By Kathy McCollett

Kathy McCollett

Kathy is an Organizational Culture Change Specialist with PHI’s Training and Organizational Development team.

I attended an all day workshop at the Pioneer Network conference this year entitled, Beyond Care: Exploring the Glorious Adventure of the Spirit. It was presented by Wendy Lustbader and Bill Keane and we were joined by Carter Catlett Williams via telephone. Carter, the Pioneer Network Convener, was unable to travel to the conference as she had annually since its inception.

Carter spoke of the experience of losing her father to a tragic plane crash in 1925 when she wasn’t quite two years old. She said she never had any recollection of ‘knowing’ him and recalled very little reference to him while she was growing up. She went about her life for the next 70+ years thinking that he had influenced her very little, and yet experiencing an unidentifiable emptiness throughout. Then at the age of 72, she read a box of letters he had written that she never knew existed that brought him to life for her and their relationship began.

At the age of 85, Carter published the book we would be using as the foundation of our workshop, Glorious Adventure, a book recounting her journey.

In the preface she says, “I am compelled to share this story of finding my father through his letters. I want others to know that an adventure such as this is possible in later life. Indeed, this stage of life may be the best time for something that goes so deeply into the heart and bears such fruit. My father’s letters have given me new life to be reckoned with and reconsideration of the old. I hope readers will be similarly prompted toward interior adventures of their own.”

Those of us who interact with elders regularly have the opportunity, and in my opinion, the responsibility, to connect with the person in ways that are outside of the obligatory tasks we perform with them and for them each day.

In this workshop, we were challenged to consider how we may support those individuals to explore what it is they may still not know about themselves, to take time for repose, to connect with the spirit of a person. As defined by the facilitators, “that part of each of us that animates and motivates us, allows us to feel alive, the thinking, feeling part of human beings often as distinguished from the body, mind and intelligence.”

The workshop facilitators asked us to consider what adventures of the spirit might await us. What undiscovered treasure of memories? A story unfolding that we’ve not yet told ourselves or others? Through this exercise, we could see that if there were untold stories in us, then we could expect the same to be true of those who have lived longer than us, those for whom we care and support.

Following this process, we felt charged with the responsibility to engage with elders in conversations and activities that would dignify their lives as they recollected them, and to provide opportunities for further reflection that had the prospect of unearthing unspoken experiences so as to afford them completeness, peace, and freedom in their final years in community with others. In so doing, we would both enjoy the experience of reciprocity – giving back, not only receiving from others.

My Reflections

Here are my reflections in response to the various questions posed in the workshop: Most of my life has focused on trying to figure out why I don’t understand the ‘stuff’ of life that seems to impede my personal, internal freedom. Like many others, my life has not been without victimization, fear, lack of truth, unkindness, restrictions of thought, hesitancy of speech, the inability to truly hear myself and others, periods of abject loneliness. I am not old, but I am not young either.

What I have come to know is that I must squeeze freedom from the narrow spaces that erupt spontaneously throughout a day, a week, a month, a year. I am no longer waiting for a time when this longed for freedom and peace will present itself in glory and vastness. As if after having trudged what seems endlessly through a thickly wooded area with dense underbrush and overcast skies, I would come upon a lovely clearing of waving grain on a warm blue-skied-day with a softly blowing breeze, where a close friend sits on a blanket enjoying a glass of wine, German bread, grapes and slices of apple awaiting my arrival. In this vision, I would be supported to think, feel and relax in reflective repose.

Rather, I’ve come to a place of accepting that I must create and grasp those moments of softly blowing breezes and caring relationships, interweave them in my life’s tapestry, and resist my inclination toward self-blame and resentment in regard to the reality of the tangible and pressing consequences of choices that have become the suppressors of my spirit.

I would like to be able to look back over my later years and say that I have been congruent, authentic, open and present for myself and others, relieving myself of unnecessary duality or compromise, to value not only the needs of others, but my own, to make room for me, too. There is still an abundance of time for this to become part of my movement, my words, my gaze, my intention and my impact, but I must be intentional if I am to become known. In relationships, to simply ask, “What do you want me to know about you?”