Tipping the Seesaw

By Jennifer Abrams, Author and Communications Consultant

I encourage all of you to check out the East Brother Light Station in the California Bay Area. The lighthouse inn is, “a beautifully restored California Victorian Lighthouse Dinner, Bed & Breakfast Inn perched atop an island in the strait that separates San Francisco and San Pablo Bays.” It was the spot at which I realized (yet again) that I had ‘tipped my seesaw.’

Similar to the cobbler whose children have no shoes, I spent the last several months talking about polarity management and hadn’t yet discerned I wasn’t living it out in my life. I had tipped the seesaw (yet again).

Polarity management is the work of not just solving problems but actually managing polarities. Polarities such as work and rest, individual and community, and personal and professional. Polarity management is about not ‘tipping a see saw’ too much one way or the other. It is recognizing the importance of valuing both sides of a polarity. I have been talking about polarity management for the last several months, but not living it.

Now I was in the middle of the Bay. And I needed to nap. After breakfast. And then again after I returned home from the Inn for another several hours that same afternoon.

I realized then that I hadn’t worked out for 5 weeks. Then I started to also notice the dead leaves in my plants. And I finally took into account that the light bulb in my bedside lamp had been out, not just for days but for weeks.

Tipped seesaw alert.

I love to live in my head. It works for me. Until it doesn’t. Now, nothing drastic happened to me. I didn’t have an MS relapse, thank goodness. Yet it shouldn’t take something that dramatic to wake me up. Remember, I teach about polarity management. And yet I became the cobbler whose children have no shoes. Sigh. Ugh. Boo.

I am beginning to adjust my seesaw. I hope that if you are in a similar space that you consider doing the same. I hope you enjoyed your winter break. Join me as we continue to rebalance our seesaws. ■

Jennifer Abrams will be the keynote speaker at the Women in School Leadership Conference on April 5-6 at the River Spirit Event Center in Tulsa. A former high school English teacher and a new teacher coach in Palo Alto, California School District, Jennifer currently serves as a communications consultant and author of multiple publications with her most recent Stretching Our Learning Edges: Growing (Up) at Work. An internationally acclaimed presenter, Jennifer has been named one of the “18 Women All K-12 Educators Should Know,” by Education Week’s ‘Finding Common Ground’ blog.