Transition

Photo: Laura Kinsler, Karen Beveridge, and Sam Pringle

Article by Karen Beveridge - January 2024

2022/2023 and turning into the year of 2024 have been periods of transition for me. I have been doing a lot of processing. Deciding to cease working with clients, moving away from facilitating workshops, becoming a grandma, losing close relatives, celebrating the wedding of my daughter to name a few have been a sea of emotions. 

On holiday recently I sat and watched the stormy sea pound the rocks for several days and then on other days saw the waves gently lap the same rocks. I noticed how the shape of the rocks has been changed, often over time, occasionally by a violent storm making a seismic change, but more so a constant ebb and flow making the changes.

My feelings and physical restlessness of tight gut, quiet mood along with frustration, tension, horror, sadness, restlessness, doubt, concern along with joy, love, tenderness, and empathy, to name but a few, have been like waves as I have navigated transitions in myself, my relationship realm, and the wider world. Some decisions have been in flow, others appear to be in flux. I believed I was unable to decide.

Transition is a mix of emotional, physical, physiological, and intellectual, and it has been through my processing, tracking back and forth, that I understand how I have been turning up in some aspects of the community but not showing up. I couldn’t make sense and no wonder when it is such a full body experience, no words to explain were accessible to me.

My processing helped illuminate to me that I am now able to let go of my fictions of not doing the right thing, abandoning colleagues, letting them down, becoming isolated, and withdrawing. I recognise this as a pattern that spirals in my beliefs, arising from time to time. Sometimes in sight, sometimes missed by me. 

In my knowing and my being, I realise there are other choices I wish to embrace and leave space to see what emerges. I have clarity and reached my decision to leave the PIAC community. 

I said to Louie, and to those with whom I attend supervision, where they witnessed my processing, that the constellation is in me and at work in my life and will continue to be.

Louie said something. I have probably heard it before but it was not in my range so the words did not fully resonate with me at the time.

“It is only a framework and is inert, unless it is picked up by others.”

Thank you for the framework and inviting others to step in and for my gift of being one of the first to tread those steps. 

Karen