Episode 50: The Second Arrow

Retired social worker Annelle Edwards reflects on how she had to adjust her expectations about retirement when she found herself having chronic pain.

Transcript

Retirement Transition and Self-Care Challenges

Speaker 1 0:00

Welcome to the Self Care Society podcast with your hosts Celia Williamson, ashley Kutcher, louis Guardiola and Carrie Shaw, a podcast devoted to those whose job it is to help others get or remain mentally, physically and emotionally healthy, but who also need to take care of themselves.

Speaker 2 0:21

How we're going to do this? By first showing you the filtered, pretty version of success and then the real struggles, real work and raw grit it took to get there, how they took care of themselves and also achieved their goals while doing it Together.

Speaker 1 0:37

we will work with you to improve and maintain your internal health and growth, while helping you achieve your external goals and your next professional achievement in life.

Speaker 2 0:47

And we're excited to show you how to follow your own individual and unique path and achieve the dreams you have, while taking good care of yourself. So let's get started. Welcome to Self Care Society. I'm Carrie Shaw and I'm the host this week, and I'm with Annelle Edwards. Annelle Edwards is a retired social worker who spent 35 years in the field. Most recently, she taught social work classes at Ohio University, where she shared her practice and life wisdom with social work students. She's enjoying retirement after an adjustment period and is going to talk about that through the transition of going from being a full-time professor to retiring, and how she's taking care of herself in ways she didn't expect. Welcome, annelle.

Speaker 1 1:35

Hi thank you, carrie, good to see you. Good to see you too.

Speaker 2 1:42

So, annelle, I would just like to kind of get started hearing a little bit about your journey as an instructor, and then we can talk about your transition into retirement.

Speaker 3 1:53

Oh well, let's see, carrie, I retired two years ago. Well, three years. I always count it by how many fall semesters. I don't go back this year. You know, I always sort of my body starts getting ready to do something like get school shoes or something by school supplies. And the first year I was retired I planned a trip because I knew I was going to have an adjustment. So you know, that kind of took my mind off of it, but I was teaching.

Speaker 3 2:22

My last two years of teaching was during the pandemic and I was doing a lot of online teaching. You know, you probably remember those times of how horrible that was, and so, spending a lot of time on the computer, I started having some neck issues and I ended up with some fairly debilitating neck problems, with some osteoarthritis in my neck, so that's, you know. I kind of knew I couldn't continue doing online teaching and just felt like you know, it was kind of time there were a lot of young practitioners coming on and it seemed like they were, you know, coming out with all these new treatment modalities and you know, it was just like, okay, I think it's kind of my time and I had always thought I wanted to travel and do some things and so, yeah, I just decided that this was the time to do the retirement thing.

Speaker 3 3:20

So I retired, carrie, and found that it wasn't at all what I thought it was going to be. I was like, oh, what do I do? I mean I was like paralyzed with too many decisions or something. I mean I'd sit there and I'd be like, okay, there's this whole stack of books I want to read. I didn't want to read.

Speaker 3 3:39

I didn't want to read. Or you know like, oh, there's all these places I could volunteer. I don't want to volunteer, I Want to. Just, you know, and I was just like what the hell am I gonna do? I just don't know. It was like too many choices or something.

Speaker 3 3:53

Then my neck yeah, then my neck hurt and then I was like I would have to lay down and I started, you know, having all these doctors appointments and they started doing things with all different kind of injections and trying to deal with this pain, and this chronic pain was really I really think I was probably going into a depression, not feel physically, not feeling well emotionally, not feeling fulfilled, but not having any idea what would be fulfilling. And so, as a social worker, what do we do? We get a therapist right, please. That's what I did, and you know I've really talked through a lot of things. Like there's some grief involved with this aging process. I mean there's, you know, your body starts to to, you know, not be what you want it to be and you can't do the things used to be. I mean, like, you know, you get down on the floor and play with little kids and can't get up.

Speaker 2 4:56

You know, like, and you, have grandchildren right and now, so well you have your little kids playing on the floor.

Speaker 3 5:03

I Did just recently have that experience with my sister's Little babies and I was playing and could not get up off the floor and I was like, oh, this is, this is like not fun, but and so you know, there's, there's that loss of lots of you know your role, who are you at this point? I guess you know, who am I? What am I supposed to do now? And then I don't want to do that. I think, okay, well, I need to give back. Well, I don't want to give back.

Speaker 3 5:34

You know, I would just go through all kinds of different things and in my mind, and so one of the things that really made a difference for me was thinking about pain in Terms of the difference between pain and suffering. And I don't know if you've ever heard this. It's like a Buddhist parable, I think, and it's about the arrows. Have you ever heard this? Like the first arrow is the pain and then the second arrow is what you tell yourself about the pain, and that's the suffering. You know that's the oh. You know I'll never be able to do this, I'm old, and you know I hurt, and you know that's the suffering part, you know.

