live YOUR life

Anxious midnight text to my sister: "How do I know if I've just got 'the grass is greener on the other side' complex??? What if I'm just never happy?" Her response, "You won't know until you step out in faith. And no matter what the results from it, use it to grow. It will become part of your story." She's right. I've never done anything like this before. The only way I'm going to know is to trust that gut instinct that has been coaxing me down this path for years. It's no coincidence that any time I said to a close friend "I have big news to tell you!" they immediately responded, "you're moving!".

I spent the last few years doing everything but what I felt in my heart was the thing I needed to do. I found every reasonable distraction- no one ever questioned what I was going to do with my life once I took a stable well paying soul sucking job. I had constructed a solid facade, and it appeared I had it together- except for the spreading cracks indicating the structure I built was about to crumble. I developed migraines, claustrophobia, numbness in my arms and hands... my body was manifesting my discontent. The very heart of me was rebelling against being forced into the tomb of what I "should" be doing with MY life. 

This week has been a reality check of just how short life is... from banter about the end of the world on December 21, 2012 to a story of a woman who was violently murdered by her husband to the funeral of a family member, I am reminded that the length of my life could be decades or moments. An unexpected conversation in a salon with a vibrant woman in her 70s (if I recall correctly) explained the reason she looks decades younger is that she has fun. She is happy. That is not to say there hasn't been heartache and a lot of difficulty, but beyond any exercise, eating habits or trendy new age reversal solutions- finding the happiness life has to offer, even in dark moments, is what really matters. It's not our life experiences that carve themselves onto our faces; it's how we respond to them. The lines on our faces silently tell the story of our lives.


I want the lines on my face to tell a story of a life well lived- one that was lived by me and for me and not dictated by social "shoulds". I want a life full of laughter- the kind that communicates that, in spite of (or rather because of) heart break and tragedy, there is healing.  

Life will be as rich and meaningful as you want it to be. You have to be the one to create it.