Stir the Dirt: Choose Your Path

From September 2013:

Tonight I ran by the soccer fields where my daughter used to spend countless hours, back in the day when her parents were married. Memories of supporting her during those early years of her soccer career flooded my awareness. It was striking how very different life was then from the life I experience now. To everyone around us at the time, I would later learn, we seemed like the “perfect family”. A perception I did my best to uphold despite the growing dissonance I felt in relationship to my husband and to the life we were not evolving in together.

What’s still so strange to me, is, when I was able to put the necessary blinders on at the time to stay in the marriage and family bubble, others’ perceptions weren’t far off. It was the perfect family according to what I had once set out to achieve from my younger self’s version of ‘perfect’. But what I didn’t have a way of making sense of yet, was the full completion of that vision and our inability to invite a bigger version of ourselves and our partnership into the relationship. For a long while, I was willing to suck it up and deal with the reality of our incapacity. I believed I had no options since I did not want to have the mark of divorce on my record.

What struck me tonight as I stopped to feel it all was how ‘easy” it was then to live the life everyone expected of us. The pressure to do what is societally acceptable is ridiculously alluring- get married, get a good job, have children, live for your children, stay together until death, leave your children a legacy and a good nest egg to inspire them to make the same morale choices.

The lack of judgment we are promised when we take a life path society prescribes for us is like crack to a perfectionist. Yet, the joy and aliveness of my present moment - fully walking in a life based in my truth, fully embodying my own stride, is far greater reward than the stupor of the high I got avoiding the judgement people outside of my life have about my life. Choosing that path when it came to foregoing a marriage vow which I held as sacred, however, was both one of the most challenging and most rewarding choices I’ve ever made.

At some point, the life that feels the safest, simultaneously feels as if it will kill you if you continue on with it as it is.

It took me seven long years of experiencing repeated cycles of resistance and deep listening before I was capable of admitting that I was no longer willing to stay in my marriage. In my situation, it was the only action I could take to finally say yes to the life I’m living now. My own reasons for this are varied, but I share this in case you are confronting a similar longing for something else within yourself. Especially, if what you have now could be judged as good or even great to others. As much as you may know this already, it bears repeating:

The very real truth of it is, others’ perceptions of you and your life do not automatically equate to a life you actually want to experience.

I felt so alone when I was working this truth out within myself. Because of this, I know the courage it takes to even consider the immensity of this kind of realization, which, if acted upon, would reconfigure the life you currently inhabit. Yet, no one else is capable of doing this for you. This is the hard truth. You can try to blow up the current life you have with conscious or unconscious sabotage, and in so doing, hope and pray that your partner will do the heavy lifting for you, but it will only leave more carnage for you to clean up in the end.

The ability to own your truth and act on what you know, even though you don’t yet know how it will turn out, is a one of the most powerful experiences you can choose in the process of becoming the most masterful and conscious creator of your life.

I want this kind of mastery to be experienced by everyone who desires it.

You may be grappling with the knowing you hold about the lack of joy you currently derive from your closest relationships, or the work you don’t do now, but want to do. It may be the truth you have realized about where you want to live and how impossible that feels to you. Or it might be as simple as allowing yourself to actually choose which friendships you continue to nurture. Regardless of the area of change you desire, there’s nothing more fulfilling than taking the steps to change your life in a way that honors who you actually are.

As we powerfully place our foot down in our truth, new dirt stirs around us. This is where the journey evolves into an adventure! Even our messes from this place become worthwhile growth experiences to have, opening us up to more fulfillment and awareness of who we are and of what we are capable.

What is the one, big, juicy life that is yours alone to create? And, what do you believe you need to allow it to become your reality?