After the Push, Comes the Pain

I've missed writing you.

It’s only been a week since my last email, but somehow it feels like weeks have passed. 

I know I’m not alone in this. 

Sometimes, after an enormous push — a launch, a performance, an opening, a big ask — it can feel like we fall straight off a cliff into a trance of despair. 

The exhaustion. The visibility hangover. The letdown.It’s real. 

And it hurts. It hurts so bad. 

Doesn’t it make sense that it would? 

I coach my clients to make space for the turnaround — that tender time after the big energy of putting yourself out there.But I don’t always take my own advice. 

The past 24 hours were rough. 

All my energy — my willingness to be flexible, stay open, be generous, even in the face of real financial and emotional strain running my own business — got stuck in the spokes and couldn't move forward. 

Reclining on opposite ends of the couch, legs intertwined, I was expressing the pain of this moment to my partner. 

He asked gently, "Can you coach yourself the way you coach your clients?" 

“Not yet," I said. "I need to feel sad about what is so painful right now.” 

That’s what the turnaround is for. 

To feel what’s always just beneath the surface — what we fear. 

Fear is part of our human-ness. 

And isn't it so human to feel deeply sad after exerting so much effort? 

No matter how skilled or practiced we are at charging forward, fear needs space to express itself.

It needs tending — whether what we just created was a success, a flop, or something in between. 

Because it takes enormous psychological — and nervous system — effort to persevere. 

I shared some morning thoughts with a friend who is an expert community gatherer and creator. 

She said a friend of hers recently told her that what I’m calling a turnaround feels to her like being in a “functional freeze.” 

Only, my friend didn’t feel all that "functional."  Just stuck. 

By midnight last night, I sensed that the struggle I was experiencing was necessary.

That it would result in something new — a shift, an idea, energy to begin again. 

And this morning, that stuck began to move.

It has the quality of remembering what matters most to me.

And it has enough energy to start to peddle forward today.   

How about you?  Are you in a turnaround or expecting one? I've got some ideas for you!