It is one of the greatest presumptions and violations of another to ever think that YOU knows what’s best for him or her. A couple of years ago, a good friend of mine scolded me in the middle of a tirade about my desire to change someone, telling me that none of us can EVER really knows what another person needs.

This stopped me cold, and when I considered it, it made perfect sense. Yet, it is so easy to project our values and beliefs and preferences onto another. We assume that because it is good for us, it must be good for others. However, when you go deeper, you see that the people in your life are not that simple, not by a long shot.

Think about it. How receptive are they when you impose your will onto them? Not very. No one likes advice, unless it is solicited. Unfortunately, the impulse to throw advice at someone in trouble, comes up and is difficult to resist. We only want to be helpful, we claim. Perhaps. But I think we also like agreement and validation that our way is the right way.

Then there is the uncharted territory that lies in the depths of the subconscious. This is our forbidden zone, invisible even to us most of the time, and yet powerful in its impact on our lives. It is not a place for meddling or to push into uninvited. Yet so many self-help gurus, ignorant or at least, disrespectful of this sacred hot spot, do exactly that–pushing people too fast, churning up old wounds, tearing down precious structures, and leaving massive fallout in their wake with no clue how to put the pieces back together.

What it comes down to is this: trusting the process of our path, as well as the path of others, no matter how much stumbling and suffering accompanies it. Who are we to rob someone else of their lessons? It only delays the inevitable, perhaps even makes it worse when one finally encounters it.

There is so much of life that we cannot see or know. It’s part of the great mystery. It is too vast and large to grasp the methods and workings in its entirety. Instead, we must settle for our small viewpoint of the whole. Therefore, it behooves us to reign in our tendencies to want others to confirm to our will for them.

Let them be. Let them have their experiences. Let them learn by doing.

Not easy, I know, especially if you’re a parent. Stepping out of the way and allowing our children to stumble and fall, helps them learn how to walk, and to find their balance and their strength. Overdoing for others, only cripples them and restricts their ability to move and grow. It makes them dependent and weak. No parent really wants that. However, most of us naturally want to relieve the suffering and heartache of those we love.

A delicate balance, to say the least. In the end, I have found that giving people enough space to move, but letting them know you believe in them works pretty well. We all want support, but no one can live our lives for us. Nor would we want them to. Occasionally, when we can’t walk, we may need someone to carry us for awhile. But eventually, we need to stand on our own two feet. Then down the road, someone may need us to carry them for awhile. It’s part of the interdependence we all need to survive.

In the meantime, though, let us stay our of each other’s way a bit, so there’s more room to move for all of us.

Letting go of relationships, possessions, habits, activities—anything we’ve grown attached to—is one of the most difficult, yet necessary parts of personal growth. It is akin to shedding old skin. In order to make room for the new skin or the new aspects of our lives, we must inevitably part with the old. Sometimes this means we need to say goodbye to negative relationships which are holding us back from realizing our potential. Other times it means moving to a new place in order to take advantage of new opportunities. Regardless of what it is, we are faced with severing a connection with something which is comfortable and familiar and exchanging it with something unknown. This can be a frightening experience, and one which may have pain and loss associated with it.

Sometimes we have to give up something which we know is in our own best interest to give up. However, in spite of this knowledge, we still don’t want to let go of it. We may become stubborn and resistant. We may decide to quit pursuing our dreams for awhile, deciding that success requires too much of us. That’s okay, for awhile.

Rebellion can be healthy if not taken too far. Holding onto bad habits or unhealthy, stressful situations can in some cases help us to see the cost they are exacting. We cling on, fighting change, feeling miserable, but righteous because we are in control. Over time this clinging drains us of the inspiration and positive energy we once felt at the prospect of turning our lives around, of finally taking steps to make our dreams a reality. We wonder why we lost touch with our vision.

When a cup is full, no more liquid can be poured into it. In order to add fresh liquid, the cup must be emptied first. So, too with our lives. We need to make room for new ideas, new opportunities, new ways of being. If our lives are too full of clutter, there is no room for anything new.

