Warning… Sunday deep thoughts. But if it hits anyone else where they’re at, you’re welcome. 😉😘
Something unexpected happened to me at the Dierks Bentley concert the other night. If you know his song “Living”, you know the chorus goes like this – “Some days you just breath in, Just try to break even – Sometimes your heart’s poundin’ out of your chest, Sometimes it’s just beatin’… Some days you just forget What all you’ve been given – Some days you just get by, And some days you’re just alive – Some days you’re ✨livin’!✨”
I’ve loved this song since it came out, and usually when I hear the part about “some days you’re LIVING” it makes my mind bounce to vacations, days at the ocean, getaways. Normal, right? Those moments are my happy places. For some reason, this time – every time he sang it – my mind went to days in the OR, in surgery, helping kids get better. What?!? No one was more surprised than me, I can promise you. 🧐
But maybe that’s a sign – if your work can be what pops into your brain when you hear songs about living, maybe you’re where you belong. Not that I’ve doubted it – I’ve loved the OR since I became a surgical tech 32 years ago, and I’ve loved it even more since I came back to it. But every job has those days, those moments that hit you hard & make you question why you do what you do. Is it worth it? Do I have to take this BS or can I just walk away? Am I happy, or just existing for the paycheck? Moments when you wonder if you’re actually making a difference.
I guess this was my answer, shocking as it was. Most of you know I never wanted to be a nurse, and my journey to becoming one was anything BUT the planned trajectory of my life. Even my return to the OR has had it’s stumbling blocks. Boulders, even. But sometimes your brain has to show you where your heart is – and even when it’s tough, if you realize that your job is part of what makes your days ones in which you’re really “livin'”, then you’re blessed.
And if not? Keep looking, keep working, keep moving forward – it may be where you least expect it, but it’s out there.
I want to share an “a-ha” moment that happened to me yesterday.
There is a certain part of myself I have often struggled with, and it’s given me a negative outlook on that aspect of who I am. I made a choice yesterday to do something that in all honesty is something I absolutely needed to do – but I wasn’t comfortable in the end with how I chose to execute it. It wasn’t sitting well with me as I went to bed, and I woke up still feeling that same uncertainty. I had today off, and a list of things I wanted to accomplish – but this nagging feeling of discontent was keeping me completely blocked from getting out of my head & into my day.
So – I fought back against the urge to just surrender & do nothing, I lit the new moon intention candle I’d created last Friday, got out my oracle & tarot cards & talked to the Universe. Layed out how I was feeling, asked for guidance, journaled & wrote down 3 questions for my tarot spread that I wanted to look at r/t this issue.
And let me tell you – it worked. I listened to my heart, to my intuition – the Universe gave some guidance – and instead of just walking away feeling better, I also walked away with an understanding about myself that completely changed how I look at this aspect of myself that I’ve always viewed so negatively. I’m guessing this was some unexpected shadow work – funny, because it is new to me & I wasn’t sure how it worked.
“There is no light without shadow,” said psychologist Carl Jung. This theory has been the basis for the psychological exploration of who we are by spending time looking at the darker side of ourselves & letting it inform our beliefs about who & what we are. It can teach us to embrace our shadowy side, as well as show us that sometimes, what we see as a negative trait is actually something that if used properly, is something of worth.
I wanted to share my experience because I know how easy it is to get stuck, and I wanted to encourage others to remember that when you’re feeling that way, go back to the basics – do whatever it is in your practice that brings you back to yourself & your intuition.
In a time when everything around us is so fast paced & is only getting faster, there needs to be a place of respite. A time for calm, a time to realign ourselves with who we are & what we want.
Writing brings that to me, and there is nothing more enjoyable than sharing what life is teaching you with others.
Travel also does that – it can change your perspective, giving us the ability to step back from our daily lives & reevaluate our goals & what really matters to us.
My journey of self-discovery started years ago, but my willingness to share what I was learning about myself took a backseat to my fear of showing the world who I was – the real me I was discovering. Hidden behind years of living a story I was told I should be living, a story that aligned with who I grew up believing I was, was someone who knew that something didn’t fit. Like a square trying to fit into a round hole, something wasn’t right & the harder I tried, the more my edges got scraped until I finally gave up. I accepted that where everyone else thought I belonged was the one place I didn’t. It was a world that felt comfortable for a very long time, but never real – like a shadow that is always present, but never shows the vibrancy of what created it.
