenging and scary and difficult and I love it. I'm taking classes where we discuss privilege week after week and it is so hard to have those conversations. But they are so important to have, especially in St. Louis.

It's the finding myself that is the most difficult though. I was part of so many communities previously, and I defined myself by my membership in them. Here, I'm just trying to figure out who I am. I can completely redefine myself if I wanted to--but if I do, who am I? What do I want from these next few years? That's a big and difficult question to answer.

I was challenged during our week of Orientation to find my truth. Seems simple enough, right? So I took some time to think about the things I knew to be true.

1. People are inherently good. I was walking home from campus during the first week of class and as I was waiting to cross the street, a gentleman who was holding a cardboard sign said hello to me and asked if I was Shirley Temple. I laughed and told him no, that I had been called that a lot as a child. He then asked what year I was in school and I replied, saying I had just started my Masters program. With a big smile on his face, he welcomed me to St. Louis and told me I simply had to go to that museum with the bus on top. The City Museum?, I asked. He nodded and I crossed the street. I've seen that guy a few times since, we smile at each other, but that engagement just reminded me of the power of humanity. Isn't it better to imagine the opportunities in humanity instead of the evils anyway?

I stopped there on my list because that's all I could think of. That's all I know right now, but that is my truth. And I think that's an ok place to start.

So I sit here now, in my new apartment, sipping tea and listening to the buses run by on the street below me. And I'm grateful for this time that I can sit here and pause. In a few minutes, I'll pack up my backpack and head to campus for class and work and it will be go time, but for now, I can sit here and just be. Maybe that's what I've been missing in my life--those pause moments. I've intentionally tried to build them into my new schedule and I'm hopeful that I can use the space to find more of my truth. Or maybe I just need to lean into the pause moments, and I am also open to that. So here's to the truth and the pause.

Night Changes

Today I stared at my computer screen and slowly tears began to well up in my eyes. I willed them back, refusing to cry. "This is good. I'm making the right choice," I told myself. But whatever I told myself, it was still hard to type those words "Courtney's last day will be August 5, 2016."

This place, this world, has become so much a part of me. Even when it was hard to come to work because I never knew what I would find, I loved the work I do. I had begun to define myself by my role at the shelter, and my coworkers feel like my extended family.

But of course that couldn't last forever; nothing wonderful ever does. And moving to St. Louis to get my MSW at my dream school is the best choice I could have ever possibly made, as difficult as it is to go through with it at times. I don't do change well, and I've had so many changes to make in the past few months: choosing to go back to school and everything that comes with that from finding an apartment and a roommate in a city I don't know, to scheduling classes, leaving my job, applying for student loans, and leaving the wonderful people here in Des Moines.

In my last blog post so many months ago, I wrote about the challenges I was having with change. And it was this big change of choosing to go back to school in a city six hours away where I know very few people that I was just beginning to wrestle with in a very personal way at that time. That paralyzing fear of this change has been something I've been living with for the past nine months. Not surprisingly, I found solace in the song that asked me "Does it ever drive you crazy/just how fast the night changes?" My answer has been yes, yes, yes. I'm terrified.

As I pushed those tears back this morning, I began to answer that question a little bit differently. I began to open up to the next lines of the song: "But there's nothing to be afraid of/even when the night changes/it will never change me and you." I know that soon I may not work at the shelter, but that doesn't mean that I can't still be involved in the homeless community. Even when I don't live in Des Moines, that doesn't mean I can't continue to connect with the support system here. Yes, things are changing and I can't stop them from doing so (though I just wish some things would slow down!), but that doesn't mean that everything will change. I know that no matter what, I have a huge cheering squad in Des Moines, rooting for me no matter what. I know that I have grown as a person by making this huge change and I will have worlds open up to me in the next year and a half that I can't even imagine now. And most of all, I know that I will always, always find inspiration in song lyrics.