Day 253: Yes, And Now I Choose
Each time, after life had cracked me open and left me to figure out the path forward, I was left to decide who I was after I lost whatever was taken from me, from my life.
Who am I now? What is the rest of my life going to look like?
Obviously, it's not going to look like it did the morning I woke up, and my reality shifted.
Is the dream I had dead? If not, how do I pick up the pieces?
How do I move on with this big hole in my heart?
I've been changed forever, and yet I'm supposed to be back to normal by now.
That expectation alone can feel cruel.
As if a few weeks or months are supposed to erase the fact that something in you had to completely reorganize itself.
There is no normal anymore.
I can play it out by heart because I've had my life cracked open so many times over my 70 years.
Deaths, divorces, financial loss, multiple illnesses that could have killed me, long-term physical and psychological abuse that returns in pictures in my mind just by typing the words.
I'm sitting here wondering if I've forgotten anything because there have been so many.
And yet I've realized so many of my dreams, in between and sometimes in the middle, in spite of what was going on.
So, no, the dream doesn't have to die because that piece of you was taken away, unless you let it die.
There's another side to all this loss and disruption of the life we had planned.
Looked at through another lens, it can be a clearing out and reorganizing of our molecules.
To go forward into what is next we have to recalibrate and recognize the truth of who we really are at a different level.
That means clearing away what has obscured the glass we see ourselves through, possibly for most of our lives.
I've been doing videos on beliefs and what I've found is that we can be very resistant to questioning our long-held beliefs.
It's rarely because those beliefs are true or because they bring us joy or lift us in any way.
Some of the beliefs we are most resistant to changing are the ones that hold us back the most. The ones that tell us there is something wrong with us, that we're not good enough, or that life can only go a certain way now.
They have been with us for a very long time and they are wrapped around a lot of what runs our lives.
And they don't want to go, so they fight to stay.
But part of moving forward is being brave enough to question everything.
This is an opportunity to really create the life you want to live from the most authentic place, your soul.
No explaining, no defending. Just you living your truth, unapologetically.
Instead of looking back and seeing loss, we can look forward, acknowledging what we learned from our life experiences so far.
This is the time we can look at our life and say, "Yes, and…"
Yes, I've been through loss.
Yes, I've been changed.
Yes, some dreams may need to be reshaped.
And now I choose.
I choose to listen to my soul.
I choose to stop facing the past, trying to figure out why it happened or what could have been different.
I choose to turn toward the future and begin walking into what my soul desires for my happiness and fulfillment.
The dream doesn't have to die here.
I simply need to carry it forward as the version of me who survived.
Today's Gentle Practice
Think about one place where life changed you, and the future you imagined had to change with it.
Ask yourself:
What can I still choose from who I am now?
You don't have to deny what happened.
You don't have to pretend the loss didn't matter.
Just notice where your soul may still be pointing you forward.
The dream may look different now. But different does not mean dead.
With you,
Lynn
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