Look here. It’s starts this way daily. You see the open space and hold the chalk in hand. How will you make your mark? This is the question I asked myself when starting Living Chapters back in June of 2013. And is still the question I ask myself each day only a couple of months after its completion. July and August 1^st came around with no new extra-added chapter challenges to take on. (thank fully!)

In this post LC existence, I am finding myself busy catching my breath – balancing a new romantic relationship, searching for new housing, struggling to keep a job in a state I am not living in and economically scrambling to keep both myself and my mother out of overdraft status.  While also testing out daily the lessons learned from the 12 month process.  Can I be accountable to myself while wrestling with life’s own chapter challenges?  I guess that depends on how I fill the slate these days rather than what is on the slate itself.

Putting my island living dreams on hold for the moment, I contemplate the choices at hand – regaining my wander-lust water side mobile Maryland existence or building a rooted life in rural Pennsylvania while I await support and stability for my mother’s life.

Transition often leaves me feeling unsteady, off-balance with one foot on the floor and one out on the ledge. One toe digging in the dirt and another dipping in the water, I hold tightly onto what I fear to lose and long for what has yet to come. Living Chapters taught me that letting go and following the flow is the best solution.  Trusting in the daily ritual and setting honest intentions will reward. Enjoy the space in between. Cherish the grey moments. Transition is a time that is rarely savored for what it is. The time between seasons, a homecoming and goodbye party all in one. It’s a celebration of what has been accomplished and a rally for future revelations. Erase the slate, sit back take a breath and start again.

I may feel chaotic at this moment but also very capable nearing the end of this unique time in my life. Reaching this large fork in the road, I find truth – knowing that everything I have done and everything I have been up until now has brought me here and yet is now also choosing to leave me behind. A time of molting and shedding of my former skin, I walk forward and leave the delicate relic on my prior path.

Right before we become what we are meant to be, I believe, we go through an initiation, a right of passage. I think it’s that time for me – nearing the end of my beginning. Wrapping up my months of practice introductions, I am ready to unfold.  This is the final introduction, not to any new chapter but to the next story in which I am the one writing the book. A beautiful blank slate, primed and ready.

8/6/14