How will you know what to let got of? In a cluttered room it is difficult to see what is worth keeping and what must go.  Therefore, one must begin to organize and take stock of the various elements of one’s life. As you begin this process, begin to ask yourself, which of these things will help me to lead a healthy balanced life, and which of these things will hold me back? If you are looking at a work situation, observe your energy level when you are engaged in it. If you feel depleted afterwards, then take steps to replace it. If you still find some reward and some energy and satisfaction from doing it, then perhaps it is worth keeping around for a little while. Everything can be measured in terms of you overall ultimate goal. What fits and what doesn’t fit into the vision you have for a successful, fulfilling life?

Another way to decide if you want to continue participating in something is to ask yourself, if you had six months to live, would you still do it? Use death as an ally. We are all going to die and most of us don’t know when our time will be up.  Therefore, I urge you to use your time wisely. Don’t waste it or throw it away. If anything feels as though it is wasting your time, eliminate it from your life. To see the benefits, find something right now that is small, that you want to eliminate form you life, some old clothes, old books or furniture. Give them away as soon as possible. Lighten your load.  Now you have more room in your closets, on your shelves or in the rooms of your house. You can now leave the space open for awhile or replace it with something new, something which better reflects the direction your life is headed.

Remember closing old doors, is a signal to the universe that you are ready to open new ones. When you are willing to let go of old things, you become a magnet for new opportunities. How do I know this? I’ve witnessed it dozens of times in my own life and in the lives of others. The only way you will know for sure is if you try it for yourself.

Think of your life as a living experiment or think tank, and it will become suddenly wondrous to you, and exhilarating. Lessons surround us and life rewards us when we respect its ability to teach us.

Life is a wonder and a mystery. We move through it under the strong illusion that we have some degree of control of it or at least our personal corner. On the surface at least, we don’t, and life does not hesitate to remind of this regularly.

But there is something deeper here…a paradox to be sure. There is a deep place within us that is connected to the Whole of ALL THAT IS. It is in this connection that we can tap into something deeper. This is the place where we can see the bigger picture and recognize the Divine Perfection all around us. It is the place where we can laugh at what is unfolding and not take it so seriously. This is also the place where we can get freed up of all of that drama and biographical, genetic, ancestral and societal baggage we keep dragging around with us.

As small children, we are powerfully imprinted by our early experiences, both good and bad. It is where our first impressions of love, relationships and the world are made. Depending on whether those early experiences were positive and uplifting or dark and traumatic or somewhere in between, they shape our perception and ways of navigating through the world.

If we grow up on a starvation diet devoid of much attention and affection, that becomes our normal because we don’t know what a full meal tastes like. Because it feels normal, we will tend to perpetuate that diet and attract people and circumstances into our lives that only partially feed us.

To stop carrying those early imprints with us, we need to heal and release the thoughts and beliefs about the world they created. Often they are so much a part of us, that we cannot even see them. But in spite of their invisibility, they shape and influence every decision we make.

For someone who is used to being deprived, learning to receive love and attention and affection, is a major healing event. It is a process of unwinding and unraveling all of those deeply ingrained ways of being, reacting and moving and opening the channel for a new level of aliveness.

In order to do what it believes will keep us safe, our subconscious sabotages all of our desires and needs and deep cravings to grow and change. This saboteur affects everything we do. To really heal these subterranean levels of fear, we need to connect with something greater. To reduce the imagined threat of releasing our old way of being, we need to remember who we are.

This is nothing short of dying to what was and being reborn to what is. It is where we will find real freedom. It is where we will find our authentic voice. It is where we will learn what it means to be alive.

We, perhaps for the first time, will be back in the driver’s seat of our lives, rather than feeling like some rogue part of ourselves is behind the wheel.

This is not really about control, but rather surrender and allowing and being with what is at a very high level of acceptance. Control is about the need to survive. When we begin to taste freedom, we no longer feel in danger and so no longer need to control things. We are no longer out of alignment with what is before us and what is unfolding. The feeling of being out of sync was simply all that noise from our subconscious trying to survive what it perceived to be a very confusing world.

