Tag Archive - transitions

One Woman’s Journey to Help Others Share Their Stories

August 9, 2011 in Transitioning, Writing with 1 Comment

A few months ago, a friend of mine pointed me towards the blog and online shop of Katie Clemons. My friend knew that I love to journal and thought I would like her stuff and her story.

And he was right. I love the story of how Katie came into journaling and how that passion for story and writing fueled her endeavor to develop her own line of journals.

Keeping a journal has been one of the most important ways that I have been able to thoughtfully reflect on my life. That reflection has been really important as I have made decisions and transitioned through different stages of life.

So I decided to ask Katie a few questions about journaling and life. I hope you enjoy, and I hope you find her story inspiring.

  1. Katie, I love the story about how your journals came to fruition. Can you share what the catalyst was behind you launching Gadanke?

A couple of years ago, NPR’s StoryCorp was in town. It was also my grandma’s 90th birthday.

The two of us decided to hop into the recording studio to capture some pieces of her story. I had all sorts of prompts to help her with her story telling. (I was always the listener, the one who asked question after question.)

The only problem?

My grandma couldn’t remember. Too much time had passed.

Later, my dad turned to me and said, “Katie, I need you to write down your story.” I knew he wished he had his mom’s stories. So I started writing. I started wondering about all of the other women who have stories deep inside of them, and I started thinking about how my tendency to just listen and ask could help put those stories onto paper. Gadanke was born with fabulous writing prompts and recycled papers. I feel so lucky to be living my dream.

I’m fascinated by the various transitions in our lives and I’m wondering how journaling one’s story can better help them navigate these transitions? Have they helped you navigate your own transitions in life? How for example?

When you journal, you are not audience-focused. Blogs, facebook, and conversations with friends have added so much to our lives. But we tend to share what we want other people to know or what we think will get the biggest response.

Journaling is about connecting with your heart or God.

I often think of a dear customer of mine. She has been struggling with infertility. Not too long ago, her sister announced her own pregnancy, and in all this joy for the sister, the woman also felt so much pain and sadness. She couldn’t talk about this pain on something like Facebook or her blog. She wanted to be happy for her sister!

So she journaled.

She let out that pain by writing about it.

These are transitions in life that are obvious and that we can feel. I want to help people draw those stories out.

I also want to draw out the stories that we don’t even realize are something that matter. We don’t realize that our normal right now will be totally different in 20 years. So often, we don’t even realize the transformations growing in our hearts. But they show up on paper. In 20 years, wouldn’t it be awesome to read about? Wouldn’t it be awesome to read that about our parents and grandparents?

What advice would you give someone who really wants to write more about their life, but feels like they have nothing to say….or feels like they don’t know how to organize their thoughts?

First – your story DOES MATTER. It matters to the people who know you. It matters to the people who will know you in the future. It’ll matter to the people who will never get to meet you but will hear about you. And it matters for you.

My entire mission with Gadanke is to create prompts that capture the stories for you. I love creating quotations that will have you thinking about favorite foods in childhood, where you dream of going, and what a typical today is like for you.

Katie, there are lots of journals out there in the marketplace, but I was wondering if you could tell us why you believe yours are best designed for people who want to “celebrate their story.”

I cannot claim to be better because our stories are all so different. So I focus on making something that can be most adaptable to anyone. Here are two things customers embrace in my products:

1. Gadanke journals have loose rings that you can pop open. Add more pages; reorganize the pages; hole punch and add letters, postcards, and memorabilia. It becomes a scrapbook with your story if you want it to be.

2. Gadanke journals have lots of extra bits. Library cards, tags, pockets, stickers, and Italian patterned papers give your stories a visual dimension. Plus they’re so fun to vary your writing on!

You can connect more with Katie online at:

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Change and Transition: Re-Defining and Re-Negotiating Your Marital Roles

January 10, 2011 in Marriage-Family, Transitioning with 5 Comments


[image by the Welsh Poppy]

In a marriage, changes abound.

