The Pivots of Life
Do you trust in the path of your life? Do you have faith in the direction that you are guided in? Do you know, in your heart, that pivots that you have experienced happened for your own behalf?
I can imagine that most reading this, myself included, would say…well, sometimes! Not always.
What if everything that has happened to you and in your life was exactly as it was supposed to be? What if the pain and challenge and trauma and drama that you have navigated in your life was exactly the medicine that you needed in order to heal?
This is a hard one to grasp and feels to be more and more important as the tides of life (and the world!) turn. There are excruciating things happening everyday with so many humans.
Quite frankly, if you had said this to me in midst of the many, many years of being knocked around by various life events I'm not sure that I could have embraced that. Although, deep down, there was a profound knowing on a cellular level that I was exactly where I was meant to be.
That I was learning lessons that I needed to of my lifetime.
Perhaps the detours, pivots, road bumps, and crevices in the road are meant to be there…are meant to turn us into a different direction. Perhaps that direction is even better than we could have imagined.
Perhaps that unexpected pivot was protection in some way. Perhaps it was the Universe’s nudge that you were not actually supposed to be doing things in that way, but rather meant to be elsewhere.
Life becomes so much more magical when we do live with this awareness and stream of trust.
Here is a little story for you all from a recent experience in this realm…
I had the privilege to take a much-needed vacation to Belize to celebrate my 50th birthday the week before Thanksgiving. As luck would have it, a hurricane made its way to the country on the exact day of our travel to (which was my actual birthday) and the day after.
I was, naturally, unsettled (aka freaking out!:) and was definitely in the space of WHY…why was this happening “to me” and WHY was this occurring on this very special day of my life at a moment in time where my partner and I actually had childcare and the opportunity to get away alone together for an extended amount of time for the first time in our relationship??
As our flight was showing “on time”, we got ourselves up at 4am and made our way to the airport. We proceeded as if all was going to be well and were on the plane ready to take off when the pilot came over the speaker and announced that the Belize City airport had closed!
As everyone around me was sighing in disbelief, in that moment I exhaled. I was not surprised as the whole thing of “beating the storm” felt stressful and unsafe. While naturally I absolutely wanted to get to Belize and spend my 50thbirthday soaking up the ocean and sunshine, I knew that a tropical storm was nothing to mess around with (or push through!).
So, we exited the plane, got our suitcases, talked to customer service at Southwest (who told us that we couldn’t get there for days) and decided to go and sit at the fancy hotel lobby at DIA and evaluate our options. I was relaxed and in complete trust. Certainly not how I was anticipating spending my birthday but it did feel as though we were being divinely guided on this adventure.
We made our way to the hotel and crossed paths with one of my dearest friends, whom I rarely see, racing to her flight…it was a fortuitous meeting, and I was so happy to have a moment with her and a big birthday hug!
Michael and I sat in the hotel lobby weighing our options…laughing in disbelief and also excited about this wild adventure we were on. By process of elimination (I was DETERMINED to not go home or back to our car, but rather take ourselves and these packed suitcases somewhere pleasurable while we waited for the storm to pass and the airport to reopen), we decided to fly to Austin that evening.
I had never been to Austin before and it was moving in the right direction, plus there was the possibility of sunshine and pool time! We booked the flights and hotel and began to search for some music that we could possibly see.
Long story short-ish…we found that one of our favorite bands was playing just blocks from our hotel. While we weren’t landing until 8pm, we knew that we would miss the first set, but we decided to make our way to the venue after dropping off our suitcases.
We arrived at the venue and were explaining the situation and day that we had AND that it was my 50th birthday when one of the production managers walked up overhearing. He told us to wait a moment and then he took us around to the VIP section and let us in for free. It was a birthday miracle!
Waking up that morning I never in my life would have imagined that we would be in Austin, TX in the VIP section seeing Greensky Bluegrass celebrating my 50th.
By the time we arrived at our resort in Placencia, Belize on Monday night, the storm had passed and the sun was setting beautifully over calm waters. Yes, we “lost” 2 days in Belize, yet I believe that we were protected.
Every step along the way felt aligned and divinely guided.
I share this with you as an example of leaning into the pivots of our lives…that they may, indeed, be supporting us in a way that we may not completely understand in the moment, yet, if we resist the unfolding, we suffer.
There comes a point on our journeys of life where we must claim who we are and where we are on our life’s trajectory. To stop resisting the unfolding and flow of what is occurring and come into alignment with ourselves from deep within. To access that deep intuitive knowing and come into a space of faith around the pivots of our lives.
We must pull the reigns back and cut the cords of that which is no longer serving so as to step forward upright, in integrity and truth, in trust and faith, in alignment with exactly who we are meant to be in this lifetime…even if it is not what you imagined or planned.
So, perhaps as we are beginning this final month of 2024, a year that has certainly become a memorable one, we can turn within to ourselves and to what we have navigated in our lives and where we are in this moment.
What have we learned? What insights have we gained? What medicine do we feel? What feels to be next on our healing path? What do we need to do, for us, to continue to move forward on our trajectory of life? What support systems do we need in place? What layers of our past imprints are we complete with?
Wishing you all a connected, easeful, and inspired final month of this wild year!
If you are in need of authentic connection, safe and loving support, non-judgmental witness, empowered community, and embodied and nourishing movement there are several options below that I would be so honored to have any of you partake in. All are welcomed!!
Take good care of yourselves and be kind to each other.