Sole-to-Soul Introduction

In 2015, I turned forty and celebrated by living my way through a list of 40 activities. I also got a divorce and wrote 80,000 words towards a novel. It was a busy year. The final item was crossed off the list a year later on my 41^st birthday.

In the days and weeks that followed, I felt unsettled. I looked around and didn't recognize this new landscape: I was single. The papers made that official. My daughter wasn't with me every day, and this wouldn't change. I had more time on my hands than I'd had in 15 years. I railed against all of this for awhile. I panicked. I couldn't imagine what was next. There weren't anymore check boxes to mark off. I'd graduated from college, gotten married, had a baby. What do you do with your life after a divorce? My friends reminded me that no one knows what the future holds. This anxiety did not make me special. It also was a useless waste of energy.

The year before I'd been a smidge cocky. I was fine. I wasn't falling apart. I had goals, and I was attaining them. What I didn't account for was the fact that grief attaches itself to every life change, every loss. This anxious feeling was a form of grief and the best way to not feel bad anymore was to walk straight into it, live in it awhile, and let time do its work on me. My gut told me to be quiet. To cope with the confusion, exhaustion, and fear with silence. In the quiet, I heard my gut say it was time to rest. To hit the pause button on all the list making and goal busting. To read more. To work on the novel. To adjust to the rhythms of this new life. To be patient.

The novel writing wasn't going too well, and so I stopped. I poured my writing energies into my journal where I examined what I was feeling and fearing, desiring and hoping. I stopped doing yoga daily. I slept a lot. I also cried and sat quietly. I welcomed every foreign feeling and scary thought. My gut kept talking to me. It's voice grew louder and urged me to trust it.

“Go for a walk,” it told me one day.

And so I did.