Change - we may not want it, but we just might need it.

If I had read these words at the start of my healing journey on a bad day, I just might have 🙄 eye rolled and had a low-level of "what the hell-ever" cyclical attitude as well as a few choice vocal words on the topic!

Yeah….we go through those moments when processing all the ups and downs of some of life's hard story lines - like a loss or diagnoses.  It's a blah, blah, blah, yeah, yeah, yeah…I needed this change right? On some "cosmic grand scheme" of things there is purpose here right?  There sure as hell better be since you realize you have been asked to walk through the deeply trans-formative and painful process of change. 

Change.  Such a little word for such a really BIG project! 

I had a many of these cynical moments, especially as the realization hit home as to what a cancer diagnoses meant.  There ARE moments of asking why.  Moments of asking how in gods-green earth did this happen?  These are the moments when you fully realize - this is NOT going to be fun and that it just might have some really monumentally hard and crappy moments along the way.   It hits you - all of it, what exactly is being asked of you.  Change.  Damn….hard….change.

Then there are moments where something deep within knows.  It sees the profound truth in the statement that "change was indeed "needed".  Because either life does have purpose… or it doesn't.  Either we are here to do something, learn something, travel through something, or it's meaningless and pointless.  Either it ALL has purpose or NONE of it does, it can't be both and you can't cherry pick the toppings when it suits you.  We don't get to pick the good moments and say they have purpose and meaning, but the crappy, shitty, hard-as-hell moments, are just bad luck and random.  It doesn't work that way. 

Somewhere in me, I knew the fire walk I was about to go through DID have meaning.  Deep, soul redefining, life undoing, refiners-fire kind of meaning; which meant change, lots, and lots of change.  I knew the walk would truly be hard.  I knew it would unravel every level of fear I had accumulated in my 47 years of life on the planet.  I knew the word "change" seemed awfully fluffy to describe what this journey would, (and still does), require of me, both physically and spiritually.  I knew.  I know still.  But I also knew I couldn't go back, I couldn't take it away, it was done, I was in this moment.  I knew there was only one way to find out what was ahead of me and that was to take one step, then another, then another, and just simply walk through it - all of it; the calm spaces, the storming places, the valley's and the hilltops.

And I was right.  The cynical part of me that once eye-rolled at fluffy quotes that tried to make sense of the madness and chaos, soon retreated into the "knowing" part of me that change was here.  Like it or not, it was what it was.  Change was required.  Change was "needed". 

Change makes us grow.   Change is guaranteed here in this life, nothing ever stays the same.  The is beauty and promise in that, but also some shadow and longing.  We are always evolving.  Change is a process that will help you rediscover things you would never have known about yourself.  Things, I dare say…..we maybe even contracted to learn here in this life. 

Today in my life.  I still have hard moments, but the cynicism is gone - mostly.  Today I see a very different landscape around me.  This life will take you to and through the hard places.  The scary places.  YOUR scary places.  We aren't guaranteed an easy walk here, but we are guaranteed a 'learning walk'.  I believe it's why we chose to be here.   

If you are at the beginning of what looks like a long road ahead of you and you have been called to grow and change - please be kind to yourself.  Allow yourself to feel it all, the cynicism, the gratitude, the hurt, the fear, the release, the hope, the utter calmness that surrounds you when you finally let go and just be with it all.  That's the point you know.  To just be with it.  To just be YOU….with it.  To see what unravels, what comes up, what image is reflected in at the water's edge as you look in the water.  You will get there.  You WILL be okay.  If you just keep walking, you will find these pockets of peace and the breathtaking spaces that make the journey stunning at times.  In order to see them and experience them though, you will have to walk.  You will have to walk on the weary days, the sad days, the scary days - all the days.  But the steps get easier and the lessons come quicker and the air gets crisper, and the view can be breathtaking.  And one day, you will look back at the path you have taken and see the miles you have walked.  You will see things you cannot imagine and you will even sit and feel gratitude for the walk.  Yeah….really.  You will, if you let it unfold.  You are unfolding YOU.  You are doing sacred work.  I am not sure I would have raised my hand and said "pick me, pick me" for this process.  But I have been able to unwrap some pretty breathtaking gifts.  I have had some pretty sacred moments in the weary and dark places of this experience.  Moments I am so grateful for. 

So, today I know for sure that life is change.  Life is temporary.  Life is calling us to be ourselves.  Life is calling us to share ourselves.  Life is calling us to LOVE ourselves.  Life is calling us to learn to just 'be'.  It's a daily decision and a daily walk - but it gets easier. 

Change.  
So much power in one little word. 

Change.  
It might not be what we thought we wanted, but it just might be what was needed to take us to places we needed to see. 

Sending love and hope.
​Layce