On Sweaters and Goodbyes
For the past year, we have been delighted and honored to publish Talking Through with the inimitable Teal Fitzpatrick. Some of our favorites include “Let’s Talk About Needs, Baby” and “Hey Smarty-Pants”, and we are always returning to “Three Psychology Lessons for Writers”, an MFA-masterclass in and of itself. To read her writing beyond No Contact, to hear her music, or to view her rug art, join us at https://www.tealfitzpatrick.com, where we’ll be watching more of her work make its way into the world.
“Sometimes, you just need to say goodbye.”
The thought came to me as I started to doze off this past weekend, after weeks of complicated consideration and handwringing while I wondered how to write a final column. The message was clear, unexpected, and so straightforward that I felt embarrassed it had gone unconsidered in its simplicity. Readers, I am writing this column to say goodbye, and it has taken me weeks to get to a place where I could even begin to put words to page.
But before we get to goodbye, I want to talk a little bit about transitions, about roles, and about making decisions on ends and beginnings. I’d like to invite you, for a moment, to think about the roles you inhabit. What are the “titles” that you or others apply to you? So often, we associate roles with professional or personal responsibilities to others. To identify as a teacher not only locates a person within a vocational field, but also suggests a level of responsibility to other people—to students, to colleagues; and to sets of values or principles: education, learning, consciousness-raising. The roles that we inhabit often, and hopefully, correspond closely with our internal experience of Self, our Personhood.
It’s a simple metaphor, but I find it helpful to think about our Capital-S Self as our bodies and our Roles as really nice sweaters. Ideally, these sweaters are ones that we have chosen ourselves, and they fit perfectly, are just the right color, and we wear them as often as possible because they just feel good. Over time, however, both our bodies and the qualities of the sweaters change. We find ourselves in different proportions, the sweater has some sag, and over time that perfect fit just isn’t quite so perfect any longer. And at that point, we have three choices: 1. Continue to wear the ill-fitting sweater and feel more and more uncomfortable; 2. Try to change the sweater to accommodate our bodies, by altering or changing it to better suit us; and 3. To appreciate the many years of warmth the sweater provided, say goodbye, and put on something new.
When I made the decision to close my psychology practice, I was honoring a change that I recognized in myself, that my Self was no longer feeling congruent with the role that I was inhabiting in my professional life. It is true that I will always be a Psychologist: by training and by history and experience, sure, but also because of the very things that brought me into the field originally: a deep curiosity about human experience, an almost overwhelming ache in the face of suffering, the ability to sit in that aching and hold space for all kinds of emotional expression. And yet, I recognized that over time, the Role of Psychologist was codifying around me in a way that felt as though it was taking over my Person. I found myself becoming rigid about things that were self-punishing. I stopped spending time in public spaces where I would possibly run into clients, even though I really wanted to be in those environments. I took on more and more professional responsibilities until there was little space for a personal life. Essentially, I was continuing to wear an ill-fitting sweater, continuing to try to make the sweater conform to my new shape.
The last time that I remembered my Self and my Roles feeling wonderfully aligned was when I was known as a Writer. I have always and still love writing, and there was a time when writing and reading poetry was as close to a spiritual practice as I had ever come. It felt natural to try to revisit that place, and so, when I recognized the need, on a deep soul level, to make a transition, I resolved to return to writing. And I did. And along with that decision came opportunities to be in community with other writers, with readers. And one of those opportunities was to write this column, a beautiful synthesis of my transition itself: the chance to write through the psychological landscape that I had inhabited, studied, and lived in for the previous twelve years. It felt good to move forward while not leaving the recent past behind. It felt honest to speak to the anonymous Other about the struggles that we move through together, to have a place to offer some of the wisdom that I have collected in my particular areas of study (to myself as well as the readers—the magic of teaching is also in the learning), and to honor my old work through my new work as I wrote down these truths. I had found a way to modify, for a period of time, the sweater itself, and still inhabit, part-time, the role it represents.
We know that the cells in our bodies regenerate so that every seven to ten years we have essentially cycled through an entire physical body on a microscopic level. I like this fact, not because it suggests that our person is an entirely new being, but because it offers a beautiful example of change within consistency. Moving through change is challenging, but it is happening all the time, visibly and invisibly, and attuning to these changes and moving with them rather than pushing against them helps. At a certain point this year, I recognized that I was in a place to really say goodbye, completely, to this role of Psychologist, and to embrace more fully the primary roles that I inhabit now. I introduce myself as a Writer and a Fiber Artist when asked about my vocation. Over the past year I began to hear myself using past tense when speaking to my psychological work: “I used to be a clinical psychologist, but now…” The language followed my experience. And so now, that emergence also means saying some goodbyes, to that role, to that public identity, and to this column that has been the beautiful link between old and new. It’s time to finally say thank you to the well-loved sweater, and put it in the donation box.
My final invitation to you in this forum is to consider how your roles are aligning with your Self. Where do your roles feel seamless, and where do they pull, itch, and generally ask for some attention? What roles may benefit from some alterations and modifications, and what roles have served you for a time, but are ready to be discarded or changed?
So reader, I want to thank you (as I deeply and heartfeltly thank the editors, writers, and friends at No Contact who have given me such a remarkable home) for walking this path with me, for keeping me company and sharing your own experiences as I have moved from one place to the next. It has been a pleasure.
