emerging

"The deepest secret is that life is not a process of discovery,

but a process of creation.

You are not discovering yourself but creating yourself anew.

Seek, therefore, not to find out who you are,

seek to determine what you want to be”

– Neale Donald Walsch

I'm thinking a lot lately about the idea that I am creating my own life everyday, with every choice I make. This way of looking at things doesn't come that naturally to me. I feel like so much of my life since becoming a mother is about reacting to circumstances - my son's behavior, my husband's work schedule, how much sleep I got the night before. My reactions can be very emotionally-driven: I tend to get easily frustrated, angry, overwhelmed, worried. I am an emotional person; I keep reminding myself that inside my emotions, I still have a choice about how I react.

I am currently enrolled in my first ever e-course. It's called Flying Lessons: Tips and Tricks to Help Your Creative Business Soar. It's being led by Kelly Rae Roberts, whose journey from full-time social worker doing art as a hobby to full-time, successful artist is so inspiring to me. I have been reading Kelly Rae's blog for a little while, and I kept seeing her talk about this e-course, but I thought: that doesn't apply to me, I'm a writer, not an artist (or jewelery-maker, or photographer, or crafter). I don't create something I can sell on etsy. But then, when the start of the class (her first ever) coincided so perfectly with my writing partner and I finishing our screenplay and switching into marketing mode, I decided to go for it.

The truth is that though I deeply want to be a professional (paid) writer, I have not yet found my path to that goal. This course has got me thinking about how to fully take the leap upward into a new kind of career success. And how to do that with one small child and another on the way. Since my miscarriage last year, I have felt like the time is now. And though it is beyond intimidating to think about making new career commitments, even if only to myself, while expecting a baby, this is my year of courage. You can't spend your life waiting for the perfect moment.

It is such a blessing to be emerging from twelve weeks of brutal morning-sickness. You know how, when you have a bad cold, the kind where your sinuses are filled with gunk and your nose is totally clogged, you fantasize about when you'll be able to breathe normally again? You think about how much you'll enjoy taking a nice long, deep, clear breath. And then you feel better, and for a day or two, you do enjoy the simple act of breathing. You feel grateful. But then you forget and you get busy and you take feeling good for granted again, until the next time you're felled by a vicious virus.

Well, I am still in the grateful phase. I'm grateful everytime I walk into a grocery store and don't immediately feel repulsed. I'm grateful for not having to think about food constantly, while simultaneously hating the thought. I'm grateful for 3 weeks with no dry-heaving episodes. I'm grateful that the boat is mostly staying in port, and I have only sporadic episodes of nausea. I'm grateful for having some energy and not just wanting to be in bed all day, even if walking a few blocks uphill does point out to me how startlingly out of breath I get. But most of all, I'm grateful for the clearing of my mind that's happened. I'm grateful for not feeling so darn depressed. Because, out of all the effects of the crazy hormones, just feeling so down is in some ways the hardest for me to deal with.

Speaking of pregnancy and first trimesters and Kelly Rae, all in one rambling post, Kelly Rae is about a month ahead of me in her pregnancy journey (this is her first). She wrote a post about how difficult her first trimester was, and I found a little comfort in reading it while I was in the midst of my awful first trimester. I could totally identify with everything she says, especially about feeling none of my usual spark or zest for life. At the time I read it, I couldn't imagine that I would eventually feel better, even though I had done this same thing twice before. So that's part of the trick, I suppose: holding how you are currently feeling, honoring the difficulty, while holding fast to the belief that it will get better.

I'm enjoying my emerging. I'm making lots of plans and confronting lots of fears. And I'm looking forward to sharing the journey here.