I’m on the other side of my July birthday now, which gave pause for reflection on the year that passed. So much change, but with it, so much growth.
Grief at the loss of my dear friend. Change in career. Moving homes. A massive leap of faith. A good measure of risk. All the hardest things came at once, but the lessons took longer.
So here I sit the morning after my birthday, in the proof that abundance isn’t what you have, it’s how you feel about what you have.
Traditional themes of success will never meet the simplicity of having peace of heart and mind, with the presence to appreciate it. Everything else is temporary. Everything.
It’s taken me a lifetime to get here. A lifetime to reconcile that my faith in myself, my ability to trust my instincts, and the confidence to create my own path was in my hands all along. Maybe that’s the point of time. Maybe we have to unravel before we can bloom.
Nothing is as powerful as the stories we tell ourselves; the stories we tell about ourselves. You’d think a writer would know that. Weaving a narrative is literally how I make sense of the world. What I never fully understood is how my own narratives have created my place in the world.
I’ve written myself off as many things and believed it, without understanding that I could rewrite the draft as fast as turning a page.
I overachieved to the point of under-valuing myself, a character I have repeated in various roles with different protagonists, in many settings, but always the same outcome. All the while, I had a draft folder of what was possible if I could just believe it.
If I could just see it as possible.
If only.
And then, one day, I believed it. I chose to. It’s that simple. I wrote a new script for myself. I fell in love with my work in a new way. I changed the way I saw routines and tasks and found the service to be done within them. I became mindful that work was a means to support a life I was grateful to live.
Then came the leap of faith and the acceptance of risk. Losing a friend my age gave me the courage I needed to answer the question, “if not now, when?”
I didn’t win the lottery. I didn’t inherit money. I didn’t get a windfall of cash. On the contrary, I gave up a full-time career for a business I knew next to nothing about, with zero guarantees except that year one we would surely take a loss. Gulp.
Yet when the opportunity came knocking, you bet I opened the door. I have no regrets. None. Even in the hard moments, where panic tries to land, I remember that everything is temporary. So right now, today, I love my life.
I have no idea what lies ahead. Yet, based on the lessons of these last six months, I’ll keep choosing a lifestyle of joy over the concept of needing more. Enough is enough.
I am grateful for another turn around the sun and I will not waste a day of it. I know my worth now and I’m writing it into each new chapter.
I don’t have to defend it to myself or anyone else. I just have to own it and live accordingly.
It’s a choice.
That’s my story so far.
