The Janus Effect

Ever wonder where the month of January got its name? My least favorite month of the year has its origins in the ancient Roman mythological god Janus. With a nod to my former colleagues from the firm of the same name, I’ll start by saying this is not the behind-the-scenes story of the golden age of Janus Capital (and for some of you that should let you breathe a little easier). For everybody else reading this, I was fortunate to have begun my career in the investment management world working for a firm named for the same Roman god.

During a period of formative growth for our firm, I was one of a handful of public faces for the company, and I probably told the story of the name Janus a thousand times to audiences that ranged anywhere in size from one or two people to hundreds. Believed to be the god of all beginnings (hence the name for the month January in our calendar), and also of doorways or gateways, Janus was typically depicted by the Romans as a head with two faces… one looking to the past, and the other with an eye toward the future.

As I write this on the fourth anniversary of our daughter Rivena’s death by suicide, that’s my starting point. Looking back and looking forward – or at least trying to.

One Eye on the Past

Without any hesitation, I can say that each of us today is shaped by the sum total of the experiences, thoughts, and emotions we have each had in our past. And although your past may not define you, it most certainly does inform who you are now. The events in your own life do in fact influence what you believe, what you feel, and how you act today. In other words, they become part of your truth.

A huge part of my truth is that I lost an adult child to suicide. Losing a sibling in the same way is something I don’t know, but having seen the impact on our youngest daughter, I know it to be every bit as life changing. I bring this up because in the last two weeks, I have had two friends lose siblings to suicide. As those who are left behind, it’s natural for us to go through so many conflicting emotions… heartbreak, sadness, numbness, calm, anger, guilt, and just about anything else you can imagine. As survivors, we’re left to work through the issues that claimed our loved ones, almost like being saddled with our own personal life sentence of suffering.

In this aftermath, I’ve found myself looking in the rearview mirror frequently. Were there things we could have done differently? Could we have been more supportive? Were there specific events that started the chain reaction that resulted in Rivena’s death? I know I’m not alone here. These are just some of the questions almost every survivor of suicide asks at some point in the process. And along the way, I’ve found memories from the past to become more and more cherished. Because as much as we can hope, or pray, or wish things to be different, our sense of time and place is now defined by a slightly different version of that Roman coin… one that looks back at a life before Rivena died, and the other that looks ahead at the life after her death.

As a result, I find myself conflicted today like never before. For me, I’ve always had the faith that things will ultimately work out. To be clear, I’m not talking here about religious faith. But instead, a faith that good things come to good people. A faith that hard work and dedication get results. And a faith that – wait for it – everything happens for a reason.

My truth is I had reason to believe in these things. Without question, I was given a huge head start by my parents, who gave my brother and I a stable, loving, and supportive home (even if it was in a different part of the country every few years) and the means to go to college. But upon graduation, I found myself with my own family (Rivena was about 3 months old), no job offers, and a fairly useless political science degree. But I also had a blind faith in myself and our family that things would eventually work out.

At the time, I ended up interviewing for twenty-six different jobs before receiving an offer. Yep, 26. I finally landed a job, making half the money I had hoped to make, answering phones for – you guessed it – Janus. And things did work out. With hard work, commitment, and a willingness to learn on the fly, I managed to rise quickly and earn a spot as one of a small team of sales professionals at a time the firm was exploding with growth. I left there 14 years later with a VP title, a relatively comfortable life, and more incredible life experiences than should be allowed. My belief that things eventually work out was cemented.

Losing Rivena to suicide shattered that faith, however. Here we are, almost four years after hear death, and I am no closer to making peace with it than I was in the initial days and weeks which followed.

To be fair, while losing Rivena was unquestionably the hardest thing I’ve gone through, there have been other things that have impacted the view from where I sit today. COVID brought with it numerous changes and constant uncertainty that we’ve all had to deal with. And I lost many of my normal outlets for handling my own heightened emotions following a nasty bike crash and multiple subsequent surgeries last year; my ability to sweat out those persistent internal gremlins with a run, bike, or swim was put on hold for months at a time as my focus shifted to mending a physically broken body.

The Pull of the Past

When it comes to working through grief, there is no “right” way to do it. The process looks different, feels different, and is different for every individual. As I’ve said before, I can only speak from my own experience. But I can say that for me, there is such thing as too much looking back.

During January in each year since Rivena died, our family has dealt with a sense of impending dread around the day we lost her. Kim’s chosen method of distraction from this year’s dread was spurred by the devastating fires that claimed roughly a thousand homes in our nearby towns of Louisville and Superior just a little over a month ago. Her realization that so many families lost their priceless collections of family pictures led her to jump feet first into a huge project of digitizing all our old hard copy photos. Over the past few weeks, she has painstakingly organized, scanned, saved, and uploaded years’ worth of pictures that have been resting in boxes since our last move a few years ago. In addition to giving us the peace of mind to know we will always have access to these memories, it has been a great way for her to occupy her time this month, and to take her mind off the harsh reality of what January means for us.

