There was a time in my life when I treated any sort of mishap as a personal insult or punishment from the Universe. I spent years asking “why me?” and not “what can I learn from this experience?” I felt the need to willpower my way through life as if everything were a challenge and nothing could possibly be a blessing.
I am relieved that my willpower finally gave out.
When I returned home to visit my parents over the midwinter holidays, intending to refresh myself and return to fighting the fight that was my life, I left home at the conclusion of that visit with an entirely new plan, and that plan was to give up.
I gave up my job. I gave up my lease. I gave up my in-person friends. I gave up my partner-turned-roommate. I gave up the toxic and abusive situation I had found myself in. And just before the spring equinox, I took my cat and my car filled with the belongings I couldn’t bear to abandon, and I drove south. And for the first time in a long time, I felt like the Universe was working with me instead of against me. But it hadn’t changed. I had.
Sometimes I feel like life gives me a refresher on lessons I thought I’d learned before. And in this case, the lesson was that it really is as easy as surrendering and going with the flow. I feel like this time the lesson came with some additional nuance, but the main takeaway was that we don’t have to fight all the time, we don’t have to wake up and hit the ground running with all the answers and three contingencies for every dependency in the grand plan, and most importantly we don’t have to do it alone. Sometimes alone is a circumstance and sometimes it is a choice, and in this case, I had a couple of siblings who made themselves available to help me make a long-distance move and a couple of parents who welcomed me home again to start over and one very special grown-up child who gave me a much-needed hug as soon as I got out of the car at home. I had professional references who understood my situation and were able to give an honest assessment of my work ethic and skill set. I had close friends who fed me, held me while I cried, listened patiently while I ranted, and offered kind and penetrating insights from their perspectives.
I remember asking my priestess, years ago, when I would know that I was ready to undertake the mantle of third-degree priestesshood. “When you don’t want it anymore,” Taz answered. I’ve come to realize that the same concept applies to a lot of things in life. Our culture teaches that seeking and striving and overcoming is the only way to achieve success, and that can be a difficult voice to tune out when it’s seemingly everywhere. Sometimes we hear it so much we think it’s our own thoughts.
But for me, letting go – surrendering to the change in the current of my life – has helped me get back to the place where I could even think about priestesshood. After months of hiatus from my volunteer life, I began to want to contribute to the community again. I began to want to write again. I began to want to share what I’ve learned with others again. And that, more than anything else, told me that I was on the right track once more.
I leave you with a song that popped up on my Spotify playlist not long ago, after a long hiatus from that section of my interests:
May you be well.
~A