How to handle a life change

Nina Grunfeld is the founder of Life Clubs (lifeclubs.com), personal improvement workshops around the country. This week’s workshop is on how to understand and work with the changes in your life. Here, she guest blogs for us about changes that affect us as parents and bloggers.

A baby: The kind of life change you can’t predict

In around 500 BC, Heraclitus said, “Nothing endures but change” and it’s still true. The only constant in our world is change and we rarely know how it’s going to affect us. Did you have any idea of how having a baby was going to change your life when you first had one? Or starting a blog.

I vividly remember when my first child arrived. I remember sitting in the bath crying. I’d been warned about losing my virginity, but never about having a baby. My adored father-in-law had just died and, instead of him, I was left with this crying, colicky child whom I was meant to engage with. I was certainly in a state of misery. Mourning the freedom I’d once had. Mourning the body I once had. Mourning this thing that was suddenly taking all my energy and had come between me and my husband.

That suffering turned to hope the day my baby stood up and walked across the room away from me. I remember thinking, “It won’t be like this forever. One day I’ll be able to be me again” and yet, 23 years later as he moved out forever, I felt that same loss and suffering, only this time it was losing him, rather than gaining him.

There’s a wonderful Medieval illustration of Fortune as a stunning female temptress holding a great wheel in front of her. On the top sits the ‘King’ looking smug and content. He represents Happiness. At 3 ‘o’clock the “King” has become a Nobleman. He is now demoted, a little dishevelled, and represents Loss. Further down, at the bottom of the wheel is the “King”, now being dragged along the floor as a beggar. This time he represents Suffering. Finally he gets hauled up again from the ground and at 9 ‘o’clock has regained some dignity. At this stage he represents “Hope”.

How change is like a wheel

That wheel is a metaphor for the cycle of change that we all go through each time something happens to us. You can go round the circle very quickly:

• You’re laughing with your child (happiness)
• Then they fall over and the day seems a bit bleaker (loss)
• They cry a lot and you realise they’ve cut their knee (suffering – on both sides)
• The wound gets washed, kissed and the smiles slowly start again (hope)
• The ball is kicked around the park (happiness arrives once more).

Or, in blog terms:

• Great happiness – I have time to write my blog
• Loss – I don’t really know what to write
• Suffering – I’m always like this… I’m a useless blogger… I have no ideas
• Hope – I think I’ve found something to write about
• Happiness – it’s not too bad. Hooray!

But it’s not always that quick. Sometimes the circle can take ages to go round and you can feel as if you’ve got stuck in suffering and Fortune has forgotten to turn the wheel.

What to do when your stuck

What to do when that happens? When everything around you feels gloomy.

If you look again at Fortune’s wheel, and imagine being in the middle of that wheel, you can see that if you were sitting there, rather than on the outside, the journey through change would be somehow not as extreme – a little less intense. But what could get you to the centre, rather than sitting on the outside?

As usual, it’s down to you. It’s your response to change that is so important, how you allow it to affect you. What you choose to do when something goes wrong. How strong in yourself are you feeling right now?

How to nurture yourself through a life change

Having children is a time when mothers often put themselves last. It feels as if there’s rarely any time for us in this busy period of change. And yet it’s essential for us to be resilient and strong so we can care for ourselves as well as others. How are you looking after yourself? Are you:

• caring for your body through exercise and healthy diet?
• caring for yourself emotionally by being with friends and forgiving yourself if you’re not perfect, rather than beating yourself up?
• caring for yourself mentally both by blogging and other things, such as sudoku, reading and going on courses?
• caring for yourself spiritually through listening to music, visiting beautiful places and meditating?

How many hours a day are you spending on yourself? What are you doing for others that you’re not doing for yourself?

Nothing does endure except change and we need to be equipped to deal with it. Just see what you can do to make at least one more hour a day yours.

To learn more about Nina’s courses, visit lifeclubs.com. You can check out her blog at lifeclubs.blogspot.com.

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