I was 45 before I had the chance to really live on my own. Before that I had been married for twenty years. Before that I was a student supported at least in part by my parents.
It was a thrilling as it was terrifying. For the first time I could organize my life as I wanted. My dreams had no more limits. Looking back over these two years of emergence from my cocoon of living safely and going along with a plan created by someone else, I realize I made mistakes. My eagerness to prove myself could be compared to a baby, whether human or new foal, taking her first steps. I couldn’t go fast enough on my wobbly little legs and they at times collapsed beneath me.
But the good news is life is about learning and growing. One bad moment or misstep does Not mean we weren’t meant to run or succeed. We are like clay and need to be flexible, willing to be reformed by the lessons of life, molded into a new creature that would be unrecognizable to the one we were before. Could the gracefully dipping and swirling butterfly recognize its former crawling, limited self? Within us is the potential and when we feed it and allow it to blossom we come into our fully created selves, and then we keep emerging more and more, hopefully mostly in the right direction but occasionally in the other. As long as we don’t give up or give in we can become what we always had in us and this is what those around us need. This is our potential as well as our service, our highest & best.
Notes From Real Life 