Travel, on the other hand, has been a long-standing love of mine. It was never something I had to hide from – the exact opposite. It allowed me to find myself. The struggle was – and still continues to be – how to bring that person back with me into my daily life.
I spent weeks in the summer with my family in Maine, discovering the joy of getting away – but college & adulting got in the way of further travel until my husband & I had been married for quite a few years. Disney became a mainstay of our vacations for years as we raised our kids, interspersed with a week off the grid in Maine when we could get there.
It wasn’t until my older daughter spent a semester at University of Leeds that I managed to get myself to Europe – which, if you’d known me growing up, is shocking. My mom was a big BBC fan & I watched so many British shows that I felt like it was a second home. 😉 London & Yorkshire were as familiar to me as Maine & NYC. So finally getting over there as an adult really began my love affair with travel across the pond.
I’m hoping this blog will help others who find themselves on a similar journey – one of self discovery, as well as one that takes them places that help them learn more about themselves. I’d like it to be a place of hope & inspiration that we CAN be who we were born to be, if we learn to listen to our heart, and that we can find ourselves when we step outside of what our daily lives hand to us.
Why is it so hard for us to let others know our flaws? I mean, other than the ones that are self – evident, like we’re always the late one or we never fill the gas tank til the needle’s on empty. 😉
I’m talking about those little things we think are so BIG we can’t share them. Those tiny secrets that make us feel ‘less’ somehow – and that we often believe belong to us alone.
Why do we hide them?
Probably because of exactly what I said above – they make us feel like we are less. Less than perfect. Less desirable. Less fun. Less of that person – that persona – we want to world to see.
I had a moment recently that shook my views on this & made me realize that sometimes, when we share some of those things we think are so (terrible… weird … unflattering… fill in the blank) it actually makes us more. MORE relatable. MORE desirable. MORE open. It makes us real.
Real is a hard thing to be – it requires an openness & an honesty that it not easy to find every day. But when we choose it, it gives us such a gift back – we become whole.
Ever read The Velveteen Rabbit? One of my favourite childhood stories, it is about a stuffed rabbit that learns that love is what makes him real, even after he is old & shabby & missing an eye. I forget about it for long periods of time, but then in moments like these, it comes back to me.
When did that precious stuffed bunny become real? When he was loved. For all his imperfections.
Perfection doesn’t guarantee us love. In fact, nothing in this world can guarantee us that. But one thing I can promise is that being honest about who you are – what you struggle with, those flaws that you think are so ugly they need to be hidden away – brings so much healing, and can strengthen the bonds with those around you more than you can imagine. It brings such a sense of freedom into your life, because you no longer have to hide a part of what makes you who you are.
So let them go. You are beautiful. Flaws, scars, imperfections – they tell a story & are a part of what makes us unique. They are you.
I had a weird conversation with someone recently that didn’t sit right with me at the time, and the more I think about it the less comfortable with it I become.
This person had looked at some pictures on my Instagram & said to me, “It must be nice to be able to sit around and create things all day.” And I responded, “Well, I don’t really sit around & create things, I just make them when I have the time.” And they said, “Well, just to be able to have that time & not have to work & to be able to have the money to do it must be nice.”
At first I felt a little bit like I needed to defend myself, but they didn’t want to hear that my job often requires 12-16hrs shifts in order to have that extra day off… that their “well, taking care of kids isn’t really hard, right?” comment cut at my heart, having just left a child in the OR who’d been lit on fire by an irresponsible adult… that I usually use my time off just to pay bills & clean my house, not do the fun stuff they think I do all the time. They just wanted to assume I have an easy life, because how else would I do these things?
And so the conversation didn’t go much further after that because I didn’t really know what else to say & I didn’t want to get into an argument.
But it was reminiscent of a conversation I’d had a few years ago with different friend, who’d commented to me after I’d posted vacation pictures that, “It must be nice to travel so much…” and I’d jokingly said, “It is!”
Their response – which I won’t quote here but which made me realize they were NOT actually happy for me – made me stop & think, just like this did.
Why is it that when we see the product of someone’s hard work, we automatically assume it’s been easy? Like whatever it is they’ve done has come from a place of ease or from a place of plenty? And why do we begrudge them their joy, regardless?
I was told I was one of the lucky ones during this conversation, because I went to college. That because I was lucky enough to have an education, I can do these “things” which they perceived to be part of an easy life.
Yes, I went to college – but not in the easy way they assumed. It was a convoluted path, full of twists & turns, major changes & finally settling into what I wanted to study while married & pregnant with my first child. I paid for it myself, no one handed me my degree. No one bought me a car to get to class or paid off my bills, even when I was fumbling my way through classes just out of high school. I had loans, I worked multiple jobs. It was hard.
