Travel

It’s funny how life ebbs and flows. I have these moments where things feel like they’ve reached a dead end, only for it to change directions, pick up momentum and revitalize. It always reminds me of how little I often know about what life holds in store. It’s also a good reminder that when I think things are falling apart, they often aren’t. Or that what seems like a bad thing may not be one at all, just something that is part of the process. I can think of countless times when hindsight has taught me this lesson. It’s just so hard to remember it when you’re in the moment and things feel scary and are unknown.

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Shortly after writing my last blog, a few things shifted. New Zealand often does something called a “secondment”, which is where if there is a vacancy in another role inside your organization, they might post a temporary opening for it where you can leave your current role and step into the new role for a set period of time, then return to your previous role when it is over. It allows people to try a position out before fully committing.

We had a temporary opening for the Clinical Manager of Mental Health at a prison in Dunedin, which is further south than where I normally live. The role is for the person who manages the multidisciplinary mental health team similar to the one I work on in Christchurch. It is a leadership position, so not only do you manage the team, but you are a part of the senior leadership team at the prison and get your own parking spot. I was fortunate enough to be seconded into this position for a little over two months.

Not only was it a really great experience, it also meant I had to fly back and forth between Christchurch and Dunedin every Thursday and Sunday. For the past 9 weeks, I have been living out of a hotel during the week and returning home for the weekends. I am currently finishing my last week before the secondment ends. It has been such a good experience to see if I have an interest in shifting away from clinical work and into management. I’m not quite sure the answer to that, but I will say I have really enjoyed it and it has allowed me to use another skill set that I realize I have missed using.

The other thing that has shifted is that my Trauma-Informed Care in the Prison Setting training has gained momentum again. I was able to run three groups through while I was in Dunedin, and we submitted a formal proposal to national office to allow my role to shift to an educator position, which would allow me to create a train-the-trainer program that could roll the training out nationally (at all prisons) and set up an infrastructure where the local mental health teams could continue to support staff with the material ongoing.

So far 78 staff have gone through it at three different sites (two men’s prisons and a women’s prison) and it continues to have 100% support from participants who have completed it who say that it needs to be given to other staff. We just had a 4th prison on the North Island request I fly up and deliver it to staff in the Intensive Support Unit there, which we can hopefully get scheduled soon. The president of the correction officer’s union in NZ has requested to attend a future session (so it may get union support, which would be huge). When I was at the national office recently, several people told me that many people have been talking about the training and sharing their support for it at the senior levels. While I am still waiting to hear about the proposal we submitted, things look more hopeful than ever that we may get enough momentum to push this out nationally. My home site in Christchurch has also officially started scheduling the rollout to all the staff at that site beginning in May. So while this journey has had its fits and starts, it keeps progressing. The more sites we try it out at and get good feedback, the more hope I have it will get the national level support it needs to really have a chance to shift the larger culture.

The other piece that has gotten some momentum is that the Compassion Prison Project is also now ready to focus more on the staff training aspect, and we have been collaborating again to see if I can help. It is too soon to see what will come of this, but they are working in the US, Columbia, Ireland and hopefully will continue to also gain momentum. All of this stuff is still at that place where nothing is solid (and could still collapse); but, there is also potential that it will hit the tipping point and really start to have an impact. I am hopeful we can get this going. It has felt like quite the roller coaster, but I guess that is just how stuff like this works. I have a meeting with a graphic design company next week to polish it up a bit, so cross your fingers.

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In my personal life, we will be starting our second round of IVF this week. This will likely be our final round, so hopefully we will have success. I am grateful the timing has worked out with all the recent traveling I have been doing. We will again have any embryos that make it past the 5 day mark genetically tested on the front end (and frozen while the tests process), so we likely won’t find out if we have a normal embryo until May or June.

It just so happens my partner will be graduating the internship part of his school degree (the one that he has done the traveling for these past couple years) in Peru in May. Family has been invited to attend the graduation ceremony there, so it looks like I will be joining him in Peru. I will fly in early to attend an ayahuasca retreat in the Sacred Valley of the Incas. This is a healing ceremony facilitated by a shaman (with a medical doctor and psychologist on hand) and has been something I have always wanted to do. I highly resonate with indigenous healing and spiritual practices, and have experienced some of the most impactful moments of my life in places like a sweat lodge or at a medicine wheel. The retreat will be three days and when it is finished, I will join up with my partner. After his graduation a group of us will do a 5 day hike on the Lares Track and Short Inca Trail into Machu Picchu. We will then fly back home together.

The irony was not lost on me that I have struggled with the re-emergence of some old wounds I had thought I had long ago healed, which were triggered by the travel portion of the school program. It seems sort of fitting that it is the graduation ceremony of this program that will take me to the Sacred Valley to hopefully do some deep healing of my own. The thing that showed me I still had some healing to do is the same thing that is opening the door for me to potentially do it. Hopefully, I at least gain some new insights or am able to do a piece of this work. I also feel my life is in a bit of transition of sorts, and I find that is always a good time to step back and do some personal growth work, or seek insight and guidance. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Once we return, hopefully we will have the information we need to begin figuring out our next steps. We will hopefully know if the IVF is successful, I will have hopefully heard something about the educator position and I have been told there are potentially some permanent clinical manager positions opening on the North Island if I wanted to go in that direction. We may also decide to start planning to return to the US. It’s a bit up in the air right now, but by the end of the year we should have some answers. I am trying my best to stay in the current moment, look forward to what is on the horizon and trust that the answers will come when I need them.

I hope the things happening in your life are progressing as well, no matter what stage they are in. The gratitude journal I started using at the start of the year has been immensely helpful in helping me remember the good no matter what else is going on. I can always find things I’m grateful for even on the hard days, no matter how small. I find that now I even look for things and acknowledge them along the way instead of letting them silently slip by. I hope that you too can hang onto the glimmers no matter what phase of the ebb and flow you are in.

Until next time.