The Road Ahead

Three months ago today, I was experiencing an unexpected low.  Since leaving my marriage in the spring of 2019, despite the intervention of an isolating pandemic and a heartbreaking flood and costly renovation, I had been on an unmitigated high, filling my new life with the people, places and adventure that nourished my soul.  But mid-summer 2023 found me feeling lonely, vacant, quiet.  I was spending most of my time alone and Bodhi and Tucker, while loving and loyal companions, are poor conversationalists.  I had closed out a satisfying career and had yet to begin my new life as a graduate student. I was living in an unsettling state of suspended animation.

As I have learned to do, I chose to process those feelings in writing, penning this poem on July 20, 2023:

The wave must recede

before it can crest

The field must lie fallow

to nurture once more

The sun must set

to permit the dawn

I will walk through the valley

to reach the peak

Three months later, I am writing a very different story.  My life is once again rich and filled with newness and wonder.  I’m a student again, refueled with new inspiration, new challenges, new people.  I just returned from a two-week trip to Nepal with my daughter, fulfilling a pandemic-interrupted adventure.  And most wondrously, I’m in love.  September brought a startling and unexpected romance with a man who has shown me a glimpse of what love can be.  What love never was before.  I am living a life of abundance.

How prescient, my summer words.  In embracing my quietude, I readied myself for the unknown to come.  For there is always more road ahead, leading us wherever we are meant to be.