Speaker 3 6:16

And so, just you know, I had to kind of get away from that part of it and say, okay, I have pain in my neck, okay, let's move on. You know I can do. There's lots of things I can still do. I mean, I can see, I can hear, I Can read, I can. You know why am I, you know, hanging on to this, you know, sort of a pity party, I guess you know about my health and my pain. So that second, I needed to, you know, not get this, you know, be wounded by that second arrow, because that was just causing more, more frustration and more, you know, depression. I think that's probably really what was causing the depression, not the pain, but it was the second arrow, right, the second arrow.

Retirement, Travel, and Giving Back

Speaker 3 7:02

You know what I mean. That was what was. You know what I was telling myself about the whole situation. So that was, yeah, that was really helpful. I also started doing a lot of. My husband doesn't travel, he is, has Loss of vision, so he doesn't want to travel, and so I found a group. It's the Rhodes Scholar group. I started traveling with this group, who are just the most amazing people because they're all learners and they like to. You know, like we, they we travel on these trips, but you also have lectures in the evenings, or they'll you know that lots of stories about the area, and so there were lots of people teachers, Professors that were in this group. So I started doing some group group travel. Love that actually even met a woman who was a professor at, I think, purdue, and she and I have Met up a couple more times and gone to different places and just meet there. She lives in Chicago.

Speaker 2 8:05

I've never heard of this before. So is it Rhodes Scholar? Like our oh ad scholar? Like our oh ad right? Like yeah, yeah, I love it.

Speaker 3 8:16

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a lot of fun. We're going to the Panama Canal in February, so yeah, and of course you hear the whole story and and have a have an education also about the Panama Canal. So yeah, it's just been great. And so I also found learning and retirement classes at Mary College and those are just great. I actually even taught one class. I taught a journaling journaling to the self. Yeah, that's, you know, been pretty. So you know I need to keep learning. I mean, I did know that I needed to do something. That was.

Speaker 3 8:56

And then, as far as this giving back, you know I I've just been very selective about what I do with my time. I do some political work with, you know, just for the Democratic Party. I've done some things and I've done, you know, worked at a food bank once a month, or a kitchen, the daily bread kitchen, and so I, you know, I'm just careful about what I do in terms of you know how much I give. I think I've given just about all I can give. You know that's I don't know. Can you do that? Can you run out it? You run out of Stuff to give? I don't know.

Speaker 2 9:41

That's a good question and it's maybe different from how you saw yourself your whole life. I mean you were to give her your entire over 35 years Like yeah, yeah, that's true, that's true.

Speaker 3 9:56

And so it was kind of that in itself was different, was more like a internal Direction. You know, you're more like kind of it's all about me time, you know, and, and, yeah, and you know there'll be this pull every once in a while to go back, and then I think, no, wait a minute, I want to be able to. If I want to pick up and go someplace, I want to do that. You know I don't want to have that. You know, obligation that says, you know you have to be such in such a place on Friday afternoon, and you know.

Speaker 2 10:30

So your self-care is like this Different boundary setting than what you've ever had.

Speaker 3 10:38

Yeah, I think you're right. I think it really is boundaries, yeah, to have to be, yeah, like I've got to keep this for myself here. You know this space, because I just don't. I just really don't have that energy and I could see myself Getting talked into Something that would start draining me again. I wouldn't want to do that, so yeah yeah, that's really neat.

Speaker 2 11:01

I mean it's, it's like a new, a new self. Yeah, it is.

Speaker 3 11:07

It is.

Speaker 2 11:07

It's really a different self all about me, it's all about me now Tell about you and I love it, I love it, I love it, I love it. Um, and so interesting because it's not how you expected retirement to be, but it's fulfilling.

Speaker 3 11:26

That's very true. I did think that I thought, for one thing, that my husband and I would do a lot more things together, and his impaired vision is really limited what he can do, and there's also a little bit of a caretaking part there, because he can't do a lot of things, and so that's a different kind of energy that gets taken up too, and so, but since he can't go or doesn't want to go, then I found this other way, and he has figured out how to be alone for short periods of time, and if he couldn't, I would probably have to find someone to come in and help with that, because I need to have some time by myself and some adventures. I still got some left.

Speaker 2 12:16

I'm not surprised by that at all, that you still have some adventures left.

Speaker 3 12:23

Yeah, I also joined the board, which is funny because it seems like I've been connected to Eve, which is the domestic violence program, and I think I've been connected to that forever, it seems like, and I've joined their board now. So at one point I was the counselor there and then another point I was the director, co-director at Eve.

Speaker 2 12:49

You've had lots of different roles there. What is it that pulls you back to Eve, do you think?

Speaker 3 12:58

Well, you and I were talking a little bit about before we started this. We were talking about my path from my earlier path, and I was a teen mom and I was 18 years old and found myself with a baby and also kind of ironic that I barely graduated from high school because I was such a bad student.

Speaker 2 13:23

And I'm your own scholar.

Speaker 3 13:27

I taught college for current at lab and I barely graduated from high school and I was in trouble all the time and so, you know, I was like, oh my gosh, how did how did I ever get out of there? So here I was with this baby and my husband at the time was in. He left for Vietnam, Then he came back and then we got married and then I had another baby, like an unplanned pregnancy, another baby, and he was abused, and so then I didn't know where I, what I was going to do or where I was going. But I did know where I didn't want to go and what I wasn't going to do, and that was staying in that situation. And so I was. I got out of that and there I was with two babies, no car and no driver's license and yeah what? No skills basically. So, yeah, I mean, somehow I did, I got out of that and eventually remarried to the person that I'm married to now. So you know, and that was, I met him in 1990, we got married in 1995. So I'm still married to him. Pretty crazy thing. I wanted something, but anyway.