Yes, I have a house (another sticking point, for some reason) but again – no one handed it to me. I moved 9 times before settling down – twice before meeting my husband & 7 times since we got married & found our final spot. I lost a house we built & never even moved into because the post 9/11 economy killed jobs. I put my head down & worked nights for 20 years so my kids could have a mom who was home when they were & the extra income helped. What you see is the accumulation of 30 years of marriage, hard work & a lot of sweat & tears. I don’t have a housekeeper or a gardener, I have dust bunnies & a sore back. None of this has been easy.
And the travel comment. Why is this always such a thing?!?
I travel because I’d rather see the world & make memories than have a house or closet full of the latest trends. (And not that that’s a bad thing, it isn’t in the least, sometimes I’m envious of what I see elsewhere. I just have to remember it isn’t part of what truly matters to me or what I value & then I relax. 😉) Yes, my house is full & I’m glad y’all are comfortable here, but my furniture is from FB Marketplace & my decor is that trend they called Shabby Chic. My mother even got in on it & asked, more than once, when she was going to be able to travel like we did. I said, “Mom, look around – you’re an Ethan Allen/Chanel kinda gal – I’m not.” Even she didn’t get it.
So.
When will we stop assuming that just because someone does things we don’t (or maybe can’t at the moment) that it is because their life has been easy? That they haven’t worked & cried & failed & gotten back up to get it done?
Yes, of course, there are those out there lucky enough to be getting things handed to them on a silver platter. But if they’re TRULY lucky, they realize just how blessed they really are.
But most of us are just working our asses off behind the scenes of the pretty pictures we post & we’re not looking for accolades – we’re just sharing our joy. We aren’t looking for a pat on the back – or a shot in the foot.
So, if you’re looking at someone’s life through their pictures & you feel a pang – dig a little deeper. There’s usually more substance there than meets the eye.
Alchemy: “a seemingly magical process of transformation, creation, or combination.” [Oxford dictionary]
Witch: “a person thought to have magical powers.” [Oxford dictionary]
What’s in a name?
Whether it belongs to a person, a place or a thing, it is always descriptive in some form. It can conjur up an image, good or bad, depending on our experience – and it stays with us, once memories are created.
I remember back when I was in college, I worked for a semester at an after-school program for kindergarteners. It was part of a larger daycare center & was usually pretty fun work. Having children run into your arms as they get off the bus, especially when they are not yours & you can send them off to their parents in a few hours, is – for the most part – a good job in your early 20’s.
However, there were moments that weren’t so grand – and for me it usually surrounded the hours that a particular child was in my care. His name was Jacob, and he was a… well, to be kind, he was a hellion. He didn’t color, he broke crayons & threw them. He didn’t play, he hit. His voice was decibels louder than every other child in the room, and usually was filled with words I don’t even want to type… he had a gift for combining the worst of them & spewing them at anyone who wouldn’t let him do what he wanted. Seeing him get off the bus was usually the end to any good day I was having.
And so? You guessed it… Jacob became a name synonomous in my mind with everything bad about having children, and a name I knew I would never be able to use whenever I had my own. I’m sure there are many lovely children out there named Jacob, but none of them would be mine.
So you see, when it comes to words – and choosing a name – it is hard! Even when our own associations with a thing are good, knowing that others may have negative ones make it even harder.
Thus the title of this post.
The Alchemical Witch.
It is a name I have chosen for myself & for an upcoming storefront I will be opening. When? I have no idea – creating what will stock it comes first. But in order to start creating, I needed a name – somehow, for me, that had to be the first step. Having a name would center me, and be the energy behind whatever I create.
The word alchemy is easy for me – creating, transforming. Combining elements into something new. It is a word I love & feels like me.
But the word witch? That’s a different story.
The dictionary doesn’t just say “a person assumed to have magical powers”. It also says that those powers are “often especially evil ones, popularly depicted as a woman wearing a black cloak and pointed hat and flying on a broomstick.” [Oxford, as well] Merriam’s dictionary defines a witch as, “a person (especially a woman) who is credited with having (usually) malignant supernatural powers.”
Evil. Malignant. Black cloaks, pointy hats & broomsticks.
That is society’s most current view, for the most part. It doesn’t seem to matter how mainstream the idea becomes, there is still a taboo element there.
