Counselors' Corner November 2
11/1/2021 9:11 pm
IDEA Mentors will begin this month. If you are interested in having your child participate, please reach out to Felice Kassoy or Stacy Pilutti. This group uses the power of peer culture to develop role models who will be ambassadors within our classrooms, on the playground, and other common spaces to make courageous conversations a part of our school culture where everyone feels seen, heard, and welcome.
Food for Thought:
Shawna McEvoy is an incredible member of the Wickliffe staff. She is an amazing Intervention Specialist (IS) and the skilled (and compassionate) facilitator of Mindful Mornings.
Shawna shared the following *message* with all of the adults at Wickliffe in a recent email. With her permission, I would like to share with all of you what she sent. It is definitely worth reading!
Take care of yourself as the seasons change.
Please look at this article below from the New York Times regarding rest and how important it is. Blair Braverman, an American adventurer, dogsled racer, musher, advice columnist and nonfiction writer uses rest as a strategy to persevere through her races. She plans to use rest proactively for her dogs. It is part of the race.
As we continue to find ways to navigate this pandemic, we hope this article will provide a helpful perspective.
What My Sled Dogs Taught Me About Planning for the Unknown
The New York Times | September 23, 2020 | Blair Braverman
Here’s the thing about sled dogs: They never know how far they’re going to run.
As a musher – the human driver of a dog sled team, this is one of my mail challenges. There are many ways in which my dogs know more than I do. They know a storm is coming, or if a moose crossed the trail days before. They know how ice shifts under their paws. They know if we’re being followed and by what kind of animal. They know their own power – that they’re stronger than me, much stronger, and if they turn or stop when I ask them to, it’s because they’re choosing to listen and trust me. Running together is a gift they give me every day.
But each time my dogs hit the trail, they run hard – they give it everything they’ve got. That’s find if we’re going 10 miles, or 30, distances they can cover easily in a few hours. We can leave after dinner and be home by midnight, silver snow on a full-moon night. But what if we’re going 100 miles, or a thousand? Asking sled dogs to pace themselves, to slow it down, is like asking a retriever to only fetch one ball out of three: It goes against their every instinct.
That’s how I feel now, midpandemic that we humans are falling into uncertainty, stretching ourselves thin, and we have no idea how far it is to the finish line. The difference, of course, is that sled dogs want to run, and people do not want to live through a public health crisis. But there’s a parallel in the unknown distance, the unseen ending. And oddly enough, mushing has prepared me for this.
I used to be a dedicated planner. I know what I’d do every day, weeks in advance. Having a plan made me feel confident and safe. And then I got into long-distance dog sledding, and I discovered that the only thing worse than not having a plan was the stress of having one and constantly breaking it. Working with dogs in the wilderness means negotiating countless shifting variables: snow and wind, wild animals, open water, broken equipment, each dog’s needs and changing mood. I learned that plans, when I made them, were nothing but a sketch; the only thing I needed to count on was that the dogs and I would make decisions along the way.
One of the most surprising things about distance mushing is the need to front-load rest. You’re four hours into a four-day race and then dogs are charging down the trail, leaning into their momentum, barely getting started – and then, despite their enthusiasm, it’s time to stop. Make straw beds in the snow, take off your dogs’ bootees, build a fire, heat up some meat stew (for the team, but hey, you can have some too) and rest for a few hours. The dogs might not even sit down; they’re howling, antsy to keep going. It doesn’t matter. You rest. Four hours later, you rest again.
You keep doing that, no matter how much your dogs want to keep going. In fact, if you’re diligent from the start, they’ll actually need less rest at the end of a trip – when their muscles are stronger and their metabolisms have switched from burning glycogen to fat – than at the beginning. It’s far easier to prevent fatigue than to recover from it later.
But resting early, anticipating your dog’s needs, does something even more important than that: It builds trust. A sled dog learns that by the time she’s hungry, her musher has already prepared a meal; by the time she’s tired, she has a warm bed. If she’s cold, you have a coat or blanket for her; if she’s thirsty, you have water. And it’s this security, this trust, that lets her pour herself into the journey, give the trail everything she has without worrying about what comes next. You can’t make a sled dog run 100 miles. But if she knows you’ve got her back, she’ll run because she wants to, because she burns to, and she’ll bring you along for the ride.
What this means for people, for us, is that we can’t just plan to take care of ourselves later. We shouldn’t expect to catch up on sleep when we really crash, or to reach out to loved ones after we’re struck by loneliness. We should ask for support before we need it. We should support others before they ask. Because if you don’t know how far you’re going, you need to act like you’re going forever.
Planning for forever is essentially impossible, which can actually be freeing: It brings you back into the present. How long will this pandemic last? Right now, that’s irrelevant; what matters is eating a nourishing meal, telling someone you love them, walking your dog, getting enough sleep. What matter is that, to the degree you can, you make your own life sustainable every day.
Sled dogs can run farther, in a shorter time, than almost any other animal. But they only think as far ahead as they can see, hear and smell. They catch the scent of a deer; they see a curve in the trail. It is, in its way, that simple. If they team meets an unexpected challenge, if they come to a steep mountain or take shelter in a storm, they’re better off for their restraint. Because they’re healthy, content; they have what they need, and they have each other. There’s no stronger way to meet the unknown.
Until next week,
The Counseling Team
Felice Kassoy, Sarah Perry, Sarah Moyer, and Megan Montana
