Meraki Healing Center, PLLC

August 8th. One year ago today, I started a brand new job – in a brand new role for the university – at Boston College. A few weeks before that, I shared some words to try to highlight the significance of that job for me. It was my dream job. Literally. I had dreamt about creating a program like the one I’d soon be responsible for bringing to BC. It still gives me goosebumps, and I still feel the awe and joy and anticipation when I go back to that place in my mind. But I also feel the intensity of the bittersweet. I had found my other dream job in the year leading up to this new endeavor, and I still feel deep empathy for the me that had to choose to give up counseling when she had so recently discovered her passion for it. And now, looking back on it all, I am overwhelmed with the complexity of all the confounding emotions. Pride, joy, awe. Sadness, shame, guilt. Appreciation. Confusion. Relief.

Because one year later, we are in a very different place. Different circumstances, different environment, different priorities. Different STATE (literally and figuratively). God, what a year can do in unraveling your future plans and timelines. What a year can do in teaching you what you need to know about yourself. In putting you on the path to get to whatever is next for your journey.

It is hard, trying to feel all these feelings that are muddled and difficult to extrapolate. To identify each on its own – to give it the space it deserves – to be acknowledged, to be felt, to be moved through, is hard. What feels harder is doing so with the additional weight of uncertainty. The added pressure, the unforgiving nature of these loud inner critics. What’s next, again?

I can’t answer that. Oof, the wave of shame that rolls up as I type that. I don’t know what’s next. I know what I feel like I’m supposed to do, what would be “the right thing”. And that this isn’t necessarily what’s actually right, for me. I also know what I want to feel in whatever is next. Learning how to pay attention to that, to prioritize that, has become a guiding light. Here are some more things I know:

1. Life is too damn short to spend your one wild and precious life feeling lost, feeling depleted, feeling burdened, especially when you know there are other things that would nourish your soul in ways that you are missing at present.
2. It is up to YOU, and only you, to make your life what you want it to be. There are so many things that are outside of our control, so many things that are unfair and terrible and awful, but the one constant we can control is deciding how we are going to show up. I am the only one who can truly understand what it’s like to live in this world in my shoes – I am the only one who can feel what comes up as I live this life. I owe it to myself to pack my life full of as many moments as possible that give me peace, serenity, joy, awe, curiosity, wonder. I will need them to motivate me to keep going when shit hits the fan, when the darkness of the trenches envelops me in its cruel hold.
3. Health and wellness is a forever commitment. It is not something you master once and then are done. It is a lifestyle. It is so many things, but it is impossible to be healthy and well if you are not nourishing your system in multiple domains. I need to be learning, to be challenged, to be working towards something, to keep my mind healthy. I need sleep, movement, fresh air, & nutritious meals to keep my body healthy. I need to be in nature, to connect with other people, and to myself, to keep my soul healthy. And so much more. When any one of these domains is lacking, I am not my best self.
4. I am no longer willing to prioritize accomplishments and accolades over my own health and wellness. I know there will be times when I will make sacrifices, that’s not what I’m saying here – but I am committed to remembering that I cannot do any good for anyone else if I’m not caring for myself.
5. I know that there’s a whole lot I do not know. I know I am still grieving a lot of things, and that it’s clouding a lot of aspects of my life right now. I know that purpose and hope are important to me, even if I don’t know what form they are going to take in whatever’s next. I know I am not done learning. I know I’m not done growing, done changing, done becoming the most embodied version of me I can be. I know I’m not done exploring. There is so. much. to explore.

While I don’t know what’s next, I do know what’s not next. And sometimes, the very best thing we can do for ourselves is make the conscious effort to avoid not this.

Elizabeth Gilbert said it best. I’ve come back to her whole piece SO. MANY. TIMES. over the last six months, but here’s just a snippet of it to conclude my thoughts:

“If you keep ignoring the voices within you that say NOT THIS, just because you don’t know what to do, instead…you may end up stuck in NOT THIS forever. 

You don’t need to know where you are going to admit that where you are standing right now is wrong. 

The bravest thing to say can be these two words. 

What comes next?

I don’t know. You don’t know. Nobody knows. It might be worse. It might be better. But whatever it is…?  It’s NOT THIS”.

Wherever you’re at on your journey, whatever challenges or opportunities or decisions lie at your feet, I hope you can take a moment to have a little grace for yourself.

Deep breath.

Again.

One more time.

You got this. We got this. I am excited to see what’s next – just as much as, maybe a little more than, I am terrified at the uncertainty of it. And I am holding the appreciation for that paradox so close because it reminds me that trusting my intuition is a magical, life-changing skill that deserves to continue to be strengthened. I hope you can, too.

Thank you for being here. ❤