There are many modalities that allow us to release our early scripts and beliefs. When we are ready to really let go, we will find them.

In the meantime, take a look at your circumstances and relationships. Notice any repeating themes or patterns? Feelings of powerlessness and frustration? A sense of moving ten steps forward and two back? A gnawing feeling of being victimized, but with no clue how to shake the feeling or change your circumstances?

That’s it. Keep paying attention to it. Call it forth from the shadows into the light of day. Watch what happens when a little bit of awareness creeps in. The power and intensity starts to diminish. Exposure is half the battle.

It’s as if you’ve discovered a few stowaways living inside of you…long-term house guests, and it’s time to show them the door.

For that you may need help, because these squatters aren’t usually so keen on leaving. They will do anything to convince you they are helping you and that you cannot survive without them. An objective person can help you to hold steady and not be swayed or undermined by such tactics.

Sometimes you have to sneak up on them and trick them into leaving. Whatever it takes, whatever modalities you choose, by all means stand firm. Give them a hug, thank them for serving you, but don’t forget to lock the door once they’re gone.

How far are you willing to go to be authentic?  At what point do you decide to compromise yourself and accommodate others? How much compromise/accommodation is really necessary in our relationships, our work, our lives?

My answer today, in this moment, is hopefully very little. I don’t know about you, but I just can’t do the self-betrayal thing any more. My body just won’t move in that direction. The resistance that comes up feels like I’d have to move a mountain of bricks to do something I really don’t want to do. My whole being shuts down energetically if it even gets a whiff of sacrifice in the air.

Does this mean I am selfish or that I don’t like doing things for others? Of course not. But when it comes to giving, I’d rather step into the stream of effortless flow where the giving bubbles to the surface naturally and just moves me in that direction. My heart expands with joy when I give from that place. Besides no one wants to receive something from someone who doesn’t have it to give or who tangles the giving in a web of expectations and resentment.

No thanks. Don’t bother.

We all need to feed and nourish ourselves. Take time out and recharge and restore ourselves. When we are fed and nourished, the desire to give comes more readily. So many of us live on a self-starvation diet, depleting our stores of energy in exchange for money or some other commodity, that we’ve forgotten what really listening to our own needs even feels like.

It doesn’t have to be like that, even down to the simplest level. If you hate getting up early in the morning and that is truly authentic for you, find a way to structure your life to support that. If being alone helps you to feel grounded and centered again, make sure you have enough solitude in your schedule. If it’s authentic for you to be in nature on a regular basis, then make life choices around that.

Too much compromise and sacrifice makes us cranky. Long periods of habitual self-betrayal can wear deep grooves in our psyches, leaving us depressed or angry or full of anxiety. Allowed to go on long enough and you’re creating fertile ground for a major illness, a meltdown or both.

Not a pretty picture. And certainly not worth it.

So what to do? Stop it! Right now. Just stop.

Take a breath and step back from your life and assess the damage. In what areas of your life are you betraying yourself? In what areas do you deny your needs in favor of another’s? In what areas of your life is it more important to be liked and approved of than it is to follow your own way? How much of yourself do you sacrifice (negotiate) in order to get something you want or hang onto something you have?

On the flip side, how much do you expect others to sacrifice or compromise on your behalf?

Can we all just put an end to this unnecessary martyrdom and suffering?

I think we can, without too much fall out. Most radical change requires going to the opposite extreme. You may have to start by simply practicing the fine art of saying no. To everyone. Or at least to as many people as you can get away with for as long as it takes to break the habit of saying yes when you’d rather not.

Another thing that helps is to start paying attention to your body and your energy levels. If something drains the shit out of you…by all means, don’t do it. If it energizes and excites you, obviously, say yes.

