Shedding 2020 and Growing New Skin
This month I’ve been helping my mother move out of and sell my childhood home. It’s a right of passage for many children with parents who are getting older. Yet this helped teach me a lesson about change and gave me a rare opportunity to connect to my ancestors in a unique way.
It’s a privilege to be able to help my mother move and witness her emotions through the process, and to do it with her in person rather than after her passing. Seeing the change through my mother’s eyes was eye-opening for me (pun intended!), because I saw life through a beginner’s lens. It gave me a deep breath of fresh air that I’ve been looking for. While my mother is in limbo figuring out her next stages in life there was kinetic energy and deep sorrow.
There’s so much potential in new beginnings, yet so much uncertainty. Her sense of security was taken out from under her, yet she’s able to shed a new skin and take a step into the abyss. She no longer has the burden of wondering what the next rainfall will do the gravel driveway, or bask in the glory of the sunset that lit up the sky at dusk. There is beauty and pain in this all at once.
The House My Father Built
In November 1974 my father hiked into the deep woods in Street, Maryland and sat on top of a jagged rock 20 feet tall. An avid hunter and good old boy from West Virginia, my dad felt at peace in the wilderness. He looked around the panoramic expanse and decided right there that he was going to make this wilderness a home. Even though all he could see around him were trees, he saw its potential.
My parents bought that plot of land for $15,000 (roughly $79,000 in today’s money), and by that November they made a clearing, added water and sewer lines, and moved into a mobile home there. Along the way they had three daughters, and quickly grew out of the mobile home. A decade later, my father built a house a stone’s throw away and in 1984 we moved in. This was literally the house my father built.
My father was a wild man with a wild heart. His nickname was “Red,” named so after his red mane of hair and unpredictable nature. He took pride in the guns he would use to hunt, target shoot, and protect our family. He was a member of the National Rifle Association until he passed away in 2019. He also loved to garden, putting his hands in the dirt, and growing the food that would nourish our bodies. I learned a lot about fruits, vegetables, and flowers that gave me an appreciation for those who farm the land.
Shedding Our Old Skin
On my trip back to sell the house, I dusted off my documentary camera and filmed my experience, which I hope to make into a short film. I was collecting b-roll in the woods when my dad’s hunter friend, Billy, approached me to tell me the story of the rock, which my father told him in his favorite place: the woods.
Always up for an adventure, I walked deeper into the woods to the rock he told me about. I filmed it, of course. I sat on the top of the same rock my dad sat on 46 years ago to connect with my late father and I imagined what he felt like in that moment he made that fateful decision. On top of that rock, I reflected on my ancestors, where we’ve been and the dreams that we all had to build a better life for ourselves and our family.
It’s not often when I get to connect with my father — in life or after his death. I didn’t agree with my father for most of the time, but what I can connect to is his desire to look out into the wilderness, stake his claim and chart a new course. At least for the last decade of his life, he was unable to really take care of the land, as he could barely take care of himself. My father said that he wanted to die in that house, which he pretty much did, and left the 20 acres and 4 bedroom house to my mother who was even more incapable of doing the land justice.
We met the new family on the final walk through of the house, and they are so excited to have found this house and property. They had been looking for a property like this for two years. They have a little girl named Alice (18 months) and a second child on the way. They are calling this their “forever home” and are also planning on replanting the gardens and giving new life to the land. This is a new skin we’re actively shedding, and a new beginning for this family.
Getting Comfortable in New Skin
It’s refreshing for the space to be under new management, and to realize that what we’ve been cultivating for years no longer works for us. We’re holding onto something because it’s safe, familiar, and full of tradition. That doesn’t make way for the positive and new ways we can grow and be better than before. So this experience got me thinking about the steps of change and what I’ve been holding onto that no longer serve me well, and maybe it’s time to give those a new home or to let it go.
If we always rely on what we’ve always known, then how are we supposed to evolve into our better selves? What are we holding onto that no longer serves our needs? Yes, we’re shedding the burdens of the past and giving up some of the good elements as well. If we don’t make space for the new then we’ll shut ourselves off from growth and possibilities.
This makes me think of a conversation I had with Alex Osterwalder while writing my upcoming book, Empathy for Change: How to Create a More Understanding World. Osterwalder is the founder of the Business Model and Value Proposition Canvases, and writer of about a dozen books with thousands of collaborators around the globe. He says that today we need to take on a healthy dose of risk and walk away from the comforts of the past. Yet when we’re there, we’re suddenly being in a place that is unfamiliar and it’s scary and jarring for us to be there.
Osterwalder had this to say about established companies:
The challenge of innovation in an established company is actually very similar across the globe. The challenge is very simple. Once you have an established business, you get more and more afraid of risk. So you’re going to get better and better at doing what you do well, but you can do less and less of the more innovative work. You get comfortable and then you forget how to reinvent yourself.
Osterwalder says the challenge for an established company is that you have to find out who you are, remember what your purpose is, see what’s working, and then finally see the constants you’d like to keep. And he also draws parallels between corporations and the self. “At the same time,” says Osterwalder, “you need to create a separate space where you stay open and creative enough to put yourself out there so you can adapt to a changing environment. It’s not either-or; it’s yes-and.”
“There’s still very, very few companies that are good at innovation in a systematic way,” says Osterwalder. He senses that in a decade we’ll start to see large companies succeeding at reinventing themselves by following the creative process of destruction and going into the unknown and emerging with a better product or service that existed. As companies and organizations go through changes, we can’t expect for things to be stable, and the company must take on risk. “You’re never going to have stability. If you only have stability, you’re not going to be able to adapt. So it’s the same thing for companies and humans: you need to balance between some stability, confidence, and some vulnerability and openness to change, but you need to keep it a balance. Otherwise, you will go crazy.”
What fitting words for the feelings I’ve been experiencing during this important move. Holding onto tradition only goes so far, and it feels safe, but we also need to balance out and learn to adapt.
Reflection
As we close out 2020 and look toward 2021, there’s so much to reflect back on — and so much to look forward to. This is a time to reinvent ourselves. To see our purpose, see what’s working and shed the things that aren’t. The questions I have in this moment are:
- What are you hoping to evolve in your world?
- How are you learning to adapt?
- What are your strategies to balance between “stability, confidence, vulnerability and openness to change”?
While this year has been disruptive for so many of us, it’s my hope that we are all making space to evolve and strike a balance.
