Identity Growth and Change Archives - Dr. LaShawn C. Williams, LCSW

Nobody’s Ready for Marriage

by LaShawn | Dec 6, 2019 | Identity Growth and Change, Relational Spaces, Relational Spaces - Family, The Bookworm Therapist, The Divorced Therapist

Nobody’s Ready for Marriage

One of my favorite relationship books is “Passionate Marriage” by Dr David Schnarch because of this quote: “Nobody’s ready for marriage. Marriage is what makes you ready for marriage.” It’s in the introduction of the book.

I started reading it a little before I got divorced because I didn’t want to get divorced.

I started reading it a little before I got divorced because I didn’t want to get divorced.

As a therapist, we tend to think we have the skills to avoid marital calamities like divorce.

In my relationship, we had survived unemployment, underemployment & grad school, we could survive infidelity, right?

We could have, if we’d gotten help, if we really wanted to change ourselves and change our relationship to meet both of our needs.

That discussion is a post for another day.

Passionate Marriage was a beginning of more awareness building for me. It was a text that did a lot to me and for me. (Books are why I affectionately call myself the Bookworm Therapist. I believe that I can’t be the only person to go through what I’m going through and someone somewhere else has probably gone through it and ideally writte a book, article, song or poem about it. At least I hope for it with crossed fingers and toes, because the alternative is unsettling to say the least!)

Primarily, it was one of the important first steps I really needed in the continued development of my self and identity as a person. It made me become the wife in my relationship instead of the therapist I’d been operating as for the past 12 years in being connected to the kid’s dad (TKD).

It’s a book primarily about differentiation of self and within relationships. It’s become one of the books I reference in couples work & recommend when working in the family relational space generally.

I’ll share some of my favorite phrases, pages & takeaways in future posts.

Change is inevitable, Growth is optional

by LaShawn | Nov 24, 2019 | Identity Growth and Change, Relational Spaces

Every story is rooted in change. Mine is no exception. As I’ve taken time to consider my career as a social worker for the last 20 years, I knew I wanted my practice to reflect my diverse experiences and professional skillset.

Identity, Growth & Change have been the keywords I used to anchor my work around facilitating connection for individuals, families, groups & communities.

It only seemed right to expand the way I talk about my work as efforts in relational change where connection matters most.

“Change is inevitable.
Growth is optional.”
John Maxwell

Welcome to Relational Spaces w/Dr. LaShawn! I’m excited to expand and articulate the next phases of this journey!

My website is being redesigned and launching just in time for 2020.

Stay tuned!!

It’s been 3 years.

by LaShawn | Nov 16, 2019 | Identity Growth and Change, Relational Spaces, The Divorced Therapist

November 14th & 16th are my divorce-aversary (divorce-anniversary) dates.

November 14th because that’s when my divorce was finalized but I didn’t realize it.

November 16th because that’s when I got an email from my lawyer that the decree I thought I was reviewing was actually the finalized decree.

A friend commented “Congratulations on your nupiticide” and I quipped “I need that on a shirt!” I still think that I do, even thought it’s been three years.

Nupticide: he destruction of a nuptial union.

It was November and I’d actually just moved into the home I would rent as I sold my house aka “the marital home.”

I made another withdrawal from my 401k to cover expenses, as I’d just started a new full time job in August and was trying to “get back on my feet” as they say. At some point during the moving of the things that I needed and sorting through the things he’d left behind and finding out how many more things were lost or destroyed during the divorce process, I told myself: “I’ll give it three years to get back on my feet. If I have to drain my 401k to get by paying rent here and my mortgage until the home sells, I’ll do it – as long as me and the kids are taken care of. They need as little disturbance to their lives as possible considering what they’re too little to understand they’re going through right now.”

And I did drain my 401k that I’d had after 10 years of working for the state, just to get through the divorce.

Then I got equity from the home sale, too. It took me 2 years of full time work plus the equity from my home sale, to realize that raising a family of 4 between two homes with $100 in child support from the kid’s dad (aka TKD) every month and only one job was a significant struggle.

And then I fell in love in year 3…. with a house.

After the divorce was final, the kids said they wanted their own house. I felt like I did too. Maybe it was to prove to myself that I could do it again. I’d bought my first home before I was married and i bought my second home while TKD was unemployed (he will always say that it was his credit that got us the home, although he wasn’t ever on the mortgage loan or the deed and couldn’t qualify to buy the home from me in the divorce). Something about having a home of our own kept coming up. We liked our neighborhood and our neighbors. And the kids wanted a two story home. Everything we saw was a one-story rambler or very old and dated and would need more money put into it to bring it up to date.

And then….