But for me, it has been rough. As much as I love to see so many pictures of fun family times when the kids were little, it’s easy to let the images themselves pull me dangerously back into the past. It’s almost a bit like being sucked into a black hole, clinging desperately to memories from the past while the gravitational pull of time marches faster and faster toward the dark, unknown realm ahead. Time only marches in one direction, and as desperately as we may want to hang onto the past, that door only goes one way.

Living in the Moment

I had the good fortune of being invited to go on a guided backcountry ski trip with a small group of exceptional people a couple weeks ago, and it was exactly what I needed to snap me back into the present. There is something about hurling yourself down a steep pitch full of pine trees, attached to skis, in deep powder that forces you to be present. It literally forces you to be in the moment. One wrong move and you end up twisted into the boughs of the tree you failed to navigate around, or worse – upside down in a tree well struggling to free yourself while you can still breathe. Skiing well in these conditions requires a certain state of mind that lets you tap into what many refer to as a state of flow. Not thinking about every move. Not worrying about the last turn you didn’t quite finish. Not concerned with what the next run might be. But actively engaged in this moment, making split second decisions in real time and letting a combination of muscle memory and adrenaline guide you safely down.

I say it’s exactly what I needed, because I had become so immersed in the heaviness of our past, and so worried about what value the future could possibly hold that I had lost touch with what it meant to live in the moment. The exhilaration of floating through the trees. The euphoric feel of soft snow gently giving way to gravity as you glide down a steep pitch. And the laughter, camaraderie, and genuine happiness that comes with experiencing these things with others.

It took me putting myself into a position where I had no choice but to live in the moment in order to let my past go quiet. For a couple days, and for one run at a time, I was able to let go of both the past and the future and just be.

Did it mean I stopped thinking about Rivena, or of where our remaining family of three is in terms of finding our way forward? No. In fact, I would say it was just the opposite. I was able to have a few brief, but very real interactions with some of the others on our trip. In some respects, I think being in the moment allowed for slightly more open, less guarded conversation.

One Eye on the Future

The hardest part of where I am today is that my resolute belief that things will ultimately work out is gone. As a result, I’ve lost (at least temporarily) the ability to have hope for a better future. Ask any parent to envision a life without one of your children in it, and you’ll realize immediately just how impossible it feels. As the die-hard AFC Richmond fans say in Ted Lasso, “it’s the hope that kills you.”

One interesting shift for me over the past several years has been my own evolution from athlete to coach. Those who know me know I’ve had a deep appreciation for training and racing in endurance sports for quite some time… think Ironman triathlons, marathons, big cycling events, etc. I got into coaching a few years back to share my love of all things endurance with other like-minded people who wanted to conquer big personal goals.

During this period when I’ve struggled to think about my own future, I have had the privilege of working with others who trusted me to help them find their own paths forward. I’ve joked with several close friends recently that I am now a much better coach than I am an athlete – largely because I’ve been able to focus on my athletes’ futures while simultaneously being unable to see my own. I am eternally grateful to each and every one of my coached athletes for giving me that… for granting me the ability to help them in some small way to plan for the future.

So, to Dave, Vicki, Tony, Jared, Freddy, Kirsten, Alex, Jason, Mikey, Chad, James, Deb, Cathy, Shirley, and several hundred Ability Experience cyclists, I say thank you. Without even realizing it, your trust has kept me going in ways you can’t imagine. Your belief in me has given me the ability to look forward that I’ve had a hard time finding for myself.

Forward

In addition to a few days of great skiing a few weeks ago, we had some enlightening conversations over dinners on that same trip. During our final evening’s meal, this topic was posed to each person at the table: “Using only one word, describe what you want for this year.”

For something that seems trivial, the exercise is harder than it appears. Sum up your entire coming year with one word. It took me some time to come up with a response, but when it hit me, it was obvious.

Forward. That was my word for the year. Forward implies movement. Forward gives a sense of future. Forward gets me out from being stuck in that doorway, regardless of what might come next. Forward allows for balancing the truth of our past with the truth that we are still living. It’s time to pick back up and get back to collecting experiences.

So, in the spirit of Janus, that mythological god of beginnings and endings, of doorways and gateways, let me close with this; Keep one eye on the past. Keep one eye on the future. And all the while, don’t ever stop living in the present. That’s what I’ll be doing to honor Rivena this year.