Hurdles

Launda Wheatley  - Artist

Last January my life changed in a moment. With a few words the image I had of the future, the work it would take to get there, the sometimes daily renewal of the commitment it would take to create it, became a moot point.

Then, as life does, she went on. The shattering didn't unshatter but all the pieces drifted back and began to find their new places. Some of the dreams were gone, some took up different places within me, some were created as new. Some, I believe, are still falling and will eventually find a home.

In May I began to move forward toward one of the rites of passage as we get older. I started to prepare for a different way to be in the world. As a daughter this happened when my parents passed. As a mother, my identity as a mother changed as he became his own man. As a working woman, I really love my job and the people I work with. Still, now I'm coming to a time when my job won't be the basis for decisions about my time and energy. Like a cannon I shot myself toward retirement no holds barred. And then the whole process skidded into a limbo of various holding pattern, starting in May, until a decision I'd made 20 years earlier could be settled and sorted out. Serious flexibility training and the creation of a super hero teacher of letting go and trusting, again, that every moment is perfect.

The last couple have days have brought news that the hurdle has been jumped and the process has begun with all the force it can muster. Where I was pushing from behind before, now I'm holding on for dear life. Exhilarated and terrified all at once, there is this amazing light shining at the core of my imagination.

I'll always be a daughter, a sister, a mother, a working woman, but now I will also be a woman who spends her days creating beauty within the end of the story of her life. That feels perfect to me.

Hmmm, I wonder what will happen next.