Beauty in Breaking

This year required me to break. And so I did. My collarbone that is. But was it just my collarbone? Or was it my spirit too? Can what’s broken be repaired? Will it ever be like it was before? Is it possible it will be better?

I haven’t been the same person since the fall. As more time passes I don’t think I will ever be her again. I mourn for her. I didn’t get to say goodbye. I wasn’t ready to let her go.

I look around and although things look the same everything feels different. Are they? Or is it just me? Is it my hopes and dreams? Did I figure out what I want? Will what I want change again?

My perceptions of the world and those in it are not entirely new I realize. With each passing experience and interaction they only develop. New thoughts and ideas are built upon what I already know. I’m growing, or just getting older, are those not the same thing? I guess some choose not to grow despite the change in their age. They remain eternally stuck, until one day they choose to take control of their life. I am grateful that my soul chooses growth.

I feel like I was stuck for a small period of time. Sure, I was doing things, even developing new skills and hobbies, but I wasn’t making plans for my future. I had a vague idea of what I wanted, but I promised myself I would live in the here and now. This way of being began when my dog died unexpectedly. It became hard to plan for a future, when I wasn’t even sure who would be in it. In reality, I’m still not sure, because nothing in life is promised, but it doesn’t mean I have to just sit around and wait for life to happen to me.

It is not wrong for us to make plans for the future, even if we may change our minds along the way. More often than not, we do. I’ve recently decided where I see my life going, and it feels good to have a direction to head in. Although I’ve began again to make plans for my future, I still consider what I have learned in the past few years:

That I must remain flexible, and adaptable. I must follow my heart, even when others do not understand. I have to let people go, and not fight for them to stick around, they are not part of my next chapter. That even though change is scary, it does not mean that it is wrong. It is essential to my development, and becoming who I want to be. I cannot chain myself to the things, places, or people, that have been apart of my story until now, the act of letting go is freeing. I cannot have regrets for how I have shown up in the world, for all of those moments have shaped me into who I am now. I must remain connected to my values and make decisions based on them. Not everything I think or feel needs to shared with everyone, some truths are mine to keep. It’s impossible to escape being hurt again, but when I am hurting, what can I learn from it?

I may now know where I want my life to go in the next few years, but it doesn’t mean it will happen just so. I have learned to let the changing tides take me where I need to be. Even though I feel I know what’s best for me, the universe and the divine are the keeper of those secrets. I feel protected that if I am veering off the path of where my soul needs to go, something will stop me and turn me around. Maybe it’s my guides, maybe it’s my intuition, or are those things one in the same?

But for now, the future I see for myself, feels like it’s calling me. It has been waiting for me. I needed to be all of the versions of me that I have been before I was ready to claim that future. I still have more versions to emerge before that future is truly ready for me to enter.

For now, I can rest in knowing I have plans, and a direction to follow. I will be patient, and savor each moment in the reality I am living. For everything I have and am now, I have desired. A version of me that used to be, wished for all of this. What I got, I got in ways that were unexpected and surprising at times. Some things caused me pain, and left holes in my life. But isn’t life a thing, where we constantly are trading in one thing for another? On the pursuit of happiness and satisfaction?

If I had to lose all I lost to have what I do now, then I am grateful. Grateful to break, because in my breaking, I became open. Open to all of the beauty and magic that this world has to offer me.