When Everything Collides, Choose What Matters

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Right where you are, between physical places and head spaces, between disappointment and determination, between bottles and bed level, stop right there and listen.
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We're going to set aside all the weights, pressures, burdens, and heaviness that you've carried into this moment so it's not occupying all of your attention at once.
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Let's start with everything you've been feeling.
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Take a deep breath and gather your anger, your shame, your sadness, your outrage.
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Gather your lost joy and happiness, your laughter.
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Gather your indifference.
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And on the exhale, open the door and release it.
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Now, take another deep breath.
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Hold it and gather your responsibilities.
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Securing beds, getting meals and transportation, and everything else that requires your attention that I didn't name, along with finding the glue within yourself to hold it all together.
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Exhale, open the door and release it.
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Gather your wishes, your hopes, and dreams.
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I want you to reach as far back as you need to and as far into the future as you can see.
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Open the door and release it.
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One of the hardest and entirely invisible parts about homelessness is that problems amass and converge into one big challenge blob.
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Separate problems begin to feel like one huge obligation that needs to be solved in an instant, even though they come from different people, systems, or circumstances.
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Sister Girl, the truth is that in this season you can't afford to spend your capacity so willy-nilly.
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Every crisis, every person, every demand, and every problem does not deserve your attention simply because it is in front of you.
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You will have to make hard decisions about where, when, and why, and who you spend your capacity on.
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I've heard it said time is our most precious resource.
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Well, today, let's replace time with capacity.
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And let me tell you why this is important.
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Because constant listener, you may have time available and still not have the mental, emotional, or physical bandwidth to use that time well.
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So today, in this season of instability, your capacity is your most precious resource.
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Now, before we can leverage our capacity within the time we have available, we are going to get control of our situation by naming it.
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Now, I can hear you saying, wait, wait, what?
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How is naming my situation going to help?
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I'm homeless.
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That is the situation.
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Now, how do I know you said that?
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Because I said it.
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I looked around at that hotel room and I thought, I'm here out of necessity.
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I have no place to go.
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The fact is, I'm homeless.
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There is no naming it.
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I did that also while driving.
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Even if I could get off the truck, there was nowhere to go.
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But constant listener, listen to me when I say naming your season puts a boundary around what is happening.
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It gives your mind something to see, locate, and begin organizing around.
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So when it came time for me to name my season of homelessness, I called it hell.
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And when I tell you hell came into full view, sister girl, everything before me was laid out in 4D.
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I promise you, I could see where I was, what I needed, and what I needed to do to get out of hell.
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One of my favorite colloquialisms is when you're going through hell, get out before the devil knows you're there.
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That's in my best Sam Elliott voice, no less.
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Then I thought about Keanu Reeves and Constantine moving through hell.
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He knew he was moving through a place, and because there was a purpose, he could look for what he needed and pay attention to what he needed to avoid.
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That is what naming did for me and what it'll do for you.
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It gave me orientation.
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It turned this huge, undefined, illogical experience into a mental landscape I could picture myself moving through.
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And once I could picture myself moving through it, I could begin asking different questions than the daily survival ones.
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Mainly, what is going to help me get through this?
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Constant listener, naming the season does more than label what's happening.
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It gives us a way to navigate it.
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Now, because this is a podcast and I'm summing up, I know naming your season can sound a lot easier than it actually is.
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And I don't want you to rush through this part just because I'm moving on to the next section.
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The name has to mean something to you.
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So listen to the full episode.
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But before you move forward with what comes next, give yourself a few days if you need them and think about what has mattered to you, what you have lived through before, what you know about yourself, what you're trying to protect, and what this season actually feels like to you.
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Then give it a name that helps you understand where you are.
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Once your season has a name, we can now go back to everything we said outside of our doors and welcome in our companions on this journey.
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Let's start with your emotions because we set those down first.
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Now ask yourself, what emotions do I need to welcome in to get through the season I just named?
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And which ones can't come with me in the same way they have been traveling with me.
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I couldn't afford to carry indifference through hell because if I stopped caring about what happened to me, stopped caring about what happened to my children, stopped caring whether I moved forward or remained where I was, then I could get lost there, and that season could last much longer than I wanted it to.
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I could not stop in hell, so I had to keep caring.
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Now that didn't mean I had to feel good every day, pretend I was not angry, or convince myself that everything was going to work.
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It just meant I had to recognize which emotions would help me remain connected to myself, my children, and the possibility of something beyond that season, and which emotions were making it easier to stop moving.
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Now we're not asking you to label your emotions good or bad, but we are asking you to identify the ones that are helpful, which ones you'll need more of, which ones you'll have to learn to cultivate to move through the places you have named.
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Now let's go back for the responsibilities outside our door.
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Now that you can see the season more clearly, ask yourself which responsibilities require your capacity to move.
