Are you triggered by change?

What creativity and glimmers teach us about how to cope with life's upheavals and transitions.

My Ukrainian vinok and blouse.

For a couple of years in high school, I danced with the Ukrainian Dancers of Dallas.

When the opportunity arose to dance with this group, I was both terrified and exhilarated. I wasn’t a dancer. This was outside of my comfort zone. I’d tried ballet and was abysmal—each leap heard around the world. 

Nevertheless, I was determined to do this. I was at that age when I was navigating the awkward changes of adolescence. I was trying to find belonging and acceptance while also tiptoeing the line of unexplored identities and possibilities.

I practiced the basic steps for hours. Another dancer worked with me outside of rehearsals to help me find my coordination and catch up on the choreography since I’d joined mid-season.

Meanwhile, the dancer’s mother helped my mom find someone to make my vinok, a crown of colorful flowers and long ribbons that reach to the waist. My grandmother mailed a Ukrainian embroidered blouse from Philadelphia. 

The entire ensemble from the vinok to the skirts and red-painted ballet shoes was a collaborative, communal act of creativity and love. 

During the first performance, I’ll never forget the adrenaline coursing through my veins as I spun on the stage, the ribbons on the crown of my head wrapping themselves around me in a chaotic embrace. 

Afterward, I felt different. Not just sweaty from exertion but elated, fulfilled. Changed, yet connected to something bigger than myself. Identity. Community. A connection with my heritage as tightly intertwined into my DNA as the French braid woven into my hair by the deft hands of one of the other dancers’ mothers.

No longer just a shy, uncertain kid, but my grandparents’ granddaughter paying tribute to their country of origin and a heritage full of beauty and pride that the hands of tyrants had attempted to stain and stamp out. After surviving Stalin’s Great Hunger (Holodomor) and forced labor camps in Germany, they had little appetite to return to Ukraine, now swallowed by the Soviets. They were eventually granted asylum in the U.S.

Even though they had no clue of what life would look like, change was in the offing and they grabbed it eagerly with both hands. 

Does such a journey even feel scary after the trauma you’ve already endured?

Does the heady thrill of a new start outweigh the fear of the unknown? 

It depends.

Change of your own making is one thing. Change that’s out of your control is another. And then there’s the messy middle as plenty of refugees can attest.

At the intersection of resistance and acceptance.

When I became a mother, I leaned into creativity and curiosity to raise my two boys. We’d explore museums and the zoo. We’d go on nature scavenger hunts and spend hours at the park. I’d sign them up for Kindermusik and art classes. We’d read piles of books about cars, dinosaurs, airplanes and trucks. They’d spend hours building cities out of Legos and drawing pictures, making slime and playing with Play-Doh. 

Naturally, life wasn’t always rosy. Of course not. What parent hasn’t blindly white-knuckled their way through a painful child-rearing situation? What mother hasn’t dreamt about the days when she’d have more time for herself (and a full night’s sleep) while trying to soothe a crying flushed infant sick with croup at 3 in the morning?

Now those days I so playfully imagined are seeping in like whispers drifting through the cracks in the door and curling around blind corners. Cool ghostly fingers tickling the back of my neck.

Instead of accepting that change is happening whether I like it or not, I find myself tempted to batten down the hatches, shove towels under the door, and throw blankets over my head. 

“Go away!” I want to shout. “I’m not ready yet.” But it’s too late. Change has already begun to rip at the seams of this life I so carefully pieced together. It delights in watching me nurse the bruising skid marks it leaves on my heart, knowing my efforts to prevent it are useless. It’s coming back for more. I resent it. I want to resist.

And…

I realize I have a choice. I can let change eat me up and turn me into a person I neither recognize nor respect. Angry, embittered, lost. Shrunken and closed off from the world, safe in the static known. 

If I learned anything from my grandparents’ —and my own— experiences with change, it’s the knowledge that I’m not wired to hide or wallow in cynicism for long. My creativity feels stunted, out of reach, in this dark place.

You see, creativity doesn’t like safety and security. It likes to dance on the precipice. It likes to explore the hidden nooks and crannies. It likes to curiously imagine the possibilities.

Creativity fidgets at the crossroads of change and it seeks community. It’s what folk dancing as a young teenager showed me. 

While change redefines the borders and valleys of our landscape, creativity waits for us to quiet down and pay attention. Then it goes about transforming our spirits. Pulling others in, hand-in-hand. Moving us toward something new that starts to look more and more like acceptance.

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way. When we are no longer able to change the situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” ~ Victor Frankel, Holocaust survivor and author of Man’s Search for Meaning

I get it. I’m no longer the center of my kids’ universe. They’re growing up, following their own journeys and dreams, discovering what lifts their wings and makes their spirits shine. 

This is the natural order of things.

I recognize that what I’m feeling is an embattled mixture of grief, fear and weirdly, cautious optimism. I must trust that every ounce of energy and attention my husband and I poured into our children over the years (and still do even at a time in their lives when they *think* they no longer need it), will strengthen them to go through the world with self-assured kindness, loving courage and bold curiosity.

But Jesus on a bicycle, it’s scary and hard! 

Adding fuel to the flames, other changes are happening too. 

I’ve entered into a time of life that people insist on calling middle age. What an ugly term. Let’s work on that. The Age of the Queen sounds nice.

My industry is changing and shifting. Some are running around screaming with their hair on fire. I empathize. It’s scary. Yet, I’m choosing to adapt. And yes, some days that means anxiously sitting in the chilly dark room waiting patiently for the blurry picture to finish developing before I can fully articulate the caption.

I suppose it’s no coincidence that I chose “craft” as my word of the year. It’s where creativity meets flow. It’s my antidote to anxiety-provoking transitions. But there’s something else we can do.

Dear Change, Meet Glimmers

In psychology, the word “trigger” means a red flag or danger cue. Triggers send us into fight or flight mode and hypervigilance. I’m sure you hear the word all of the time.

What we don’t hear much about is a concept I recently came across called “glimmers.” In the article by Vanesa Pizzuto in Vibrant Life magazine, Deb Dana, a clinical social worker who specializes in complex trauma, describes glimmers as the tiny moments in life that move us into a state of relaxed calm and connection.

As we learn to pay attention to more and more glimmers, we build up our emotional resilience. Think slowing down and being present to soothing sensations like the soft fur of a pet, the bright sounds of birds singing, the smell of fresh-baked cookies or a tree bursting with new life.

While triggers force us to shrink back, glimmers expand and nourish our well-being.

We’re all going through changes and upheavals in our lives and many of these changes are out of our control. By filling our glimmer buckets, maybe we’ll feel stronger, less resistant and more hopeful about how we’ll navigate whatever change is coming next.

I’m willing to give it a spin. How about you? (Ribbons and flower crowns optional.)