The couple may move houses. They may move states.  They might have a child, or two, or three, or more.

The mom may work as a stay at home mom. Or maybe even the dad might take up that work (I did for a short period of time–easy change, but super hard transition).

They might change jobs, or go back to school.  One of them might get cancer.

Change is going to happen, and the couple is going to have to adjust to the changes.

But what they might not do is transition.

Perhaps a couple has kids that begin to go to school, and the wife/mom who has always worked full-time as a stay at home mom is now re-entering the work force outside of the home. That is a huge change. But I wonder how many couples work through the transition of that? And why is that important? Because though the change has happened, dealing with it psychologically, emotionally, relationally, spiritually, etc. is a whole other aspect of that change.

What happens when that mom goes back into the work force full-time? Does the dad expect the mom to continue on not only with her new job, but also all the same things she did before she worked outside the home? If expectations are not discussed, and are different, then their roles need to be re-defined and re-negotiated, because the change brought about a transition they were unprepared for.

What To Do?
People change and grow and evolve, and so it only makes sense then that so do marriages. Couples need to sit down and look at the evolution of their marriage and how what originally helped them define their roles has perhaps changed. In recognizing that things have changed, then a couple can begin to assess and negotiate how things might now look.

With change in a marriage not only comes the need to transition, but to possibly re-define and re-negotiate the roles. I feel like this is a process that my wife and I are constantly in as we continue to work through changes in our own marriage. When I resigned my job as college pastor at Bel Air Presbyterian Church in 2008, that was a pretty easy change. But it was a super hard transition. And there was a re-defining and re-negotiating of our marital roles. We went from both working, to one working, to me being the primary caregiver, and my wife the primary breadwinner. Easy change. Hard transition. Lots of re-defining and re-negotiating.

Look at some key areas of the relationship that have perhaps changed over the course of the marriage, or that you would like to see change.  Here are some that come up fairly often in my work with couples:

  • Re-Defining and Re-Negotiating the tasks around “keeping house” (i.e. laundry; dishes; cooking; cleaning; yard work, etc.)
  • Re-Defining and Re-Negotiating parenting roles
  • Re-Defining and Re-Negotiating vocation roles (one income/two income; part-time; full-time; etc)
  • Re-Defining and Re-Negotiating hobbies and activities (helping a partner make time for them and achieve them)
  • Re-Defining and Re-Negotiating dreams, goals (travel; volunteer work; retirement; passions; etc.)
  • Re-Defining and Re-Negotiating spiritual life (place of worship; certain beliefs/practices; etc.)

When couples engage one another in the practice of re-defining and re-negotiating roles in their marital relationship, they are also giving their partner the ability to begin to dream again of some things that they might want for their life.  Things that have possibly never been discussed, or that have laid dormant for years.  “Many times, spouses, are willing to make sacrifices for each other and the relationship, but are unaware of what the goals and dreams of their partners are about” (The Essential Humility of Marriage by Terry Hargrave, pp. 193).

Change vs. Transition: Why Most People Will Fail at Achieving Their 2011 Goals

January 6, 2011 in Therapy-Psychology, Transitioning with 8 Comments

Without a transition, a change is just a rearrangement of the furniture.

–William Bridges

I can easily say that I learn as much from my clients in the course of a therapy session, then perhaps they often learn from me. At the end of each day when the last client has left the office, and I lock my door and head home, I am grateful for the many insights that come in my interaction with them.

Recently, one very astute client declared during session, “I love change, but hate transition.”

I was instantly intrigued. My blog for many years has had the tagline, “Transitioning Life’s Journey“, and transition is a topic that I speak a lot on, and that has been an important concept in my own life. But I don’t think I have thought much about the difference between change and transition.

And there is a big difference. Failure to differentiate the two can lead a person down two very different paths.