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This part is especially hard because you're going to have to be selfish and be okay with being alone and perhaps unliked.
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Now, in this season, selfish does not mean that you stop caring about other people.
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It means you recognize that your capacity is limited and you can't keep giving pieces of it away just because someone expects access to you, the entitlement.
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You're going to have to learn how to choose yourself, even if it's uncomfortable, because right now you're trying to get through homelessness, and that requires so much more of you.
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So let's talk relationships.
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Some relationships you will not be able to attend to because the return on your capacity investment is not worth it.
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It may be one of the hardest decisions you make, but ask who's going to help you get through this season, who doesn't require an explanation, and who's not going to judge or require from you when you don't have anything to give.
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The reality is you don't need a large circle for this season.
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You need to know which relationships make the journey lighter and which ones require more from you than you have available.
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That question alone will help you decide who belongs in your circle.
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Now, I had to go through hell alone because no one in my circle had ever experienced homelessness.
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And I did not know who I was gonna ask.
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That is not to say I didn't have family or friends in my corner, but homelessness complicates relationships.
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And those of us who have been there or are experiencing it now know this.
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People can love you and still not be someone you have the capacity to stay connected to in the same way during this season.
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Support and access are not the same thing.
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And you need to limit access to your capacity, even when the relationship itself still matters.
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Some relationships are not your responsibility to carry through this season.
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Leave them outside the door for this journey.
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And if they don't understand, then they don't understand.
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Finally, let's return to the door for your hopes and dreams because we set those down too.
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And I don't want you to leave them behind just because you're in a difficult season.
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You may not have the capacity today to build the whole life you're imagining, but there may be a hope you need to keep close enough to remind you why you're still moving.
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A mental talisman that tells you this season is a place you're going through and not the final description of your life.
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Sister girl, some hopes need to stay close because they give meaning to the choices you're making now, even if you can't act on them yet.
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You don't have to carry the full weight of all your hopes and dreams right now.
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Just keep one or two within reach so that you remember there is still something ahead of you.
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And finally, look at what remains and give yourself permission to leave it where you set it down, right outside your door.
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Oh, that's so powerful.
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Chapter two.
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I made it through hell, and I am very different from the person who entered it, different from the person who was traveling through it, and different from the person who was here before you now.
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Of course, I carry scar tissue from that season, memories I would rather forget, and others I still hold close, like a mental talisman, because they remind me of what it took to keep moving when I didn't know how long the journey would last.
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I remember standing in the bathroom at the hotel while the kids were just on the other side of the door, turning on the hot water as hot as it could go, laying my towel across the sink, and stepping into the shower with everything I had been holding wound tightly inside.
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I stood under that hot water for a long time, and then the thoughts came, and then the tears and the anger came rushing forth until I felt empty.
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And really empty is not the right word because empty suggests there is simply nothing there, and it can be refilled.
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Constant listener, what I felt was more like a void, a hollowed-out place where all the weight had been drained away, and there was nothing left to fill it with, nothing left of me, and nothing to brace myself against.
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Now that void dropped me to my knees, and I cried again, but I cried this time from somewhere deeper than exhaustion.
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I cried for what I had lost, I cried for my failures, I cried because I was angry, and I cried because I was lost.
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I stayed there on my knees beneath that hot water until I heard a voice telling me to get up.
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A voice that originated inside of me but seemed to reverberate beyond me, and all the water molecules in that bathroom.
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I could hear it in my ear as clearly as if someone were standing in the bathroom next to me in that shower, mouth pressed closely to my ear, saying, get up.
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Oh, between sobs and hyperventilations and bewilderment, it would repeat its command.
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Get up.
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Eventually, I answered, Oh my gosh, sister girl, truth be told, I did not want to stand because I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that standing would mean forward movement, and I didn't know where I was going or what I was going to do on the other side of that bathroom door if I was to stand.
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Still, still I responded.
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Despite the uncertainty, I responded.
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I reached for the shower bar, gripped it, and pulled myself to my feet.
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I stepped out of that shower and out of that bathroom into the same hotel room with the same uncertainty waiting on the other side of another door with the same long journey ahead of me, with no clear understanding of where that journey would take me or how long it would last.
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Turns out it lasted longer than I wanted, but not as long as I thought it would.
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Hell is a long way off.
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Not because I have arrived somewhere final, but because my capacity has expanded beyond what it was when I first entered that season.
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I pretended I was what I was going through hell.
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And I learned to grab what I needed in order to stand and to make my way through, no matter how high.
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And you don't have to carry all of it in every person, in every emotion access to your capacity.
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None of us know the length of the journey ahead, but you can choose what helps you stand, what helps you move, and what helps you remain connected to the woman you are becoming.
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I'm Dr.
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Hollis.
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Until next time, I love y'all.