When the Path Falls Away

Making sense of me in what feels like the last summer

I’m in a time of life where the path can’t be seen anymore. It’s equal parts exhilarating and terrifying. At least that’s how it feels right now. I have no idea where I’m headed, and for literally the first time in my life I am feeling I can work with that.

I recently made a decision to let go of work that was paying the bills in order to follow my inner push to focus on my own creations. Also to live with the freedom I’ve always dreamed of. Its not the first time I’ve let go of work to follow my heart. The difference this time is I didn’t already have something built and I don’t have a nest egg to pay the bills while I figure it out. My work has been in the midst of so much change, as many of the ways I’d been doing it have fallen away while something new is being birthed. I’m building as I go while navigating the downswings and fatigue of a woman in midlife, and all the biological changes that entails.

Most days I cry and I feel lost, and I also create and write and pray and walk and nurture myself. I’ve never had so much room for ALL of me. I’ve never had such a desire to show the world my heart and at the same time clam up when the time comes. But I push out from those edges because I know it’s the only way to truly live.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a piece about feeling stuck in grief over the end of a relationship I have held dear to my heart. A good friend reached out and told me my words helped her with the same sort of experience. Would she have known my deep struggle? Would I have known hers? Baring my heart opened up a deeper conversation for us, and for that I’m grateful.

I'm only now starting to really understand the true value in my sharing from an authentic and sometimes raw place. It doesn’t just give me a container to release my grief, it gives others a lifeline of connection and shared experience. Because I know my life’s work is the honoring of pain in such a way that it transforms into grace, I know I only feel on my path when I share from that authentic pain.

Yesterday, I shared a story on Instagram that had the most views I think I’ve ever had. It was a simple screenshot from my computer showing the child support payments I’d received. I shared how for the past 14 years, I’d been on and off receiving these small (sometimes literally a penny) garnished amounts from my daughters’ father who has chosen not to uphold his financial responsibility (or any other). I got so many messages and so many views, I realized I’d somehow hit a nerve. I rarely share on this subject because I felt it unbecoming and wasn’t sure if it would come off as complaining bitter single parent. But I moved from my heart and I shared, and I realized it is these painful truths about the human experience that need sharing.

In what feels like a last summer in many ways, my oldest daughter has moved out and my youngest is about to leave for college. My time of active daily parenting is coming to a close. I have no idea what to expect on the other side of this change. I feel simultaneously excited to see how I will focus on my own needs, build a new life, and make some much needed changes—and I will miss all it meant to care for my children (even though it was sometimes sooo hard).

We have been a threesome, in the last few years a twosome, who have shared so much as a unit under the same roof. It’s hard to imagine they are the same two who screamed and cried while I tried to do their hair, who won spelling bees, who I took to girl scout meetings, who performed in dance and piano recitals, who I ritually took out for ice cream for every and any reason, who slept in my bed nearly every night of their very young lives, who I planned every birthday for and made every cake, and so so much more.

It is truly the end of an era as I realize our lives will never look the same. We’re entering a new cycle and I have so much to look forward to as we all grow in different ways. We’ll always have an anchor in each other even as our boats move in different directions.

So as I surrender into the current and flow with wherever this guiding force is taking me, my faith is regularly up for reassessment and strengthening. I get scared, I’m not going to lie. I’m in acceptance but fear pokes an index finger into my solar plexus regularly.

So, the crossroads I find myself in is that either I believe or I don’t. Everyday, am I taking actions that demonstrate belief in not needing to control and do and figure everything out? Do I trust my own nature? That I am designed to know how to die and how to be birthed? I often look to my astrological chart to understand what story I came here to live out.

Turns out my Pluto sitting right next to my Moon in the house of how I think, perceive, and communicate puts me in new story lines over and over. I’ve overhauled how I look at everything many times over. My North Node sits in the house of transformation, depth, death, and rebirth. Guess I wanted to develop an ability to let my experiences annihilate me so I could resurrect myself anew again and again. Pain has literally changed my entire being and that is what I came to master. Deep self-confrontation, shedding identities, releasing the old, emotional depth and intensity through sometimes traumatic and unexpected events—putting me in repeated transformational cycles.

I’m getting better and better at not running from it but turning toward it fully. My mastery of the whole process gives me the opportunity to show the way for others to do the same. I make sense to me now more than ever before, and I just want to help others feel the same.

From my heart to yours…