How do I view a witch? Well, based off of the ones I know & am friends with – pretty damn amazing. 😅
But seriously – we are not evil. Or malignant. Do I have a black cloak? You bet – and I wear it to the Ren Faire. A black hat? Also yes – and it’s usually on my head in October. A witchy broom? Try 3 – one sweeps, one just happens to look cool & the other is above my front door. I also have a medicinal herb garden, loads of crystals, a few tarot & oracle decks & more books on self care & spirituality than I will ever finish. I create salt baths to wash away negativity, I create moon water to help me connect to the earth & I sage my house on a regular basis to clear the energy. I have a very down-to-earth husband who adores me & tolerates my oddities, who lets me put crystals by his computer & tries not to cough too hard when the incense is burning. He loves my herbs in my cooking & thinks they are weird in my baths – but he acknowledges that I am a happier person after using them. I believe in a Higher Power & a Creator, and I acknowledge their presence in my life & in this world.
All this to say – I call myself a witch in the very best sense of the word. I am one who takes what the earth has given me & uses it to create things that better serve my place in this world.
An alchemical witch.
However – having grown up in the church & having spent my school days in the conservative religious world, the words magic/witch/alchemy/astrology (as well as a myriad of other words that are deemed “bad”, or at least alarming) can still make me twitchy. Why? Because it was ingrained in me for over 30 years that there could be no room for them in mainstream life. A normal life. A life that acknowledged the existence of a Higher Power, but only the one most commonly associated with the modern day Bible. And with this twitchiness that still exists, you’d think I’d never use them – or at least not as my own.
However – an acronym I saw a number of years ago really struck me.
W.I.T.C.H.
Woman in Total Control of Herself.
Devon Cole turned it into a song in 2023, and I love it.
Because being a witch isn’t a bad thing. Can it be? Sure – just like being anything can be turned on its head into something negative. But that does not make it inherently so.
So. The Alchemical Witch is in the house. Twitches & all.
This is a resounding question for so many of us, and one I’ve been thinking about a lot, esp since re-creating this blog.
I have a brief “hello, this is me” at the start of my blog, but a recent experience has had me digging deeper, and this is part of that exploration.
Who we are can get so muddled by how we are raised, by who we are taught we should be because of family expectations… by society & what we see on TV & in our social media feeds. Even how the news spins events gives us an idea of what is acceptable to be or to do in today’s world.
But we are so much more than these things that are put upon us – and finding that part of us that truly is at the core of who we were created to be is not an easy task!
Who was I raised to be, told that I was? A Christian. A good, obedient girl. Someone who went to church, believed in God, prayed, read the Bible & never spoke my mind. Because good girls were silent, obedient & reverent. I was taught to tow the line, be submissive, keep the peace – don’t raise your voice, go against the flow or be “different”.
(In full disclosure, I think my mother knew I was different from early on & didn’t know what to do with that except try to train in out of me. She had a book on her nightstand “How to Raise a Spirited Child” & regularly told me that I needed to stop doing things just to be – that word again – different. Little did she know just how strongly that would backfire as an adult! 🙃)
And for 30+ years, it worked for me. I didn’t ask myself questions, I didn’t look closely in the mirror. I was comfortable. I didn’t rock the boat, I blended in with those around me. I never even questioned whether or not I was happy.
Then one day, I began to wake up. Call it maturity, call it no longer having any fucks to give after years of not being myself, but I began to see the world differently, and those around me with new eyes. I began to question whether or not one religion could possibly hold all the answers, and whether or not it was reasonable that those ‘answers’ sent a large majority of the world to hell if they weren’t believed. I began to see organized religion as a way to control the masses & ostracize anyone who was remotely different. I wasn’t comfortable in church anymore. I didn’t want to sit & listen to patronizing sermons or partake in trivial conversations. I didn’t want to be part of a system that shunned any part of humanity.
I began to realize that I was created to do more than walk this earth with my head down, my eyes closed & my heart shut off because it had been taught to acquiesce to those around me, maintain the status quo. Fit in.
[Mini focus shift here to say that I don’t have a problem with Christianity as a whole – I, too, have faith in a Higher Power & believe we were created for something greater. In some ways my Christian training will never leave me, and I take no issue with anyone walking a Christian path, as long as it is one of love, kindness & support for those around them. It is when the opposite becomes true that I get twitchy. 😉]
I wanted to study. To learn. I began to delve into herbalism & yoga & crystals. I learned mantras & what chakras were. I studied the sabbats & the wheel of the seasons. I learned that Christianity borrowed (stole?) from many other belief systems in creating their own, systems that were around long before the Bible was written – and then had the audacity to criticize the very beliefs they stole from. I began to see that people who held differing beliefs were still good, reverent people – but on their own path, not the one they were being told to follow. I bought Tarot & Oracle cards. Not because I had any idea how to use them but because the idea of communing with the Universe held so much truth for me. The idea of learning to look inside of myself for the answers of who I was, what I believed & who I wanted to be became almost as vital to me as breathing.