We were driving to the store and saw a home for sale. It was a two-story home. I texted my realtor (who became like a sister to me during the sale of my home during the divorce as she was also divorced) and asked her to get us a showing. She told me it was above my price point and asked if she should increase it for my search. I said no, we’re just gonna walk through it, not buy it.

And then we did our showing… and i had the same feeling in this house that I did in my second home. I walked in and said “this is my house.” Except this time I said “oh no.” and “uh oh.” as I walked through the house and fell in love with each room, the layout, the shower, the closet, the basement, the backyard & the kitchen.

It was my home.

After the walk through, I had to talk to myself and my Self said, “…but it’s almost been 3 years. And you said ‘2-3 years to get yourself together and back on your feet.’ and here is a home… together and here you are with feet, so???” And it really was a lot like falling in love because I didn’t feel like I was ready for what I deserved nor did I feel that I necessarily deserved it.

But I was ready on the inside and I do believe I deserve it.

The home that stole my heart

This is my third home purchase in almost 15 years.

Oftentimes people will hear my divorce story and praise me for getting this purchase “without a man” and then i look back at the 3 properties I’ve owned in my life and I’ve always done them “without a man.” My only co-owned purchase was acreage with TKD that we’d planned to build on – had plans drawn up and everything, but then the divorce happened instead and the land was a short sale.

But here I am 3 years later, from a process that truly drained me emotionally and financially. 3 years later and I know that it’s time to rebuild, to truly build with intention and purpose in ways that I have done before but didn’t realize it when it was happening. Divorce isn’t easy and I can’t say that divorce is necessarily worth it when there are kids involved. It was worth it for me and it’s very difficult helping them navigate their reality inside of my own, but this is where we are.

I look at how hard I work and how hard it really is to try and do all of this like a Pinterest-perfect person. My own life story is as much of an impact on my present circumstances as my divorce is. The divorce just highlighted it to a place that I could see it and make sense of myself and the life I want for my family and my kids.

I intentionally try to create and provide and sustain for my kids. That is the only truth I hold right now. It is my start and my finish line. It is my one true thing. We talked yesterday about what our reward would be when I get a promotion at my job in two years. We set a reward for when I finished my dissertation back in 2017 and it helped us cope with the stress of it all (aka during the divorce) and we will do it again as we enter another busy year preparing for promotion and tenure.

So we’re going to set some intentions and plan our life and expectations with each other for that time period this weekend. I look at the last three years and think that it could be worse (and it has gotten close more than I have time to write about in this moment) but it can and is and will get better. I love the quote “God didn’t bring you through a storm to drop you in a puddle” because none of this has been easy, but it has taught me to invest in rain boots just as much as sturdy umbrellas.

And to look forward to the next 2-3 years because it’s time to bloom.

Journaling the Junk Away…

by LaShawn | Jun 30, 2019 | Identity Growth and Change, Relational Spaces

If you find yourself struggling with emotions that feel paralyzing and limiting (or getting close to it!) to your ability to function on a daily basis, you may benefit from a journaling method that consists of a good ol’ healthy brain dump. No theme. No prompt. No order or structure. Just dumping the words in your brain onto paper.

Why?

Well, as I’ve learned more about how our bodies understand and hold on to energy, I’ve started to approach thoughts like tiny particles of energy and if they build up and build up in my head (or other places in my body) they start to cause pressure. I don’t know about you, but some of my thoughts contribute to some of my most annoying headaches. So what do I do with other things that build up and cause clutter or pressure? I decide how long I can tolerate it and then when I can’t, I start moving the junk.

That may mean moving the junk “out of sight, out of mind” or it may mean sorting through it and putting it into functional piles or it may mean throwing everything into garbage bags and hauling it to the street for garbage day.

Whatever the final method, it all starts with a brain dump.

One of the best brain dumps I was ever introduced to was by a fellow therapist who introduced me to the book “The Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron. The book had an option to come with a journal and she encouraged me to pursue that option. I opened the book and the journal and eventually got to work writing the “morning pages.”

The morning pages are a brain dump that is an investment into your clarity of self and recovery.

Here’s what Julia Cameron says about them after describing her own morning pages journals she’s created over the years.

“The journal you hold in your hands is first and foremost intended as such a companion. Through it, you will be contacting yourself: your hopes, fears, dreams, aspirations, and the simply daily flow of life. Through it, you will find privacy, a sort of portable “room of your own” where your opinion is off the record, except to your own eyes. Although you may have kept a journal previously, you are asked to keep this one in a very specific way: through the daily use of morning pages. Note the words daily and morning. What, exactly, are morning pages and why should you use them? Put simply, morning pages are three pages of longhand morning writing. They are to be written strictly off the top of your head. (No “real” writing please!) Pages may sound whiny, grumpy, even petty. Occasionally, a brilliant idea may sparkle through, but more often it will be “Need to do the laundry, forgot to call my sister, wonder how Dad is.” When I am in a puckish mood, I call morning pages “Brain Drain.” they are used to siphon off whatever nebulous worries, jitters, and pre-occupations stand between me and my day… Once we get those muddy, maddening, confusing thoughts on the page, we face our day with clearer eyes. We are more honest with ourselves and others, more centered and more spiritually at ease. For this reason, I often say that morning pages are a form of meditation. You are writing down the “cloud” thoughts that drift across your mind. In writing them down, you clear them.

