personal – Page 4 – Katie Kearns

The parenting manual didn’t include a chapter on pandemics

A yellow flower in the foreground held between two fingers. There's dark purple nailpolish on the thumb. In the background are two shadows: on the left a woman with shoulder-length hair and a dress, on the right a slightly shorter shadow

What aspect of pandemic parenting should we be talking more about? The hard stuff: the reality of human cruelty, Bandaid solutions to bleeding out situations, and relationships that got developmentally frozen in 2020. And also the human capacity for love, acceptance, truth, communication, interdependence, liberation, rest, reciprocity, stewardship, and emergent abundance.

Follow the Bubbles

A photo from underwater. At the bottom, the water is dark and at the very top center is brightest. There are bubbles in the center.

What if, instead of drowning in everyday life of productivity and competition, we did what lights our spirits, brings us meaning and purpose, and puts our gifts in service to others?

Exploring my relationship to grief

A small pink balloon, lit from underneath, is floating about 12 feet above the ground. There is a neighborhood with two houses in the background. The sky is at sunset, light blue with a few clouds.

Like many of you, I’ve experienced a lot of grief during the pandemic. Yet I had convinced myself to keep working at full capacity through these transitions in relationships. I spent some of my leave of absence processing grief.

Spread sunshine

A complex, tessellated, radiating outward pattern of dots on a square black background. The dots are white, yellow, orange, and red. In each corner is a flame pattern pointing inward to the middle

For much of my professional life, I have maintained an impossible, “I will enjoy myself and life when…” fantasy. But I was denying myself the rich life I was trying to offer and protect for others.

Journey back to integrity: Therapeutic relationships

A black and yellow striped butterfly with long tails, perched on a long green stem. There's leaf litter and green woods in the background

My current role in a graduate school doesn’t automatically have direct, community-building work in it (which opens up lots of questions for me). As I went on my leave of absence in April, I knew that when I came back I would need to deliberately engage in work that is in integrity with my heart and spirit: community-building with graduate students.

My return from leave

A woman seated below a wall mural that says, Peace Love Tybee. ." T

I took a leave of absence because I was burned out and exhausted from working and parenting during the pandemic. When I’m being honest with myself, however, a misguided, naive goal I had for my mental health leave was to “cure” and “get rid of” my mental health challenges.

How was my leave?

In the foreground, a black backpack, pink water bottle. The lake is in the background. It's a gloomy grey day

I don’t think most people would have known I was having an internal experience of turmoil. I wear a happy, warm, reliable, productive, functional mask. The reality hit hard in March 2022 that I was in denial about my ability to continue coping with life-as-usual. My life had become unmanageable.

Rebirth

You know how, when a crayfish molts, It’s new skin is kind of translucent white? A little soft. Squishy. Glistening. Like all those Brood X, Larvae hanging off the oak tree bark, White wings unfurling from a pale yellow body. Now feels like that. Vulnerable. Pluripotent. Inevitable. Dear reader: These words sprinted from my brainContinue reading “Rebirth”

Guardrails and bowling bumpers: Reframing boundaries

I’m starting to reframe boundaries now as the abundance of time, space, and energy I need to bring my love-based self to the table. Instead of boundaries, I’m thinking about guardrails and bowling bumpers – adaptations to my life that make it less likely to get off track or fall off the cliff into fear, shame, and scarcity mindsets.

If you’re on leave, be on leave, Katie

I’m sharing with you my journey through recovery from burnout, the struggles I’ve encountered, what and who has been helpful, and how my thinking and behavior are starting to change..