Sounds so simple, but most of us have developed a pretty strong override button that effectively silences our needs in one fell swoop, essentially taking us out of any equation that comes up. Because our needs are cut off, we aren’t factored in. Instead, we simply move into and through our lives on automatic pilot reacting to things and putting out fires, without regard to the inner yearnings of our souls.

People aren’t mind readers. You have to know what you want and ask for it. You have to stake your claim or you will get walked on or at least left out. Yes, it’s uncomfortable, but the juicy, fun part of life happens when we engage with it full out with our entire being.

So stop censoring yourself. Stop holding back. Stop second guessing yourself. And for God’s sake, stop worrying about what other people think.

Create the space for the real you to emerge. Then, and only then, will you be free to give.

Let’s face it. Life is quite simple when you really look at it. We all want the same thing: to love and be loved. Period. Beyond that I would add that we all want to be seen and heard and appreciated. We all want to feel connected and to feel meaning in those connections. Plus, being touched regularly is nice. Add to that some creative expression and you have a pretty rich life.

At the core of life is our communication with each other. What we say and don’t say. The messages we send out with our eyes, our expressions, our body language.

We crave connection. It is our life blood. Restrict that connection, and our being begins to wilt and wither, like a plant without sunlight.

Love needs to flow. In its pure unconditional state, it is expansive and inclusive. It continues to grow and build on itself. And to do that it must be expressed freely.

Love is abundant. It is everywhere. It is we who limit it with our conditions and possessiveness and definitions and boundaries. We cling to it out of fear of losing what we have or not getting what we want. We treat it as though it is a scarce commodity that will run out and dry up.

Communication is love’s channel. Listening and receiving and letting someone truly express who they are and be heard is a great gift, yet it is so rarely given. Like a delicious meal, conversation is meant to be lingered over, not rushed through.

You can discover hidden territories when you slow down enough to really speak and really listen. New ideas are born. Wisdom is revealed and shared. Wounds are healed.

Talking, when done for its own sake with grace, is a subtle, yet beautiful art, often neglected. Consciousness has been shifted by those who understand this art, and who know first how to listen and then how to speak.

Speaking up can be the most radical of actions. It can stir people up, inspire them and get them moving.

Silence is just as powerful.

Our voice and our words are incredible tools once we remember how to use them. Most of us hold back. We censor ourselves mercilessly, depriving others AND ourselves our deepest interiors, preferring instead to skim along the surface of life. No wonder we’re hungry with longing.

I propose the following: Listen harder and longer. Engage. Immerse yourself in another’s ideas and being. Really be there. Speak using your whole voice. Don’t hold back. Expose yourself. Be bold and brave. Whatever you do, bring something to the table. Make it worthwhile for the person(s) listening to you.

Broaden your circle. Don’t talk to the same people all the time. Seek out new people. In fact, make it a point to meet someone new every week or even every few days.

I guarantee you if you’re willing to expand your circle and go deep with people and really engage with them, that your consciousness and your life will begin to shift in miraculous ways. New opportunities will start to emerge that may even take you in a whole new direction.

And that is just the beginning…many great ideas have been born out of a single conversation.

Lately, in conversations with friends, they’ve been challenging me, confronting me, exposing me and inviting me to come out from behind my walls. I frustrate them, irritate them, hurt them, avoid them, and just plain drive them crazy with my awkward attempts at setting boundaries. I told someone the other day that I see myself living behind a moat and I’m pretty sure that moat is filled with some amphibians with very sharp teeth. At least that’s what my friends are telling me.

How do I explain I’m not doing this to cause anyone else pain, but instead, I’m doing it to prevent myself from feeling pain? Kind of rough on the people close to me to have them think I’m assuming that letting them get close to me means I’ll have pain in my life.

But it’s not quite that simple.

I’m not afraid they will cause pain, but rather that my recent wounds will be re-opened, not intentionally, but perhaps without knowing it someone may bump into a sore spot, thereby, opening a floodgate of feelings—feelings, mind you, they didn’t cause, but just happened to stir up.

