It occurred to me that maybe you are wondering why I should give any advice at all about dealing with change. Why am I an expert? First, I'm not. I am just practicing - living my life in a way that actively looks at how I deal with the ups and downs of life.
I really work at it.
I don't want to live my life like a pinball bouncing from one experience to another - good or bad - I want to consciously respond to what comes up in my life. That is an ongoing practice. Some days I'm great at it and some days I suck.
Here's the thing though - sure, I'm not a Holocaust survivor, an ex gang member, or anything that seems to be both really hard or a big deal in our society.
I am just a woman. A white woman, at that.
I live pretty simply, leaving my big salary for a simple life. I don't do drugs. I don't have health problems. I am pretty average, by all accounts.
But here's the thing - everyone experiences change. Everyone.
It is how you deal with it that matters - that is where the flexibility, grace and resilience comes in.
Sure, I have suffered my share of hard things: my mom was bi-polar, my brother died of AIDS, I am a birth mom, I supported and helped both my parents in the end of their lives, my husband has suffered from severe depression, my daughter almost died - you know, life. Messy, uncontrollable, shit happens life.
It was probably my brothers death that moved me towards the direction of understanding that we get one chance - this life - to have it be how we want it to be. That every moment matters. I was 18.
It has taken me 24 years of dealing with the ups and downs of life to cultivate the Change Practice that I have and although I am not an expert, I am practicing every single day. Probably enough to share some advice about how to deal with it. Probably.
