SAW WHEN
Samhain — Looking Back to See When
Does This Help®
Sometimes understanding where we are begins with being willing to say:
I saw when.
I saw when something changed.
I saw when someone stopped holding the leash.
I saw when responsibility started being passed from one person to another.
I saw when a child was learning—not merely from what adults said, but from what adults actually did.
And sometimes I saw it long before anybody was willing to listen.
Samhain — and “Saw When”
Samhain is an ancient Gaelic seasonal observance traditionally associated with the transition from harvest into winter. For me, the word also sparks another thought:
SAW WHEN.
Not as an historical translation of Samhain. It isn’t.
It is my own play on the sound of the word and what it makes me think about:
When did I first see it?
When did the problem begin?
When did somebody intervene?
When did somebody look away?
When did we stop doing what we already knew how to do?
And—perhaps most importantly—
When did I decide to do something differently?
There is value in looking backward when looking backward helps us understand what we need to do going forward.
That is different from living in the past.
I Have Been Watching
A mother watches.
She watches a child learn to walk, communicate, make decisions, make mistakes, accomplish things and become responsible for more of his own life.
She also notices changes.
For years I have been asking a simple question through my life and my work:
Does This Help®?
Does what I am doing help?
Does what you are doing help?
Does what the school is doing help?
Does what treatment is doing help?
Does what our community is demonstrating help the children watching us?
Those questions aren’t accusations. They are measurements.
If something isn’t helping, repeating it simply because that’s what everybody does doesn’t suddenly make it helpful.
Hold the Leash
There is a literal leash, and there is a figurative one.
Holding the leash means accepting responsibility for what is yours to manage.
If the rule says I hold the leash, I hold it.
Someone else dropping theirs doesn’t require me to drop mine.
Someone else ignoring responsibility doesn’t relieve me of mine.
And when children are watching, our actions become part of their education.
Children learn what rules mean by watching what adults do when following a rule becomes inconvenient.
Do we follow it?
Do we pretend it doesn’t apply to us?
Do we expect somebody else to enforce it?
Or do we simply demonstrate:
This is what responsibility looks like.
Progress Can Be Real Without Erasing History
There is another important lesson in Saw When.
Someone can accomplish something today and deserve recognition for accomplishing it today.
At the same time, the people who traveled the road with that person are allowed to remember the miles already traveled.
A mother can say:
I’m glad you accomplished that.
And she can also say:
I remember teaching this. I remember practicing this with you. I remember when we were here before.
Those truths don’t have to compete.
Progress belongs to the person making it.
History still belongs to everyone who lived it.
Harvest What We Learned
That may be the part of Samhain that speaks most clearly to me: harvest.
A harvest is evidence of what was planted, tended and allowed to grow.
Our lives have harvests too.
Some are beautiful.
Some reveal what needs to change.
Some take twenty years before we understand what we were looking at.
So I am willing to look backward.
Not because I want to remain there.
Because I saw when.
I saw when something helped.
I saw when something didn’t.
I saw when responsibility was taken.
I saw when responsibility was abandoned.
And today I get another opportunity to decide what I will demonstrate next.
I don’t have to drop my leash because somebody else dropped theirs.
I don’t have to abandon what I know simply because somebody else doesn’t understand why I’m still holding on.
I can look at yesterday, recognize today, and continue building tomorrow.
That is my SAW WHEN.
And the question remains the same:
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