In the past four years, my emotional range opened up fully—which is what, like it or not, intense grief and major life changes do—and I hit notes I hadn’t played since my father died, along with many others I never even knew existed. This opened my heart and made me aware of many levels of human experience. I touched and was touched by other people’s pain at a much deeper level. I could see and know experiences that before I had only imagined.

The raw beauty of it was that prior to my marriage falling apart, my range had been very narrow and small, very contained. Then like a suddenly active volcano, my life and my heart blew open, spilling the contents of my inner most feelings all over the place. It was a mess.

I learned to live in this overheated muddy place, for many, many months, my identity in pieces. The pain allowed me to connect with people, allowed them into my most vulnerable and sacred places. I had no choice. I needed people or I wouldn’t have survived.

I still need people, perhaps now, more than ever. What’s different is that I finally got a break from the pain, and I’ve been enjoying the more neutral feeling of equilibrium. However, I have also become so attached to the absence of pain that I’m now doing whatever I can to avoid it, including not letting people get too close. My range has shrunk down into that narrow place again because it is what I can manage and control. The very thought of being out of control again terrifies me.

All this sounds pretty foolish. The cost is quite obvious when spelled out that way. Without the full range of feelings (no pain=no joy), we miss most of the essence of life, instead spending most of our energy maintaining our comfort zone and protecting our small little world.

I know all of this, and yet…and yet, I hesitate at the doorway of intimacy and human connection and peer in watching people engaged in the dance and wonder if I will ever feel safe moving in that world again. That’s what the sharp knife of grief does…it puts you in a state of post-traumatic confusion and doubt that you will ever be “normal” again.

Life, if nothing else, is about change and growth, and in all likelihood, this state of no pain or numbness, is temporary, a kind of suspended animation or existential limbo, allowing me to travel a great distance from one state of being to another. I trust that one day I will wake up and feel confident again about taking risks in my relationships again. I trust that my friends will be patient with me a little longer, and not see my withholding as a personal rejection, but rather regard me as someone who is on retreat from the world for a time, in order to regroup, refresh and restore my being into a place of wholeness.

In the meantime, I will continue to linger at the doorway, reminding myself that intimacy—like riding a bike—is something you never forget how to do.

We live in a house of mirrors, the people and circumstances in our lives reflecting and refracting back pieces of ourselves. It is our reactions to these reflections that teach us the most about ourselves: what attracts us, repulses us, makes us angry or sad, open or shut down becomes our unique signature in the language of our experience.

These reflections also show us what we look like in different contexts. Sometimes we like how we show up and what we see, and sometimes we don’t. We resemble so many bits and pieces of broken glass turning in a kaleidoscope of daily interactions—always new, always changing, always becoming.

We are so much more than the sum total of all of the reflections in our lives. The concepts, ideas, projections, assumptions that are thrown at us from the outside world only make up a small, and frankly, quite a messy composite of our identity. It is really nothing more than a mask or persona that we associate ourselves with and wear in the same way we wear items of clothing.

However, when our buttons get pushed, it can feel like much more than that. And nothing pushes our buttons more than someone who reminds us of the parts of ourselves we’d rather forget. The last thing we want to do is spend time with someone who stirs up the ugly uncomfortable shit we thought we’d dealt with already or who shoves the hideous underbelly of our personality right in our face. Ouch! Our reaction is typically to find the quickest route out of there, anything to get away from having to see THAT and be around THAT right now. Sometimes that’s not possible and we need to simply find a way to be with the person who makes us SO uncomfortable.

Being around a person who mirrors some of our deepest, dirtiest, nastiest crap can be excruciating AND it can be the best teaching tool around. Instead of running, try turning right around and seeing what there is to see. If you don’t like what you see, perhaps it’s because it feels a little too close to home or a little too familiar. Therein lies the gift. This person is dishing it out so eloquently so that you can see what it feels like to be on the receiving end of such attitudes and behaviors, so that you can know it so well and so fully, that by the time you catch your breath, you vow to NEVER, EVER act like that toward anyone again.

