Sometimes I didn’t realize I was sleeping until I woke up.
Is there an event in life that forced a change of direction in the trajectory of your life?
Since I had my first child, I feel like I have gone through a slow awakening process. I was in a deep slumber, living my life with my eyes closed, and not actively participating in it. Then my daughter was born almost 16 years ago and a veil was lifted. I felt that I wasn’t on auto-pilot anymore. I wasn’t blindly completing steps to a life that I was expected to have. I was in unchartered waters, navigating my life on my own. I woke up to the possibility that I could design my life.
Have you ever had a shift in the way you view what you’ve always accepted?
Small awakenings in my consciousness: having a large family, living with less, different food and lifestyle choices, homeschooling, helping Ever-Patient design a life of work around our lives, re-defining success, trusting myself, letting go of the idea of a conventional life. I question more. I am awake looking for the answers that fit our family life.
Have you read a book earlier in life and then again at a later point in life and felt differently?
My mother gave me this book for my 16th birthday: If I Had My Life to Live Over
It is an anthology of stories and poems written by women from all walks of life. They are reflections on the choices they have made. I remember reading it and feeling neither here nor there about it. I don’t even think I read it all. I found it packed up in a box that was left at my in-laws’ house after one of our moves. I re-read it over the holidays in one sitting, cover-to-cover. As I read the stories again, my own stories and experiences over the last 19 years awakened them in my soul- the words, the feelings and the context lived in me differently.
Have you ever had a conversation that provoked you so deeply that it stirred up the past to teach you about the present?
“Mom, I’m not you.” As my child said this to me recently, a memory was awakened within me. I had said the same thing to my own mother. This memory lay dormant, waiting to erupt when I had children of my own, when I had a child that so closely resembled me. This conversation also awakened the child in me – the child that just wanted to be accepted and loved.
Life shines brighter with each of these awakening moments as if I am finally waking up to my true purpose. (Thank you February for pushing me to write daily allowing me to have more and more of these moments.)
Did you say “yes” to any of these questions? Do you remember having an awakening moment?
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Trying to survive the February blues by getting my write on with writealm:
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