I had just finished a speaking engagement at Lake Tahoe, an otherworldly place I’d often heard about but never seen. This high-profile engagement had taken months of preparation and it had gone well. Afterwards I’d planned to spend a couple of days at a resort with friends before going back home to my business and my confusing home life.

Sitting on my balcony at the resort the next day, I was thinking through the complexities of grown children and ex-husbands and the storms I’d recently been through with both, when my phone rang.

It was news from home. Surprising, tragic, heartbreaking, dangerous news. I felt as if I’d been physically struck. My breath left me. My mind raced. I was terrified.

Standing in that hotel room with my mobile phone in my hand, brokenhearted, I couldn't imagine a place without this pain and fear. All I wanted was to get home – to a situation I couldn’t control, with no idea of what the future held.

So that is what I did. Packed it up, made a call and flew home.

As the flight approached Nashville, the pilot informed us we would be flying around a thunderstorm. Thunderstorms were common this time of year and, in fact, I love them. I love the energy. I often sat on my back porch as they came in, watching for the effects of the first winds as they reached the trees in the back of my yard. In the gap between seeing it and feeling it you can smell the rain. When the storm reaches you, the energy is amazing, sometimes frightening. Many times it's short and you're done quickly. Sometimes it 'sets in' as my grandmother used to say, and you've got it for a while.

I had seen many thunderstorms from my porch. But on this heartbreaking flight home that night, I experienced a thunderstorm from a different vantage point –– flying into it from a place where it didn't exist.

This storm was very well defined. The shape of the mushroom cloud changed every few minutes. It was dense but not solid. You could see lightning in the middle of the cloud that never reached the ground. Then you could see the strikes that were strong enough to break through and hit something unsuspecting. The lightning would illuminate the whole cloud and you could understand the basis of electricity at that moment. Water streamed out of the bottom, reaching the ground, producing steam that rose back up into the cloud. A whole science lesson right there.

The storm was impressive, but the thing that impressed me the most was that I could see the beginning and the end of the thunderstorm. The people who lived right under that storm weren't having such a good time right then. But the people less than 3 miles away on either side were oblivious to what was going on just down the road.

It was a storm all in one place.

It was beautiful.

It was comforting to me. The storm wasn't everywhere. It was just right there. All you had to do to get relief was move a little bit or just wait for the storm to pass.

I sketched that cloud out on an airline napkin and stuck it in a book at home later that night, thinking about another thing my grandmother always said...this too shall pass.

The storm isn't everywhere. It's just right there.

“The storm isn’t everywhere. It’s just right there.”

Storms are a great metaphor for the struggles we face in our lives. They demand all of our attention, skew our perspective. We rush to secure property, preparing for the worst. We imagine catastrophic failure out of proportion to the storm itself. In the midst of the storm nothing else seems to exist. There’s no peace anywhere, no way out, no way through.

But that’s not true. Nothing is permanent. Nothing is pervasive. There is a peaceful place outside of the worst trauma at the same time it is happening, and it’s not very far away.

“There is a peaceful place outside of the worst trauma at the same time it is happening, and it’s not very far away.”

Bruce Tuckman, an American Psychological Researcher at The Ohio State University, published his theory of group dynamics in 1965 that became known as Tuckman’s stages of group development. This work describes the way teams function as a cycle with distinct phases; Form, Storm, Norm, Perform.

In the forming stage we are all getting started, as companies or teams. We’re on our best behavior and things move along at an exciting pace for a while, until our nature is revealed, the honeymoon is over and we transition to the next stage.

The storm begins as we struggle to come up with the idea or to agree and find a path forward. Boredom, tension, disagreement all manifest during this stage. Mistakes happen and it seems it will last forever, but it doesn’t.

We reach a norm where things get smoother. We learn to communicate as a team. We work things out and we move on to high performance…

...only to end up back in the storm. It’s a cycle, like the thunderstorm dumping rain on the ground below, and the earth returning some of that in the form of steam that rises back into the cloud, giving the storm a little more life. The storm, obviously the most painful phase of the cycle, is an essential part of the process. It’s where good ideas are born, vetted and finally adopted. Without the storm our ideas would suffer an apathetic life of mediocrity.

“Without the storm our ideas would suffer an apathetic life of mediocrity.”

In personal relationships the cycle is similar. At the worst, in cases of addiction or domestic violence the cycle is tension building, followed by the incident, then remorse, and finally calm followed by tension building...

When this is happening to someone you love, you also are caught in the cycle, trying to respond appropriately, not to escalate, waiting for the storm to pass, thinking it never will, waiting for it to happen again.

The visual of this storm all in one place has never left me. From it, I learned to see the storms in my life for what they are; temporary intrusions, opportunities to reset. The key to surviving them is in understanding that it neither defines nor controls you. It Is just a part of the process.

The storm isn’t everywhere. It’s just right there.

This, too, shall pass.

Postscript:

If you or someone you love is experiencing domestic violence, don’t wait for the storm to pass. Call for help today. Here are some resources for you.

YWCA Nashville and Middle Tenn. Domestic Violence Hotline: 1-800-334-4628

U.S. National Domestic Violence Hotline: 1−800−799−7233.

Not sure if you or your loved one is in an abusive relationship? Take a look at the warning signs of domestic violence.