Make The Plan and Hope to Never Need It.
Why do we avoid the uncomfortable things? All of us have at some point in time. The conversations we don't want to have, the plans we don't want to make, the money we don't want to spend. Because why would we, if it hasn't happened yet?
But what if one day it does?
I've seen this play out in my own life more times than I'd like to admit. I've watched people around me do it. And to be completely transparent, I'm still doing it in some areas of my life right now. That's actually why I wanted to write about it.
When something unexpected hits, a real crisis, and there's no plan in place, everyone goes into panic mode. Nobody knows what to do, what to say or where to go. And all of that chaos and scrambling, it didn't have to be that way.
We invest more time, energy, and money into planning a trip. We research, we book ahead, we make lists. We do this for parties and weddings. We go all in. But a mental health crisis? An accident? Death? We don't plan for those the same way. Because somewhere in the back of our minds we tell ourselves, that's not going to happen. Or, that's not going to happen right now. And what that actually does is create more worry and more stress if and when it does happen. Because now you're dealing with the crisis and the chaos of being completely unprepared for it.
When my husband and I got together 6 years ago, we did something different. We both came into the relationship having experienced situations where we hadn't planned ahead, or we'd watched others go through it, and we knew we didn't want to end up there. So we started having the hard conversations.
Like, if we needed to leave our house suddenly, does either of us know what the protocol is? I didn't. Not until we made one. Now we have an emergency bag packed and a list of exactly what to do. Which vehicle to take. What to grab if it's just me, what to grab if it's both of us. I hope that moment never comes. But I feel safer knowing we've thought it through.
We've also talked about death. Because none of us are getting out of this alive, that part isn't up for debate. So what's the plan? We've talked about what each of us would do. How to access each other's assets. Where to find everything that matters. We still haven’t taken the steps to write up a will but that is in the back of our minds and do plan on it very soon.
We don’t want to talk about this stuff. Nobody wants to sit down and plan for something traumatic that might not even happen. Of course not. That's exactly why it's so hard and that's exactly why most people don't do it.
But when you approach the hard stuff with a clear plan already in place, it changes things. Because when something does happen, you're not spending your energy figuring out logistics. You already know. Which means you can put your energy where it actually needs to go. Processing what's happening, grieving what needs to be grieved, taking the next step. The plan doesn't take away the pain.
But it takes away some of the chaos. And that matters more than most of us realize, until it happens.