And I found witchery.
Anyone who’s known me for a long time probably wasn’t surprised by this – it was a natural progression of the path I was on. I am, at my core, a rebel.
Surprised?
Trust me, no one was more surprised than me.
Not many see it, because it was repressed out of me by 30+ years of “do the right thing, be the right thing, never misstep and NEVER shake the system”. But it was there – I just kept it in check. And it was easy, because I am also an intensely insecure person. Who rebels when their nature is to say, “… but is this okay? Am I still okay, do you still like me?” However, it was there, bubbling under the surface, even though it only showed itself in the smallest of ways.
I am no longer a “follower”.
I spent so much of my childhood and early adult years being one that I thought it was just a part of who I was. But my desire to NOT be like everyone else was making its way to the surface – I just couldn’t see it yet. Things that should have shown me who I was were there – I just wasn’t looking. The fact that I spent so many years NOT looking at myself will always be a regret of mine.
I intensely dislike authority that exists for authority’s sake & those closest to me know how much I hate doing what I’m told just because I’m told to do it – it will literally almost force me into doing the exact opposite. My mother called me “willful” – but really, I just wanted to understand things. I DIDN’T want to just follow the crowd, but it got so drilled into me that by adulthood I was doing it without even realizing it. So what small stances did I take? Ones that allowed me to feel like I was standing up for myself without creating a fuss.
If there was a fad out there? I wanted no part of it. A popular TV show or movie? I never watched it. The latest famous label? No thank you. (When Game of Thrones became popular, I couldn’t stand the amount of chatter surrounding it and turned my back, while everyone who knew me was like, “But this is YOUR genre! It’s costumes & medieval & wolves & DRAGONS!!” And I was seriously like, “Whatever… ” until I finally gave up my pride before S5 & caved. Because if the entire universe was talking about whether or not this Jon Snow guy had really died, maybe I’d give it a go. And of course – I loved it & never looked back. 😁)
But did any of those things really make me any better or any stronger in who I was? Not at all… they were just symptoms of a larger problem – not knowing how to express who I really felt I was.
All that to say – the word “witch” strikes at the heart of being different. It invokes reactions. Whether they’re good or bad, they’re intense. It is a word of the olde world, of secrets & signs, of rebellion & empowerment. It is a dicotomy between the good & the bad.
And all those things appeal greatly to me.
After years of repression, I found a way to shake things up in my life & begin to reclaim my power. My strength. My own belief system.
Does this mean I wear black, summon the devil & make sacrifices?
Absolutely not. That is Satanism, NOT witchery. Or at least not the witch that I subscribe to being.
If you google the word “witch” & look at the images, 99% of what you see is old women with warts on their noses, black cats, bats, broomsticks, cauldrons & spiders. (Okay, and in today’s modern world, you also get the random “sexy witch” – but she also sports a hat, striped stockings, a broom & most likely a cauldron or black cat.)
Guess what? That’s not a witch.
A witch is so many things – but what it is not is an image. A conjuring of spells & black magick & voodoo. In reality, it is (most often) someone who communes with nature. Who observes the cycles of the moon & tries to live a life aligned with the Universe. Who believes we were given things in this world – herbs, crystals, seasons – to connect not only with the Universe but with the world around us & our deeper selves. To heal. One who holds spirituality very close to themselves but does not believe it makes them any better than those around them – someone who is intensely aware of their power & their energy & believes it makes them stronger. Vital. It is someone who believes magick comes from within, if we give ourselves the grace & the time to learn who we really are & align our lives with that truth.
So yeah. I’m witchy. I’m a dreamer. I’m a lover of the moon, an owner of more crystals than I will ever fully understand how to use. I’m a novice herbalist & I love a good Tarot spread. I believe in the power of the mind to commune with nature & in what the Universe has to teach us, both as a whole & personally. I believe every person on this earth has a place within it & something to teach others as they walk through life. I throw intentions into the fire & I talk to the skies.
And yes, I occasionally wear a black hat (for fun), I own a black cat (who actually belongs more to my husband than me) & I have a cauldron. And if I’m honest, I believe everyone should – because life is too short to be normal.