I alluded to this process a bit in my earliest post about the therapy process being like a fizzy drink of soda. Morning pages help us clear the fizz.

Why do I have to write? Can i just talk and record myself?

If that’s a question you have, I wouldn’t say that talking is off limits or prohibited. What I will say is that writing involves a bit more of your body in the physical process of moving emotional energy from your thoughts to sheets of paper. The goal is the same: clear you head so that you can see your self and your life clearer. There is no wrong way to do it as long as you keep writing,

The words are yours and yours alone. The activity is excellent for creating a connection with yourself and your identity. Once you are clearer about who you are, you’re better equipped to understand ideas for how you want to grow and eventually create sustainable change in your life as well.

Give yourself the gift of connection through authenticity in your writing.

Give the morning pages a try and tell me what you think in the comments!

Dr. LaShawn
Identity, Growth & Change, LLC

SAVERS & the Miracle Morning

by LaShawn | Mar 25, 2019 | Identity Growth and Change, Relational Spaces, The Bookworm Therapist

I’m not one to jump on a bandwagon of latest fads, but let me tell you how I found the SAVERS acronym and why I think it’s helpful.

But first, the backstory: In the last quarter of 2018, my good friend introduced me to bullet journaling and in the process of trying different layouts and surfing the learning curve of all things #bujo I ran across this goal setting layout called “Level 10 Life.” (Another blog for another day) While trying to get more background information on what the Level 10 life was, I ran into the same name (Hal Elrod) and three words: The Miracle Morning.

So now I’m searching Hal and the miracle morning to see what this is all about. This led me to Barnes and Noble (because it was out of stock at my public library and I was #5 on the waiting list) on a Saturday night where I found the book and sat down to flip through it and see if I wanted to purchase it.

an oversized brown patterned chair holds a blue book entitled "The Miracle Morning"

Where read The Miracle Morning

I finished the book in about 2 hours and took notes of what mattered most and made sense to me.

Enter the S.A.V.E.R.S. acronym.

SILENCE * AFFIRMATIONS * VISUALIZATION * EXERCISE * READ * SCRIBE

It’s actually called the LIFE SAVERS for multiple reasons, but it’s shortened to “savers” and if you check pinterest for SAVERS and bullet journal layouts, you’ll see example upon example of ways that folks are creating their miracle mornings. I was intrigued and skeptical about its effectiveness because of how popular it was. However, I couldn’t stop thinking about it once I got home. Was I ready to try it?

I knew a few things for certain, however, I wasn’t waking up an hour earlier to do it. I’m a single parent of 3 kids under 12 and sleep is a precious commodity. I was open to considering restructuring my present wake-up-and-wrangle-kids-and-go routine to see if or how i could fit this “miracle” into it.

Want to know what sold me on the technique? Two major points/takeaways from the book:

First, the SAVERS are suggested to be done an hour earlier than when everyone else in your home gets up (again, huge NOPE for me). People get so excited about their success that they start waking up 2 hours earlier (2 hours of NOPE). This wasn’t going to be me BUT one sentence gave me enough hope that it could work and it was this – “If you can’t do 60 minutes, then just do 1.”

The way SAVERS is set up is that it’s 10 minutes per letter: 10 minutes of silences, 10 minutes of affirmations, 10 minutes of Visualization, 10 minutes of exercise, 10 minutes of Reading and 10 minutes of Scribing (Writing). The goal is to carve out an hour of time to invest in yourself and start your morning off positively and productively. As a busy as my family is, I knew I could try for 1 minute if I wasn’t able to do 60. I set a goal to do 4 out of 6 letters as consistently as possible. I regularly read and write, so I just focused on SAVE, especially the E, because exercise is not my super power.

That weekend I started and I logged about 45 days of consistent SAVE-ing in my bullet journal. What made it work? It was simple to do and there was always at least one thing to do so that I could check it off of my list.

The piece that sealed the deal for me was a paradigm shift on consistency.

