The Embracing Change Series - Rolling with Unexpected Change: Claire's Story

Happy 2013 all!  I’m excited to start off 2013 by returning to our Embracing Change series.

The last two posts in the Embracing Change series have focused on women who sought out change in their own lives.  Today’s post features Claire, a consummate “five-year” planner and academic into whose life walked an unplanned change agent, in the form of a US Naval Officer.  The romance that sparked and blossomed between the PhD and the sailor was not something that Claire had planned on, but after  years of a long-distance courtship, thousands of miles of driving and flying, and hours of phone calls, the two wed down the road from the restaurant where they first met.  And as she tells us below, over the years of courtship and subsequent years of marriage, Claire has learned to loosen her grip on her five-year plan, embrace flexibility, and be open to multiple possibilities for the future.

MF:  Hi Claire!  Thanks for agreeing to be interviewed for this series.  Can you tell our readers a little bit about the change that life presented to you?

I am married to a military officer, and since we’ve been married we’ve moved to a different state every two years.  Our biggest move was in early 2012, when we moved from the Northeast (where I have lived for most of my life) to the Pacific Northwest – a process that involved living in four homes on two coasts over the course of eight months!  

This also meant that I stopped working and taking classes, and came to an area of the country where I did not have any established personal, professional, or academic networks.  I am planning to go back to work, recently obtained my professional state license, and am slowly starting to establish a professional network here.  Still, it’s been a huge adjustment to go from having a full work/school schedule that took up 50+ hours of my week to being a primarily stay at home partner.


Packed up and ready to leave Claire's East Coast home...

...for her new West Coast location.

MF: That’s quite a change!  What strategies do you recommend to deal with changes in your life that you haven’t initiated?

For me, it’s keeping the perspective that it’s not a situation that was thrust upon me without my consent.  I think often times, when a situation isn’t ideal or is limited in its options, it’s easy to see it as “no way out” or feel a bit like a martyr – but in reality, there are options, they just may come with other consequences that are more undesirable. 

If the most important thing for me was to stay in the Northeast, then I could have decided not to move, but that would brought its own consequences such as an unhappy partner, expenses of two living quarters, and potential marital discord.  I would rather be with my husband than suffer the consequences of refusing to move across the country. I chose to marry someone who serves the military, and everyday, I choose to stay in that marriage, which I know comes with many moves.  When I look at it from that big picture, I’m very much an active participant in choosing our lifestyle of change.  And with that as my framework, we are playing the best hand with the cards we were dealt, so to speak.

MF:  That’s a great – and empowering - perspective to have!  As a follow-on to that positive outlook, do you think there can be a silver lining to the unexpected changes life can present?

I think it can help broaden your perspective.  Change inherently shakes up the status quo, and my understanding of what is “normal” becomes wider with each new situation.  I’m also learning to become more flexible in thinking about what the future might hold.

At the same time, I value what remains constant in my life despite the changes: my spouse, who lets me make as many decisions as I can so that I can be an active participant in the change; relatives who welcome us when we manage to be there for holidays and send us cards and gifts when we cannot, so we still feel included no matter what; friends who come visit each time I move to a new place, and friends who aren’t phased by long absences in communication; my cell phone number, which I’ve had now for over a decade (trust me, this is invaluable when you move as often as we do).

MF:  Now, for a little more self-reflection.  Did anything surprise you when you were dealing with/adjusting to the change?

I am terrible with spare time!

Also, apparently, running out of cardboard boxes or misplacing my packing-tape gun is my emotional demise. (That may have been the low point, during the move from house one to house two.)  However, two weeks into being at house three and being nearly unpacked, finding out that we have to move again two weeks later to house four, did not break me.  The take-home? As long as I have the correct tools and supplies, I don’t mind tackling huge tasks.

MF:  Packing-tape gun lessons aside, is there anything you would have done differently?

It’s hard to predict what life will be like when you move somewhere totally unknown - what kind of jobs are available?  What will the commute be like?  Where will you live?  Where will you go for grocery/dry cleaning/auto repair/etc.?  How will you make friends?

A collection of hotel room keys from Claire's cross-country trip.

Even with a lot of research and a few helpful friends giving us advice, we still are finding things that we would do differently if we did had to do this exact move over again.  Our neighborhood is nice, but now that we know the area better, there are other places we’d prefer to live.  (Check in with me in six months to see if we’re moving again when the lease is up…)  There are established means within the military to meet other families, and while it’s not the same as living near close friends, it certainly helps; I’m also slowly getting to know non-military people.  There are projects and trainings I think I could have done while I was working on the east coast, which perhaps would have helped me to start networking professionally out here.  But this is all in hindsight – we only had a couple of months notice before we knew for sure that we were moving to the Northwest, so in reality, there was very little time to do much planning.

MF: What advice do you have for people facing change in their lives?

Know that change, whether it’s good or bad, can be stressful, and don’t give yourself a hard time if you find it to be a challenge.  Sometimes, you might not be happy, or you might find something to be difficult, but it might not necessarily mean that something is “wrong.”

Not being happy, I think, is different from being unhappy – I don’t think the two emotions are mutually exclusive.  As you encounter and become adjusted to change, if you find yourself thinking, “I’m not as happy as I could/want to be,” don’t jump to the conclusion that it means you are unhappy.  Think of it as a process of building back up to a place you want to eventually reach.  And if you are having a bad day, acknowledge it for what it is – one day that didn’t go very well. 



Claire's view from her home office on the East Coast....



...and her view from her home office on the West Coast.

MF: Any other thoughts you’d like to share?

Lest you think that this is an interview where wisdom is being dispensed from someone who embraces the changes with the zen attitude of a Buddha, I assure you that is not the case.  I wish a lot of things were different: that it wasn’t so rainy in this part of the country; that the Northeast wasn’t a six hour flight away; that this town had a Chinese restaurant (No, really. We have Thai, Indian, Japanese, but no Chinese???); that I was still working at my old job, and still taking classes at my old school; that it’s easier to find a job; that someone would fold my laundry; that change wouldn’t be so hard.  But I’ve known people who get stuck in a rut focusing on the change that they didn’t want to happen to them, and experiencing the situation as something they must suffer through; they seem stuck in “I can’t” and “it’s impossible” and “I have to,” and I know that I don’t want to get stuck there.



Many thanks to Claire for sharing her story with us.  If you are in a similar situation as Claire and find yourself dealing with a change you didn't initiate, I hope her message of empowerment inspires you as much as it did me!

xoxo,
MF