Reverb10 Day 29
Prompt: Defining moment. Describe a defining moment or series of events that has affected your life this year.
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I had a couple of very strong realizations just a few weeks ago that have shifted how I see myself and my work in the world.
The End of a Chapter
I am done with a period in my life that’s been very internal.
Since 2002, I’ve been engaged with learning my new line of work: that as coach, teacher and writer. I spent many years as a systems analyst for a financial institution. Then I went back to school. I studied many things, and focused on designing experiences, mostly of the interactive digital kind.
When I left school, I knew that what I had just been educated to do, was not my calling. In other words, the tools I gained are directly useful in my new work, but being an interaction designer was not how I was to share my gift.
I spent some time after school grieving a lot of things I hadn’t yet grieved. Like dirty dishes, grief doesn’t go away on its own. It wants to be invited in to sit a spell until it has been fully integrated.
Then, I began to train in my new chosen field: that of teacher of creativity and personal coaching. I wanted to really know the coaching profession, to become well qualified to do this work. When people entrusted me to walk with them as they turned to look within, to unearth their deepest longings and to move through the painful ways they keep themselves stuck, I wanted to be able to be of service to the unfolding of their true self and the gift they are here to give. Fully. I’ve followed this desire as it took me through years of training and education and my own deep work.
Suddenly, after a great deal of training this year, I could feel that I am done. I know my work.
And, I am done with a more internal focus. It had not yet felt right to be moving into the world in a more visible way. And now it does.
The moment when I came to see this was so clear.
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There is No Separation
I am a very lucky woman to have two daughters and three grandchildren, with one more on the way. As I was working to deepen my coaching and teaching abilities, I kept feeling pulled between my personal and professional worlds.
I am blessed to have both my daughters and their families close by. Completely blessed. And, I am the one grandparent here, which means much of the grandparent duties fall on me. I’ve loved this and I’ve felt torn between these two parts of my life.
In another moment of clear seeing, I finally could see, in a very real and palpable way, that these are not two separate things, but rather than one infuses the other. My work with women is enriched by my deep love for my children and grandchildren, and the time I spend with them informs my work. My work with women enriches my time with my children and grandchildren.
And, finally, my writing has been infused with much wisdom I have gained from my experiences with my family.
Of course they are all intertwined. How could I not have seen this? Sometimes these insights are so simple, yet so very profound.
Now, I feel integrated and ready for what life has in store for me, for where life will call me to go, for who life wants me to be with.
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There is a truth at the heart of the way life moves. As Kahlil Gibran wrote:
‎“Yesterday we obeyed kings and bent our necks before emperors. But today we kneel only before the truth.” ~ Khalil Gibran
This is my life in all its intricate complexity; yet at the heart of it, it’s all quite simple.
I used to think there was a way life should look and that I would see that way out there, reflected back to me through how the culture shows it.
These two realizations in these past weeks have deepened my faith in my own aibility to trust when to shift, when to move and where to flow to next. Somehwere inside, I knew it wasn’t yet time; and now it is time and life is showing me the way.
Life asks us to flow with it, to follow its lead, to trust in life’s nature.
Everything that has happened in my life has been rich fodder for this gift I’m to give. Nothing was for naught. Everything has informed.
Nothing is wasted, everything is in order, and it’s all sacred.