We’ve all heard the adage that “it takes 21 days to form a new habit.” Elrod discusses this in his book and says that it actually takes 21 days to form a new habit but 30 to cement it into your routine. I have to agree with him here because of how he broke down the 30 days. To be brief, he says that Days 1-10 are unbearable and it takes about everything in you just to get to day 10. Once you hit Days 11-20 it’s uncomfortable but no longer impossible. Day 21 is where most of us think we’re cured, so we stop and then wonder why we don’t have the new habit solidly in our lives? It’s because we have to go from day 21 to 30 to do so. He calls it the “unstoppable” part of your process.

I held onto that 10-days-at-a-time mindset for the first 45 days that I was using the SAVERS acronym and, of course, like all good habits, I got excited and proud of myself so I stopped doing them all each day but it’s different this time. It’s easier to start again, even with just 1 minute. 10 seconds of silence, 10 seconds of affirmations, 10 seconds of visualization, 10 seconds of exercise, 10 seconds of reading and 10 seconds of scribing.

It’s truly amazing what you can do in one minute and the sense of accomplishment of “just doing something” that you promised yourself you’d do. So, that’s my very brief opinion on why the SAVERS have become my game changer and I share them with people I know. It’s an easy way to start doing something different that is beneficial to your self and your health.

As always, be gentle with yourself, trust the process, and keep trying. You’re worth it!

Therapy isn’t a bad word, it’s just misunderstood.

by LaShawn | Jan 24, 2019 | Identity Growth and Change, The Divorced Therapist

When your mentor says it, all you can do is repost and share your own story!

Therapy was not a dirty word in my family, it just wasn’t a real one. I say that to mean that it wasn’t something discussed in my family growing up. We were an active-duty military, Southern, Christian Black family. My parents were first generation college graduates. We survived, “we made it,” we were successful, we prayed. We didn’t have to go to therapy.

Therapy wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t real.

Therapy wasn’t anything we saw as a resource or an option. However, talking was important to our relationship with my mother and it was probably the closest we got to experiencing the listening ear of a therapist.

Could I have used a therapist for any of these major life events?

– adjusting to mom’s remarriage? Yup.

– adjusting to step dad?Yup.

– figuring out the relationship with my bio dad? Yup.

– and step mom? Yup.

– multiple moves? Yup.

– having 4 siblings enter my “only-child” world? Yup.

– maintaining relationships with siblings on my dad’s side? Yup.

– meeting a new sibling as a junior in high school? Yup.

– changing schools, homes, church congregations & friendships? Yup.

With our frequent moves, creating a relationship with a new therapist after every move may have negatively impacted the therapeutic relationship. (A good fit and consistency is important!) Therapy may not have been conducive to our lifestyle and I realize this in hindsight. So while therapy wasn’t real to us, I can definitely acknowledge that it could have been helpful for me as an “only-turned-oldest child” in a new family configuration as one of many reasons.

I got closer to therapy experiences before I finished elementary school. My near-therapist was a Catholic Priest in my 4th and 5th grade (and only) years of private school. I don’t remember his name, but here’s what I do remember:

Whenever it was time for weekly confessional, he always came from around the mesh divider and sat in front of me. He always listened. He didn’t interrupt me. He was approachable enough that I trusted him with my story and my struggles of being a stepchild, a jealous older sibling, a new kid at every school (every year!) and a confused kid about having two sets of parents and trying to get along with all of them. I don’t know that there were any huge “a-ha!” moments for me when we would talk – I was barely developmentally ready for “talk-therapy.” I just knew that it gave me the energy and perspective I needed to try again for another week. Every week. I really appreciated him for the safe space he gave me to explore my thoughts and feelings.

I didn’t officially enter therapy until I was an adult. First it was pre-marital counseling, which shifted into marital counseling, which evolved into divorce process/individual counseling.

I have loved and grown from the work with most of my therapists (not every one was a good fit)! For me, being a therapist “on the couch” of another therapist, either alone or as a couple, I really was able to appreciate our therapy training. It gave me insights into myself as a person being seen through the eyes of another professional.

I have appreciated having my own, very necessary, safe space via another therapist’s expertise. I have appreciated the accountability and the support, the belief and the empowerment that I’ve received in therapy. It has been what’s helped me feel better prepared to show up for not just my own clients, but for my family, my friends and my profession, too! Being in the same shoes as your client is validating! We really care that you have the right fit because the connection and potential work truly depend on it.

I echo the words of my mentor who shares her journey here: therapy isn’t a bad word! It can be a mystery, but it is a mystery with a real solution for your life and the lives of your loved ones.

A few reminders if you’re considering therapy for the first time:

Remember that it is its own relationship and needs time to establish itself. Give yourself 2-4 sessions to establish a rhythm.
It’s important that you feel safe, heard & understood. You want to know that your therapist can comfortably speak your language (literally and figuratively). Ask about their specialties and preferred approaches.
It’s okay to see a few therapists before you make a decision to receive services. Ask about free consultations!