Speaker 3 14:54

So then they began this healing process of, you know, this abuse that I had gone through as a, you know, teenager with babies and horrible things that I had gone through in this relationship. So I started. You asked me about Eve, so I started volunteering. When my kids were little, I started volunteering at Eve and they had a really incredible training program that trained volunteers to help them understand the dynamics of domestic violence and I just, you know, I was just like that's what it was, that's how that happened and that's. You know, I'm not a stupid person and I'm not. You know, it wasn't my fault and I am capable and you know all of those things. You know, I started kind of learning that and so that was kind of the beginning of my healing process and I'm still, to this day, involved with Eve. So, yeah, that's pretty much what draws me back to that.

Speaker 2 15:55

I would say, yeah, yeah, and I know you from this world of social work and as a young social worker you I remember doing visits with you and remember meeting with clients and just how authentic I felt like you were with them about their situations and how much empathy you had. And I think it makes a lot more sense knowing that you had that lived experience, that it wasn't coming from a place of book knowledge, it was really coming from a place of I know what it's like to be in your shoes.

Speaker 3 16:35

Yeah, yeah, that's true, and there's probably not many people that actually know the Apple story about my beginnings, Because you know you're not a podcast, but I don't really talk about it too much. I was caring for the first time.

Speaker 2 16:58

You heard it here first.

Speaker 1 16:59

You heard it here first.

Speaker 2 17:02

Well, I appreciate you sharing it because I think I think that it's interesting to reflect back. I mean, we were talking a little bit about healing and how healing, what it looks like in different time periods of your life and how, during that period, you were healing emotionally and now you're really working on this healing process that's more physical in some ways because you're having health challenges.

Speaker 3 17:31

Yeah, and you know, kari, I think that even our early traumas still stay in our bodies. I mean, I think about that sometimes when I mean think of the analogy of having a pain in my neck, you know, I mean there's been a lot of things that were a pain in my neck and a lot of and a lot of things that I carried around in my shoulders and in that tension, that in the weight of things, and now I go to acupuncture too, and that's one of the self-care things I do. And she talks about that a lot too, with Chinese medicine and how your body and your emotions are so connected oh, connected, yeah, and she's talked about that too that even those early traumas can still be affecting the body. So I'm pretty cognizant of that.

Speaker 2 18:28

Yeah, found. So, as someone who's pretty newly retired, do you have any words of wisdom or things that you would like to share for people who might be considering retirement or anyone who's kind of newly in that space?

Speaker 3 18:49

Words of wisdom. You know? I don't know, because I think it's so different for everybody.

Speaker 3 18:54

I think just really preparing yourself for it. I mean, you know, don't think if you have expectations that it's going to go a certain way, you know I'd say couldn't be careful with that, because it doesn't always go the way you think it's going to go and you got to be ready to roll with the punches. You know the whole. You know I just think back about what it was like to try to go through the Medicare process. You know that was so stressful Just trying to read through all that. And you know, and you know my neck hurting and being depressed and trying to get my finances figured out. And you know how am I going to live without an income? You know, is it going to make a big difference? Or you know what's this going to be like? Can I? Will I have the money to travel? You know, I don't think I probably planned very well financially, you know, but it's okay, it's okay now, but I think I could have probably done better with that plan.

Speaker 2 19:59

I hear that from a lot of people. That's their suggestion. Make sure that you're planning.

Speaker 3 20:06

Yeah, just do your planning. Do your planning for yeah, in all different ways. Yeah, and allow yourself that time to adjust, because I kept thinking you know why am I so depressed? I didn't you know. But yeah, it was a, it was an adjustment period, definitely.

Speaker 2 20:28

But it sounds like you have some adventures on the horizon and things that you're looking forward to, and so you're kind of coming out of that depression and figuring it out.

Speaker 3 20:41

Yeah, yeah, great. With the help of you know some healing professionals too. A therapist and acupuncture and massage therapist works on my neck and yeah.

Self Care in Different Life Stages

Speaker 2 20:54

Nice. Yeah, that sounds like an okay team to have on your side, yeah.

Speaker 3 20:59

I could have been on my team. I do, yeah. Yeah, that's my aging team, maybe yeah.

Speaker 2 21:09

Oh, and now this has been such a joy to see here how you're doing and I get to look at your face, which is nice. But we really appreciate you joining us today and kind of talking about what self care looks like in this, in this different time period of your life. And yeah, and I just want to remind everyone that you know self care isn't selfish, and we hope that you join us again next week with the self care society. And thanks again, mel.

Speaker 3 21:42

Thank you, carrie. Thank you so much, just fun. Thanks, Good to see you.

Speaker 2 21:48

That concludes this week's episode. And remember, it's not selfish, it's self care.