A little LL Cool J to start your day

Belle Isle

Sam, Ada and I went on a mini-jaunt to Belle Isle today to play in the James River. We needed to get Ada out of the house, and Sam definitely needed a break from his new job and from all of the busy work that still needs to be done around here. Belle Isle is a 54-acre island in the James River located here in Richmond. You can only really access it by a foot-bridge that takes you across the James River from the North-shore of the river to the island (and surprisingly gave me a bit of vertigo as we crossed high up over the river).

We had a wonderful time there and were taken back by the vast cross-section of people that came from all over the city to enjoy the sun and cool water like us. This is definitely the most diverse and urban city either one of us has ever lived in - what a learning experience this will be.

Sam informed me when we were walking the path to the river that the island was formerly a prison for Union soldiers during the Civil War. I was swiftly reminded that we now live in what once was (or what some might argue still is) Confederate country. Perking my interest, I had to read up a bit more on this piece of history, and learned that the island was home to approximately 30,000 prisoners of war; nearly 1,000 died. I found this quote on Wikipedia (who knows about the accuracy, but I'm not in the mood for serious research here, a just a little history lesson):

In 1864, Peter DeWitt, surgeon @ Jarvis hospital in Baltimore described the "great majority" of Belle Isle POW patients as being:

"in a semi-state of nudity...laboring under such disease as chronic diarrhoea, scurvy, frost bite, general debility, caused by starvation, neglect and exposure. Many of them had partially lost their reason, forgetting even the date of their capture, and everything connected with their antecedent history. They resembled, in many respects, patients laboring under cretinism. They were filthy in the extreme, covered in vermin...nearly all were extremely emaciated; so much so that they had to be cared for even like infants."

I'll shamefully admit it crossed my mind while we were walking the path that the island didn't seem too awful a place to have to be held captive. I stand corrected!

While there are so many beautiful places that we will get to explore while here, I cannot help but interest myself in the deep historical influences each place holds, so - I will promise to post pics of our adventures, but hope you'll put up with a little history lesson every now and then. One last thing for the history-buffs in the family - Belle Isle was also home to Old Dominion Iron and Nail Company. You can still see remnants of the iron plant, and reportedly of the prison as well, although we didn't explore it enough to see physical evidence of the prison.

We did have a wonderful Sunday afternoon as a family, and truly enjoyed watching Ada grab for guppies and sprawl out in the wonderfully cool water that holds so much history.

Having fun

Change Management

I know, I know! You want pictures. I want to share them, but alas, we cannot find our camera cord- what with the unpacking and boxes and general disarray that is our house right now.

What I can tell you is that we're getting settled in, adjusting to new weather, new routines and a new culture that is entirely different from the Pacific NW, the Southwest, and dare I say even Knoxville. Having done this moving stuff enough times, Sam and I are managing the change well enough (we earned those coping skills during the last 2 moves!) - managing Ada through the change is something new to us, however. I am finding some similarity with this change, and what I experienced in my role at work. So, unless you're bored already (yes, I know, pictures -what you really want are pictures!!), please read on.

Upon my return to work from 9 weeks maternity leave, the agency I had worked at for 4 years had just merged with a much larger statewide organization (read, we went from 25-ish employees to 700 statewide with multiple divisions). I was simultaneously promoted into a new position to oversee our division under the umbrella of our new parent agency, while maintaining the same program I had oversight over for a number of years prior to our merge (read - expanded duties).

This was not an easy time. Lack of sleep (I got about 3-5 hours each night), nursing/pumping (which seemed non-stop at the time, but my how fleeting that was now looking back!), and negotiating a new role at work and at home while dealing with the new guilt I felt as a working Mom was challenging, to say the least. At work I thought about home, at home I thought about work. My head was never where it should have been (and with "Mommy-brain", my head wasn't really anywhere for a while!).

One of the biggest challenges as a new/expanded leader at work was managing not only the change in my own life, but responding to and being mindful of the change that the staff of my division were experiencing. Mergers are hard. Period. Whether good, bad or in our case, necessary (many non-profits have no choice but to make this decision to maintain their mission, serve the under and unserved and keep their doors open), mergers are difficult for multiple reasons, but "change" is the primary one. Who really likes change? I certainly didn't like the change. Everything at home had changed, and now work was different, too? New budgets, paperwork, supervisors, people to answer to? Ugh.

Now, while the work we actually provided did not change, the systems by which we navigated did, and that was scary for everyone. Naturally as leaders of our division (I had about 4 other leaders on my team) we were looked upon to make things better and to help manage the many feelings of grief, loss and anger that merged staff feel...while simultaneously managing our own grief, loss and anger (all of which is normal and expected). In many ways we felt helpless as leaders and were trying to find ways to help staff with an experience that was beyond our control. We looked for assistance in the community to help us define just what it was we were experiencing and learned that what we were dealing with was "change management". We learned that this process involved transitioning teams/individuals from a current state to a "desired future state", namely moving them to acceptance and to embrace the changes in their environment, which meant that we had to do the same to be successful. I think change management is a normal process, particularly in the workplace, as new supervisors, ways of doing things (paperwork, processes, service delivery, etc.) are introduced, and people have to figure out a way to respond to them. In many cases people do learn to embrace and accept, and if they cannot, they must come to a decision about whether or not they can continue operating in their new environment - and that might mean leaving, which is OK. Some folks left, some stayed, but we all managed through the change in our own way as individuals and as teams.

In many ways I feel like this move to Richmond has required some "change management" as well, particularly since we have a 2 year old whose life in Tucson was dismantled (literally packed in boxes) and now she's trying to navigate a new environment completely. Now, leaving is not an option here, nor do we want it to be, but I find that helping her adjust has actually been much easier than my experience with a merged agency, mainly because kids are much more resilient than us adults...we are just set in our ways, aren't we? What is the same about these two experiences, and what I see at the root of it all is a basic fear of change. We are simply afraid during the experience of change and this fear manifests itself in many ways.

What we noticed for Ada was that her daily habits changed - eating and sleeping were more difficult. While she is thankfully eating like a chow-hound again, she is not sleeping as well in our new home as we were used to (some of this may be developmental, but I think it's all about change - or maybe those are one in the same!). She has been incredibly clingy to me, which is expected, and requires much more patience on my part and being able to stop what I'm doing to be emotionally available to her, which often means just sitting down and holding her (and who wouldn't want to do that!?).

The newest development since we've been here is that Ada is afraid to explore the house on her own. She insists, particularly if a room is unlit, that we go with her. What I hear daily is, "Mommy, scary". Yes, Ada, it is.

But if there is one thing I know for sure, we are going to be OK.

...and more change to come!