The Dog Walk of Appreciation

On surrendering to unwanted things

Zebedee loves a good walk. Photo © Ros Barber

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Unwanted thing, begone. Unwanted thing, you cannot be.

We fear. We push. We fight.

We fight to prevent the unwanted thing, and fighting only brings it towards us faster. Our focus gives it weight. It gains momentum.

We deny it can happen: unthinkable! And our fear gives its wheels a little acceleration as it rolls towards us on the track. The lie of the land is now an incline, tipped towards us because our fear sinks us lower.

No, no, no, we say, and our denial calls it as if “No” were its name.

The unwanted thing can be anything at all, but if it’s unwanted, be sure it feels like a loss. And none of us wants to lose. And all of us do.

I pushed against my redundancy in every way. Emotionally in my journal and conversations and officially, in meetings, and on forms. A few days after I got the dreaded email, sleepless at 4 am and playing heart-centred guidance to soothe myself, I was shocked to hear what I already knew yet had strangely forgotten in the run-up to my sacking. The speaker repeated the phrase three times for emphasis, and it felt like the words were intended purely for me.

You get what you push against.

You get what you push against.

You get what you push against, whether you want it or not.

And boy, had I pushed. I’m fairly sure my dismay and anger about the “Transformation Programme” in my “Stage 1” interview were what marked me out for culling. You can be sure that when an organisation is shrinking, they’ll kick out the objectors. The boat-rockers. The ones with a history of trauma that makes them especially sensitive to uncertainty and injustice.

You get what you push against, whether you want it or not.

How had I forgotten this fundamental principle when it mattered most? I decided it must have been important for me to do so. Important for me to lose connection with deeper wisdom, important to lose my job so as to grow. Not least, through several ways of being afraid. So after a very short stretch of shock and grief, I embraced the challenge, sure I could make it work.

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When I went to clear my office, a non-culled colleague told me that across the college, fourteen people had simply refused to engage with the process. Marked, like me, for redundancy, they hadn’t attended meetings, answered emails, filled in forms. And every one of them was still employed. Had I done nothing, I’d still have a job.

Those of us who fight to prevent unwanted things, drawing them inevitably towards us, may not learn from our errors straight away. When an unwanted thing has happened, withdrawing from our lives deep roots of security, leaving us feeling prey to every strong wind, we may tend to keep pushing. This time, pushing our feelings out of awareness.

I say “we” when I didn’t think I was doing this. On Sunday, at the end of a week of ludicrous self-created pressure, someone I hadn’t seen for months took my shoulders between her two hands, looked me in the eyes, her own eyes brimming, and asked, “How are you holding it together?” I answered with a smile, “I’m fine,” and truly believed it.

It turns out I am not.

For nearly five months, I’ve been running away from my grief. As always, lines arise from my touchstone, Larkin’s Aubade.

Larkin and Finding Yourself In the Rubble

This time, it’s:

And realisation of it rages out
In furnace-fear when we are caught without   
People or drink...

Drink is no longer my go-to. My addiction, my “healthy” distraction from what’s really going on, is that great ignoble god-not, Productivity. Since July, I’ve been working my arse off in four different directions, trying to get things off the ground that might sustain me. And now, I am exhausted, and spent, and uncertain, and sad.

I don’t think it’s helped that I’ve been swimming in memoir. As important as I think it is to speak up about domestic abuse and coercive control, as helpful as some have found these posts, there is no question their writing has reanimated some of the horrors of that time. It’s useful to me to process these memories and heal some of the trauma. But it’s also tiring work, and I am spent.

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I have worked too hard and too long and not acknowledged how tough this all is. So for the rest of this year I am easing off. I will not be “working”. I intend, instead, to align myself with a better-feeling life, so it might find its way towards me. No more pushing. Just allowing.

Surrendering to the unwanted thing — this has happened, and this is where I am — is essential. Letting go of trying to force Right Now to be different is surprisingly hard if you’re a “doer”, as I am. But I’ve done it (oh, there’s that word, the doer’s word) before. The most beautiful things in my life have arrived the moment I’ve let go of wanting them.

“Want” is a state of absence, after all. The focus is on the lack, and you get what you focus on, like it or not. (That’s why you get what you push against.) My chief wealth in this time of crisis is my store of personal experiences of the surrender-fulfilment moment. Funny how I am always having to relearn how to let go.

You can’t make yourself surrender. That’s just more pushing. But you can find peace with What Is with a very simple practice. It’s time to tell you, and remind myself, about The Dog Walk of Appreciation.

It was coming up to Christmas. My second marriage was falling apart. My husband, who had developed Chronic Fatigue Syndrome just after our daughter was born, had been fighting with me for several years, since the start of my PhD.

I had stopped fighting back once I learned how to tap, how to release what was triggered, how to clear my anger, my hurt and dismay, and find at the bottom, surprisingly: still, love. But he was lost in his illness. I wasn’t being the “nurse” he felt he needed.

