The New Survival Skill

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Our sweet boy turns 7 this week!​

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​There’s a Jewish saying, “If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.”
 
Nonetheless, we had planned our summer pretty carefully. Although she still has six titanium screws in her knee, Lillie Grace is mobile, and frankly, we were ready for some sort of normalcy.
Jory, after working overtime in his first season with the XFL, was going to coast: work for the XFL a few hours a day, and then get stuff done around the house.
I, on the other hand, had committed to an all-consuming six-week sprint: teaching six different classes a day at a private school's summer camp, which the kids would attend. I’m the type of teacher who gives her all in the classroom, so I get home and need to recover. At the end of camp, we planned a much-needed vacation.
 
So Day One after year round school is out: I'm working on curriculum for my classes.  The first morning of orientation, I’m in my new beautiful summer classroom, when I get a text, “Please come home now.” While unpacking materials, and working with the fabulous tech team to synch daily video clips from the computer to the white screen, I can’t just come home.
 
I call, thinking one of the girls needs my help, and to my surprise, find that Jory had sent the text. Jory wants me home. “What’s up?” I ask.
 
“I just lost my job,” he responds.
 
I sit, shocked, fear coursing through my body. Jory’s job at the XFL had been his dream job. He enjoyed his team, loved his marketing work, and had thrived. We are completely blindsided. I sit there dumbly, as he goes on to tell me that the entire marketing team has been cut, his boss and the CMO included. It made the news. No one saw it coming, and everyone is reeling. It seems that in looking for investors, the XFL brass decided to trim their expenses, so axed the entire marketing department, giving everyone one month’s pay for severance. 
 
This punch to the gut opens old festering wounds.
 
You may remember that we suffered severe financial hardship for two years during the Covid pandemic. This latest blow surges up all kinds of dread and PTSD. Suddenly, my schedule for the next six weeks goes from overload to just-right. I continue tutoring on the weekends, working seven days a week. Jory’s summer, meant to recover from the intense work schedule he kept during the XFL season, has become once again insanely stressful, applying daily for jobs. In addition, he misses his XFL colleagues and their work.
 
It's surreal how quickly everything can change. One minute, life is sailing forward, caressing you with a gentle breeze. The next minute, a tempest comes out of nowhere, upends the boat, and you’re holding on for dear life, cracked open once again.
 
I want to ask why. Haven’t we (literally) paid our dues?
 
A more tangible question: do we cancel our cruise to Alaska at the end of July? This was to be our first vacation in four years. Last year’s trip to Boston to bury my parents conjures many wonderful descriptions, but “vacation” is not one of them.
 
We all want to see Alaska, and despite all my travels, I have never been on a cruise.  But is it a responsible use of the money my parents left me when the future is so uncertain? I meditate on what my parents would say, and childhood memories of us hiking Machu Picchu, scaling the highlands of Scotland, and exploring the catacombs of Paris fill my mind. I hear my parents saying that we must say yes, for what is life, in the end, but a balance between time and money?
We will get more money (we must believe!)  – but time?
 
We commit to go. Two of our kids are already in middle school, and if we don’t have these adventures now, then when?
 
I search for silver linings. Maybe unemployment is keeping the kids from becoming entitled? They want spending money? They have to earn it, because they know that we simply don’t have it. They open their café every weekend, and despite their shyness, force themselves to talk and sell drinks and snacks to the golfers on the other side of the fence. We are united in supporting each other to earn money.
 
At an estate sale down the road, I find a gift: paperbacks by Mary Pipher for 50 cents. Pipher is deep. She writes that we all suffer, but cautions us not to waste our suffering. We must allow our suffering to help us grow.
 
My first thought: “Haven’t I had enough effing growth for awhile?”
 
Apparently not, so I lean in. “How can this latest financial setback further my growth?” The obvious answer is to stop resenting it, wishing it away, lamenting its injustice. How to sit with it, and have the courage to keep being generous when income has stopped?
 
Pipher further explains that it is only through suffering that our capacity for gratitude grows. Gratitude she believes, is not a virtue; it’s a survival skill.
 
This is a paradigm shift: gratitude – not just an attitude, but an actual survival skill?
 
We want to get through life without becoming bitter, disappointed, shut down, depressed? Then we must daily cultivate that gratitude, the kind that is forged from sitting with our darkness, be it fear of lack, disappointment, or heart ache.
 
Since I started teaching at Georgia O’Keeffe, I’ve been rising at 5:30 every morning to journal, read, meditate and set an intention for my day. Today I read a quote from Helen Keller, dumb, deaf and blind:
 “So much has been given to me, I have not time to ponder over that which has been denied.”
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Boom. That's how it's done.
Somehow, Keller was able to see, hear and speak that which is most essential:
Gratitude as a survival skill.