That person that pissed you off just became your greatest teacher and offered you up a precious opportunity to evolve and grow that cannot be bought or found in a book, classroom, or personal growth DVD. No, this came through the school of life, right there in the comfort (or in this case discomfort) of your daily life.

Pretty amazing. Everything we need to grow is right there in front of us. Endless invitations to master the human condition given to us as one of the perks of being alive. Imagine that.

But wait, that’s too easy. Beyond these mirrored reflections, who are we really? The answer is really quite simple: we are what is seeing the reflections, we are what is hearing the voice in our heads, we are what is feeling the emotions, we are what is moving the body in its dance with the world.

But who, we ask, is that? Who, indeed, is life’s greatest mystery and life’s greatest gift. It is the motor that drives the whole machine, the constant hum of life force buzzing in the background of our lives. That my friend is who we are; we are part of this whole lovely crazy thing expressing itself like mad across the universe of existence. Everything we see is merely a reflection of that doing its thing in us, through us, around us.

I never make New Year’s resolutions, but this year I decided to break tradition by making one. This year I am resolving to have no more drama in my life. I’ve had enough drama in the past four years to last me for quite some time. I was so immersed in nothing but drama and pain for such a terminally long stretch that I became certain that it would never end. I questioned my sanity, and wondered if perhaps I was becoming a drama addict or that I needed drama to feel alive.

It was only when the noise and the pain and the grieving stopped that I dared to lift my head and notice the blissful quiet that had entered my life. I was distrustful at first, certain that at any moment the dragon would round the corner and burn me again with his nasty flames. But when one day of peace turned into one week and then a month, I realized that the worst was over, and that time, in fact, does heal all wounds. At their worst, my wounds had felt untreatable—they were so large and deep and gaping, I just assumed that I had joined the walking wounded, whose scars are always the first thing you notice about them.

But the wheel of justice turned and my life began to move in a new direction. My days began to have longer and longer stretches of joy and happiness. In fact, I began to feel some part of myself emerging that had been dormant for decades, and the effect was nothing less than rejuvenating.

This is the reason why I’m now absolutely clear that I have no room in my life for drama of any kind. If it can be avoided, it will. If not, I will do whatever I can to bring the situation to a quick resolution. Now, when I even get a whiff of drama heading my way, I will do a 180 degree turn and head in the opposite direction.

Drama, to me, is like a subtle, but extremely toxic and dangerous poison. It stirs up ugly feelings and emotions usually based on half-truths and amped up assumptions. It is destructive and drags all in its path down with it.

The only answer is prevention—not to ever go there in the first place. The remedy in all cases is to take the high road and take the most mature, high integrity action you can think of. Because once you’re in the middle of it, undoing it can be difficult or even downright impossible. Far better to just avoid it in the first place.

One of the things you realize when you’ve stepped off the drama merry-go-round is how immature and adolescent it really is. When you stand back and observe others who are engaged with it, it sounds so much like a bunch of teenagers, that you cannot imagine allowing yourself to narcissistically indulge in that way or regress that far back ever again.

Drama and all that comes with it—wining, complaining, manipulation, deception, impulsive behavior—is a contamination of who we really are. It pollutes our spirit and stresses our being. There are absolutely no benefits other than the feeling that something is happening in our lives. Some people might claim it makes them feel more alive. But they are speaking from within the eye of the storm. The fall out left after the storm subsides can be pretty sobering, making even the most drama-hungry person take stock.

My motto in 2008 is going to be just say no. Because from where I’m sitting right now, the hangover just ain’t worth the high.

The fear of being alone is what causes most people to enter into or remain in bad relationships. Fear, being the poor adviser that it is, leads to poor choices. It tends to keep company with scarcity and evokes the flight or fight response regularly. The energy associated with it is downright toxic.

What starts as simple enjoyment of the way we feel when our partner is around, can, when coupled with fear, move into attachment and even addiction, in which we feel tremendous suffering when they aren’t.

Essentially, when our well being is dependent on another person, we become enslaved to him or her. Take it another step further and you might even say our very survival is dependent on the relationship.