In the book, Transitions: Making Sense of Life’s Changes (HT: to my dad Timothy Smith and my friend Adam McHugh for suggesting this book to me) William Bridges differentiates the two very nicely:

Our society confuses them constantly, leading us to imagine that transition is just another word for change. But it isn’t. Change is your move to a new city or your shift to a new job. It is the birth of your new baby or the death of your father. It is the switch from the old health plan at work to a new one, or the replacement of your manager by a new one, or it is the acquisition that your company just made.

In other words, change is situational. Transition on the other hand, is psychological (bold added for emphasis). It is not those events, but rather the inner reorientation and self-redefinition that you have to go through in order to incorporate any of those changes into your life. Without a transition, a change is just a rearrangement of the furniture. Unless transition happens, the change won’t work, because it doesn’t ‘take.’ Whatever word we use, our society talks a lot about change; but it seldom deals with transition. Unfortunately for us, it is the transition that blind-sides us and is often the source of our troubles.

And that is the very reason for why many of the changes that people hope to make in 2011 won’t “take.” They will spend all their time making the situational changes, but little or none of the psychological changes.

A husband and wife will commit to change some habits and commit to more date nights, but they may do little or nothing of the psychological work to build and maintain an emotional, spiritual, physical and psychological connection. Date nights alone don’t make for an improved marriage.

A pastor may make changes to the mission of the church he or she pastors, but may have dealt with little or none of the psychological issues in their own lives that may hamper them from effectively bringing about the change. New mission statements don’t make for a new vision.

A recent college graduate may make the change to move to a new city for a new job, thinking this is the answer to their loneliness and feeling of disconnection, but may do little or nothing in the way of dealing with psychological issues that are at the root of the problems. A change of scenery doesn’t create connection.

Change can come easy, but transitioning will take work. So don’t commit to just changing this year, but commit to transitioning.

Can Social Media Use Be a Hindrance to Effectively Transitioning to Next Stages of Life?

February 1, 2010 in Marriage-Family, Ministry-Theology, Technology-Social Media, Therapy-Psychology with 20 Comments


[image by Hawthorne Ave]


Can social media use be a hindrance to effectively transitioning to next stages of life?

I don’t know, but it’s something I’m exploring.

This question was rooted in a conversation I was having a few weeks back with Lars Rood and the parents of seniors who will be heading off to college next year. What we have noticed is that some college students fail to effectively transition into college, and that one possible considerations is that social media use has hindered them from effectively being present, setting down roots in their physical community. Instead, social media tools like Facebook keep them engaged with high school friends in different states in different schools. And that’s a really good thing of course. I wish I had Facebook when I was in college. So though I don’t want to draw a conclusion that failure to transition is a direct causal of social media use (it’s not), I think it does affect our relational and social interactions.

So sometimes, instead of investing in the person in the dorm room next door, they are more concerned with what their friend from high school is doing on Facebook.

Can social media use keep us tied to, or concerned about other things, that instead of not only helping us build relationships with those not physically near us…..it can also have the unintended affect of not allowing us to fully invest in the next stages of our lives? Stages that involve the participation and support of the community around us.

This question I have is not limited to the high school to college transition either. It could be singlehood to marriage? It’s possible to get married, but with Facebook keep up with all the happenings of our single friends, and very subtly, and subconsciously we can be holding onto that previous stage of our life, not fully embracing the present one. There are other transitions as well, but these two come to mind the quickest.

Transition in its very essence involves a process of transformation, and often transformation requires a leaving of something, and a cleaving onto something else.

Can I properly leave something and transition into something new, if I’m still cleaving to the old?

And social media not only allows great things, and fosters friendships with those we can’t be near, but I wonder if it keeps us cleaving to things, hindering us from fully living in our physical surroundings.

I’m seeking some some clarity…

Remember, I think social media is awesome, but I’m thinking about it’s very nuanced and subtle unintended outcomes it can have on our relational, social interactions.

Thoughts?

Examples of where you agree or disagree with me?