Yesterday, I watched my 13 year old daughter do one of the hardest things she has ever done. She took a dream and made it real, while at the same time saying goodbye to something she holds so dear to her heart it pains me to think about it too deeply.
Emma is a dancer. She has been twirling around things since she was able to get her tiny feet stable underneath her, moving to music that sometimes only she heard – but always moving. The funniest thing? She was our clumsy kid. I never knew a child so prone to tripping over her own feet, and her special talent? Landing on her face. Always. We had more trips to the dentist to check out her front teeth than any parent should have.
But once we enrolled her in dance class? That clumsy child disappeared. She went from being this tiny little thing that would stand in the audience of her older sister’s dance recital, shaking anything on her body she could move, to this graceful little dancer who would give anything to have a tutu.
One of the best parts of our dance experience was the fact that both our girls were taking classes at the same studio I had danced at as a young girl. I had spent many hours being instructed by the same woman who taught my girls, and as they got older and she retired, her daughter, whom I had also danced with, became their primary instructor. It was family & something we all loved.
As Emma advanced, she was asked to join the studio’s competition team, and we were thrilled – a bit leary of it, as we knew it would be some tougher work, longer class hours and to be honest, we weren’t sure how competition and dancing would mix for her. But she wanted to give it a try – and she never looked back. More hours? Bring it! Harder skills? Yeah! You want me to what?? No problem… just give me a minute. No matter what was asked of her, she’d give it a go – and we began to see that not only did she try, but she excelled. Her hard work paid off, and we began to see her turn into this tall, graceful, athletic being on stage that made my husband and I turn to ourselves and say, “Seriously?? We made that?” Sure, I had danced, but I’m not sure I was ever really a dancer. I loved it, but it never really lived in my soul, something I breathed the way it began to in our youngest child.
The hard part? With this love of dance came the desire for more… and not in the competition world. She began to want more ballet, more technique, more pointe. She loves jazz (and honestly is ridiculously good at it), tolerates tap – but it is ballet that she really lives for. Strong, beautiful, lyrical dancing. I would find her occasionally curled in a ball, listening to music, looking at pictures or videos of dancers at different ballet companies, and the conversations would start – and they all ended the same way. If this was what she truly wanted, then changes would have to happen.
And so yesterday – they did.
We visited a ballet studio over the weekend that we believe can give her what she wants – HOURS of ballet a week, more pointe instruction, more technique. Advanced jazz & tap, even modern/contemporary, but mostly… ballet. She loved how hard the class she took seemed, she was enthralled by watching a class that had 16 and 17 year old primary dancers, absolutely thrilled by how much she was going to have to work. Crazy, right? Not for this kid. She might not want to do her homework, moans about laundry and housework, rolls her eyeballs mightily at some of the things we ask her to do – but work up a sweat for 3 or 4 hours, twisting and turning her body into multitudes of insanely crazy positions, holding an arabesque longer than should be humanly possible, or practicing fuetes and heel drops until I’m dizzy just watching her? That’s our girl. Nothing was too hard to work at.
With this love of dance & the knowledge of what this studio could offer her, she had a choice to make, and so did we. She couldn’t have both – and either way, it would hurt.
Not surprisingly, she made the harder choice. I don’t know, maybe she’d say it was the easier one, being able to look forward to dancing the way she’d been dreaming of. But the tears in her eyes as we talked to her teacher and friend at our home studio – the way her voice would catch as notes from her teammates started to roll in once they’d heard the news – I don’t know. She left a familiar, comfortable world where she knew her place, knew her role, knew what was expected of her – and most importantly, knew she was loved – to venture out into a world where she knows no one, armed with only the fact that she knows what she wants.
To dance.
Imagine… learning to make hard choices from your child. Just goes to show that you’re never too old to learn, never too young to start. I just hope that as both our lives move forward, we remember this and always choose to go for the dream – you never know how far it will take you, and I hope hers takes her as far as she wants it to.
Now to just learn to ignore the constant sound of pointe shoes on our hardwoods…
A friend on Twitter posted this recently, and I love it… it is something I need to really embrace right now, so I’m sharing it with all of you, as well. It is so easy to let life & all its difficulties stand in the way of what we love – 24 hours never seems to be enough, and what we have to do often cancels out what we love to do.
So print this out – hang it on your fridge, your bathroom mirror or anywhere else you will see it and be inspired – life is waiting for us!! ♥
Wanderings of a Blithe Spirit 