Changes...

When we moved away from our lives in Toronto to come home, I left behind everything that I had built in the six-ish years we were there.  I had to start all over again.

I struggled for months to come to grips with what my new life had in store for me.  I missed Toronto, I missed my friends, I missed my life there.  I was miserable.

In spite of that, I knew in my heart that we had made the right decision.  I never doubted that for a moment even though my life was so different from what it had been, and so difficult.

My circumstances had created a complete shift in my life.  Now don't get me wrong, I know that I made the decision to move, and I accept the responsibility of that choice.  But when your life goes through a fundamental change, whether by choice or not, it takes time to adjust.  And I struggled.  A lot.

My friends advised me to just sit with it.  To stop trying so hard.  To stop trying to "make" something happen. I had a hard time with this.  I hate sitting still.  I hated feeling the way I did.  And yet every time I tried to take the reins, the universe would find something else to keep me stuck.  In about March, I remember saying to a dear friend that I wanted some drama in my life, positive drama.  Well, the universe has a sense of humour because a couple of weeks later I got my drama in the form of a polar bear swim at a local park.

I had been walking my dog in an off-leash park when she ran after another dog who was chasing geese and fell through the ice on a pond.  After calling 911 and running back and forth in a panic, I tried to wade in to retrieve her, only to get stuck up to my knees in muck.  I came out and watched as she struggled to get onto the ice, whimpering and starting to get tired.  So I did what any dog lover would do.  I crawled out on the ice to get her.  I made my way on hands and knees until I neared the edge where I got onto my belly and shimmied out to her.  I tried to throw my fleece jacket for her to grab onto but she didn't understand, so I moved closer and...crack.  The ice broke under me.  I pushed her onto the ice and eventually pulled myself out too and in the end we were both fine.  The moral of the story?  Don't ask the universe for drama!!!

After this escapade I did what my friends suggested.  I stopped.  I stopped trying to make something happen in my life.  I sat in the void.  Now that's not to say that I sat on my butt all day everyday, far from it.  But I let my life unfold.  I stopped trying to force my will on the shape it would take.  To be honest, it felt a little like giving up.  I didn't make plans or set goals - at least not for anything bigger than what I needed to do that week.  I didn't try to figure out how to eat the whole buffet, I just ate the food on my plate.  And little by little, things started to get clear.