I wrote this quote on a Post It note in the Fall of 2013. I was in an important meeting, trying to listen, but not hearing a damn thing. My mind was saturated. My soul was drowning in the misery I felt, on trying to understand how my body could betray me and become so sick, on the fear that I may no longer be able to work, on wondering if the warning signs I had begun to notice in my husband meant what I feared them to mean.

I wrote this quote to myself and have taped it to computer monitors, stuck it in journals, clung to it in fear, and gazed at it in wonder...for it is the truth. Regardless of what is actually happening in your life, regardless of the specific pain, or source of anxiety, or the possible ways the get through...Socrates had it right.

"The Secret to Change is to focus all of your energy NOT on fighting the old, but on building the new"

I wrestled with how unfair that statement is. I bemoaned the implication that it was somehow up to me to restart or rebuild what I had thought was already complete. I raged against feeling victimized by life, and an expectation that I owned any piece of restoration and redemption. I had done nothing wrong dammit, and the idea of recreating and working again for the very things that felt like accomplishments, milestones, MINE...felt like a sick joke.

However, I kept the post it note because I also knew that it was the truth. I knew deep down in my very tissues, that ultimately I would have to be the one to fix what I was feeling. I knew that I would be the one who would need to take a step back, to view my pain from a distance, and to be thoughtful about how I could contribute to a solution.

My health (as it turns out), is more in my hands than I could have imagined.
My marriage (as it turns out), has just as much to do with my own actions and perceptions as my husband's.

Life is in fact a partnership in so very many ways (with your body, with your partner, with yourself) in which I will always play an equally important part in the ultimate satisfaction or demise of any one piece of it.

The 'Change' is the part that is so very difficult. It is so hard to let go of what you thought you knew. It is so hard to accept a changed future, and even more difficult to accept a changed 'YOU'. My revelYOUtion continues, but I know that it is the rebuilding that I have learned a taste for. It is in exploring my own capacity to adapt, to grow, to be bigger and more expansive than I ever was before, that I stay strong despite my own fear of change.

I remind myself that even Peter Pan had a shadow that wanted to escape, and had to be sewn back onto his body. There are times when I restitch myself together so that my shadow self and my fear cannot escape, so that they are forced to become a part of the rebuilding, so that they have no choice but to contribute to my restoration.