The snow globe
This piece was written during November 2009, and documents my transition from part-time to full-time coaching.
If I chose one metaphor for my life in the past year, it would be the snow globe. In general, everything has felt so shaken up, so topsy-turvy, but in a beautiful way (the kind of way where you might be tempted to shake it up again, just to watch it happen), and now the pieces seem to be slowly floating down into a slower space.
The odd part about all of it is that underlying everything that happens lately, I have this larger sense of fate. I feel as if I have stepped off the track of being the arbiter of my life, someone who has sat down to identify goals in a purposeful way and then worked her ass off to attain them, and that now there is something bigger and more magical at play and I am just riding that ride. There is a lot of deja vu, a lot of hanging back and then when something happens kind of shaking my head at the "rightness" that I feel, and then sensing that, yes, it was all supposed to turn out just this way.
For instance, even with the troubles we've had with the house that we've just moved into--the plumbing lines that backed up, and the newer problem that has presented itself with the electrical system (!)--despite those troubles, I don't question for a second whether this is the right place to be. It just feels right. In other houses where we've been when troubles have arisen it only confirmed what I knew--what I'd felt leading up to the signing of the papers, the red flag warnings that had been whispering at me to think about the choice just a bit more. For whatever reason, with this house it is my story that because it feels right, it is right despite the challenges. Thus, living here feels perfectly okay (in fact, I feel inordinately proud that we made the decision--walking in the house, I feel that sense of "Ah..." that I have been missing the past few years).
There is a kind of magic (energy? presence? spirit? who knows) that seems at work in the background, and I think it is always there but in this particular cycle of my life I feel more present to it. I feel guided by it, protected by it. I feel more committed to doing only that which resonates and trusting that if something does not resonate--even if it's something that "should" resonate for some reason--there is something to that. I feel willing to listen. I have felt this way to varying degrees since Italy. Sometimes I think to myself that the only thing any human needs to get "right" on what they want is a week away from their everyday life. I find that every time I take myself out of my daily routines, issues that I think I'm challenged by become more clear, and then I can return to the routines with that insight.
I feel really grateful because I know I have felt this guidance before in my life and then it slipped away (or perhaps it's something that just naturally cycles through, changing like seasons, waxing and waning?). It feels good to have this, especially now, because I also have big waves of fear come up--there is so much more money flowing out of my life in this moment than into it, and my inner little kid, happy as she is that I will no longer force her to do a job she is ready to let go of, is looking at the money part and going, "What the fuck are you doing? Who put you in charge?"
In a few minutes, I'm going to slip out of the house and head to one of my favorite places, Cafe Gratitude. They're holding a workshop on abundance and I feel all sorts of things--afraid, resistant, excited, open--but mostly I'm hoping that this workshop is just an opening to sinking deeper into a sense of being held by the world. I'm also really, really grateful that there is a place I can go to get even further insights into stepping completely into being abundance. I've done a lot of money work in the past few years, and I'm proud of all of it, yet in many ways it feels like an onion being peeled as I discover another way that old patterns around scarcity or lack show up in my life (most recently, by the way, my old learned story about money, "Rich people are selfish and out of touch with the suffering of others" has shown up in feeling sudden bits of self-consciousness that someone might come into my home and think that because Andy and I are paying more rent and buying new furniture, I'll be viewed as "selfish and out of touch with the suffering of others." That was a huge wake up call for me yesterday--just when I thought that that story had played itself out fully...)
I'll be excited to report back!