I call this type of relationship, the “save me from being alone relationship” in which one or both parties will literally put up with anything as long as they are assured they can hang onto the relationship.

People become each other’s life preservers.

Typically, my observation is that in most of these over-the-top co-dependent relationships one person plays the role of savior or master and the other plays the role of saved or slave. The person saved from being alone becomes indebted to the one who is doing the saving and is willing to do anything to repay this debt and please their savior.

The savior or master, on the other hand, holds all the cards and is in a position of power in the relationship. They call most of the shots and tend to exert great control over the relationship. There is a sado-masochistic dynamic at work here as well.

The slave is held hostage by the fear of being alone and the master uses this need as leverage against the slave. Both the controller and the controlled are each happy with this arrangement, because each is getting what they need.

This dynamic works until the master gets bored or the slave gets tired of being controlled or when either one or the other or both finds a new master or slave.

To break the spell or enchantment may require cult member style deprogramming as the fear and survival needs that created this dynamic may be buried so deep in the subconscious that neither party may even be aware what is at play in their relationship. Bringing the nature of the relationship into conscious awareness is one step on the road to healing.

But this begs the question: what does fear have to do with love?

Absolutely nothing.

Love doesn’t take hostages; fear does.

Love isn’t about control; fear is.

Love isn’t worried about the future; fear is.

Love is without conditions and restraints. Love is about freedom.

Fear has its own agenda, and that is to make sure you survive.

But life is not about mere survival. It’s about growth and learning and living…really living.

No one can save us from being alone.

We’re all alone. We’re born alone. We die alone.

Holding on tightly suffocates what’s near and dear.

Is that what we want to be doing?

When is an ending a beginning? Where does one thing end and another thing begin? Depends upon your perspective.

Today marks the ending of my twenty-four year marriage and the beginning of my life as a single woman. In my case, the ending of a union marks the beginning of a separation, a diverging of paths into new directions.

As with many of life’s mysteries, there is a bittersweet paradox here. Change means both loss and gain. Letting go of what was for what is and what will be. Sometimes that can be a shock. Sometimes it is a welcome relief. Sometimes a little of both.

Change brings with it the rush of the new, the different, the unknown, but it also brings the fear of those things. What was comfortable and familiar is gone.

A friend once said to me, “One party has to end, in order for another party to begin.”

The problem for me is the time between parties can seem long and lonely.

Through the process of separating from my husband, there has been a pretty equal mix of loss and gain. You would think that after a couple of years of living separate lives, it would get easier and be less about loss and mostly about gain. But in my case, it hasn’t unfolded in quite that way. Sure I’ve had days of enjoying my freedom and solitude and space. But the lonely, sad times still crouch in the corner and pounce unexpectedly, catching me off guard and leaving me in a puddle of tears.

I no longer fight or resist the feelings. Nor do I hold onto them. I surrender and let them move through the way a summer thunderstorm moves through, dramatic, intense at times, but thankfully, quick. On the other side, the calm returns and I’m okay.

I’m okay.

So while a very long chapter of my life has ended, a new one has begun. In preparation for this change, I’ve discovered a well of strength and courage that I’d forgotten I had. Deep inside all of us is this incredible resource that allows us to tap into something greater, and right when we think we can’t go on, some invisible energy kicks in and gets us to the next moment and the next, so that before long we realize that in spite of our fears and pain, we’re still moving forward.

In this movement, we can choose to hide out and protect ourselves, licking our wounds, or we can use our vulnerability as a way of connecting with others. Stepping out of the comfort zone of a long-term relationship can open us up and make us available to others in unexpected ways. There is a deep recognition when we meet another soul who has experienced a journey similar to ours….a sharing and understanding that is not possible otherwise.

There are gifts that come from endings and loss, and those gifts shape the very course we take when starting anew. For every cost, there is a benefit…sometimes hidden from view for a very long time, but eventually, it shows up, and we can then appreciate what it took to get here. And if we’re lucky, even appreciate it.

So here’s to new beginnings.