I am not a natural nurse. I am not bedpans and patience. I am more the research scientist; let me look up the data and work my arse off to secure our long-term future. My response to his illness was to do a PhD.

But my efforts weren’t working. Our “long-term future” was crumbling. Attending the Christmas puja at our daughter’s Buddhist school, in the midst of the children singing the sweetest of songs, I noticed, through the fairy-light-framed window, that snow had begun to fall. The moment sliced me to tears. Christmas coming, the song, the snow, our daughter’s innocent joy… and I knew her world was about to fall apart.

I’d been pushing away this huge unwanted thing. To be divorced a second time. A single parent again. This time with four kids. It was unthinkable. Surely I could save us. Surely I could make my husband well again, and he would come around. But I was at the end of efforting. It had been five years, and hard, and I was done. The sense of personal failure was profound. What kind of useless human being was I, to have got it so wrong again? But I had to accept it was over. This was where we were.

That night he was too exhausted to take the dog out. He often pushed through, which is what broke his immune system in the first place. He is a man who habitually puts others first. Even if doing so is damaging to his health. That night, I looked at what was left of him and said, “I’ll do it.” He doesn’t like me walking the dog at night for safety reasons, but he didn’t have the energy to stop me.

It was cold, and no one else was out. The lawns where I walk the dog were entirely empty. I felt this huge well of sadness arise as I acknowledged the end of us. And rather than berate myself for my failure, rather than shake the rattle of regret and could-have-been, I decided, instead, to do a gratitude practice. Speaking quietly aloud, I said

Thank you, for bringing me so much love. Thank you for being the first man to truly see me. Thank you for our daughter, who is so precious. Thank you for caring for her right from the minute she was born, for walking her up and down when she couldn’t sleep, for taking her to the theatre in a sling so that I could write. Thank you for being a good parent to the boys. Thank you for always thinking about how we could make things go better for them, and listening out for when they were fighting, and having the patience to work through solutions. Thank you for so often having a wise perspective I hadn’t considered. Thank you for all your appreciation of me, which I have so, so loved, and which has helped me grow. Thank you for dealing kindly with my broken bits and damage. Thank you for your help in dealing with my ex, and supporting me through some really hard times. Thank you for Costa Rica. Thank you for Paris. Thank you for telling me the truth even when it was difficult. Thank you for your generosity. Thank you for teaching me how to read my poems in a way that reaches people…

For the whole of the walk — forty minutes — I thanked him for everything he’d brought into my life, even as I acknowledged he was leaving it. It was amazing to me how many different things I could find to thank him for. The more I found, the more opened up before me.

I was left with this feeling: it was hugely good, and I’m glad we had it, even it all went wrong. Maybe it didn’t “go wrong”. We just brought to each other what we needed then, and now, we need something else.

I got back into the house, took off my coat, and hung the dog’s lead. We were sleeping separately, but I saw him on my way to the bedroom, standing in the corridor. His eyes, at that time, looked like a wall. I couldn’t reach what I thought of as the real him. But thanks to the walk, I was simply brimming with love.

I said, “I’m sorry you’re so unhappy. I really love you, you know, and I appreciate everything good you’ve brought into my life. But I understand if you need to build a different life now.”  And I went to bed, at peace with the end of us.

It took two days. But two days later, on Christmas Eve morning, he got into our bed and said, “I’ve been a fool. I love you, and I want to be with you.” 

That wasn’t quite the end of almost breaking up. But eventually, we made it through the rough stuff. It is thirteen years later; we’ve been together for twenty-four.

I wrote this for me. Did I write it for you, too? Only you can answer. If you’re reeling from a loss or afraid of further losses, maybe I did. This isn’t a magic spell to put a lover in your bed or money in your bank account. But twenty or thirty minutes of this simple thanksgiving can bring you some peace with What Is.

And doesn’t it seem like the timing is perfect? I’m in England, but in the US, it is almost Thanksgiving. So I’d like to invite you to join me in a little gratitude writing if you are game.

Writing a Better World for Yourself: Old Hurts

Does it matter where you start? Who you address?  The greatest healing comes when the target is difficult, but we might not be ready to thank the ones who have caused us the maximum pain. So maybe something in between, a “mixed bag” presence in your life (either now or before).

Address it to them. The second person has some serious power. There is no need to send it or say it to them; simply write it. Write a paragraph, write a page. Speak into a device while you walk. See how many different things you can be thankful for. A dozen? Five dozen? A hundred. Do it for you and for you alone, to shift your pain.

Start anywhere, and let it build as it wishes.

And then, if you want to, share some or all in the comments.

Happy Thanksgiving to my US friends. Happy late November to everyone else. Let’s light a candle of words to the people who have shaped us and helped us grow.

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