Catch This Before I Fade

In group coaching and facilitation, there is this thing called fading.

It’s when the facilitator fades into the background to allow participants to fully engage. The facilitator doesn’t disappear, but instead slips into the surroundings to let the group to do its work.

I love this idea, fading.

There are many ways to fade. My boyfriend has been officiating high school and college hockey for about 40 years. And he says the best officials are those you don’t even notice on the ice. They appear only when needed to call penalties or blow the whistle to stop and start play. Even when doing that, you don't really notice them. The best officials fade.
I am working on fading in my son’s life, now that he is in his mid-20s. I’m consciously practicing how to let him take center stage, while I fade into the rafters.

Not easy to do when for 10 years, it was me and my son against the world.

But for now, it’s Mom, exit stage left.

Mom! Exit stage left!

But what if Mom still wants to be at the center of her adult child’s life?

I lost both my parents 7 and 14 years ago. Have you ever had someone just fade like that from your life? It’s not an easy thing to get over.

They, too, faded into the background and appear only in moments when I call them forward. In moments when I desperately need them.

But just because they have faded does not mean they are no longer here. I have their DNA. I have our family traditions. I have their mannerisms. I have my dad’s brown eyes. I have my mother’s ability to sing on key. I am pragmatic to a fault like my father. I talk to my cat the way my mother talked to hers.

Sometimes, we have no control over when another person fades from our life. Whether you are ready for it or not, a person can just disappear. The cruelest form of fading can be those moments when the physical body cuts out.

But what about when you want to choose to fade, like with me and my son? Or what about when you want to fade out of someone’s life where you had a role previously?

That, too, is not easy. This is why there is that saying for a reason, a season, or a lifetime. I know I right now there’s a reason for me to fade with my son. It's good for him.

And probably good for me.

I was helping him with his taxes last weekend—I have TurboTax and can run several returns through it, so I was helping him with his. But before we finished, he became frustrated. He said I was treating him like a baby.

Why should I think he knows what estimated taxes are?

I wasn't treating him like a baby. Babies don’t do taxes. Especially estimated taxes.

But I got his point. When I said, “How do you know about estimated taxes?”

He said, “Um, I went to Bentley, Mom?”

Oh, yeah. Business school. We’re both still paying for all that learning.

It can be exhausting knowing when to fade—whether in or out. Social media is a great example of that. Tracking all those relationships has some impact on our psyche. It takes energy to track all that flow of matter and energy.

Before Facebook and Insta, we had relationships that just ended—that just disappeared. But now, through social media, we can now maintain a constant, virtual relationship humming in the background. We might not talk to someone from high school for 40 years, and then somehow, we know what they did for dinner the night before, how old their children are, or what they are struggling with or celebrating.

That’s a lot of movement to track.

It seems it should be enough to focus on those who are right in front of us, alive and present. But now we can also track another 1000 relationships—sort of. And this is why people take breaks from social media. Monitoring all of that is simply—exhausting.

Because of my work, I also have to do a lot of fading. I might facilitate a dozen meetings a week, where I have to do a lot of zooming in and zooming out. I have to be there to show up when I am needed—but when I am not, I need to slip into the background.

And, now and then, I tune in to my mom and dad.

I might suddenly hear my mom’s voice when I am talking to the cat. Or I see my dad show up in a red-tailed hawk circling overhead, or the fluttering red wings of a cardinal in the yard.

Or when I see my son's name show up on my phone, I think, my boy is calling me! And then I hear them in his voice.

And in that moment, I smile. Because he is calling me from the shadows to join him at center stage.