“I am where I am and it’s the perfect place to start. I have what I have and it’s more than enough. I’m creating what I’m creating by what I think, say and do. I’m going where I’m going, and a thousand angels are with me too.” ~ Elizabeth Richardson

School starts today.

It is the first time in 17 years that I will not be getting ready at 5am and going to that place that is all too familiar. To see the faces that have become my family and to help with the cryers — every year we have at least one. The first day of school. This is the first September in most of my grown adult life where I will not be joining the masses and going to work.

I feel free!

I had to make a decision. It was not an easy one. As a single woman, I had moments when I thought I was going crazy with my need to leave. Crazy with the idea that I no longer belonged or fit in.

We do what we have to do to be a productive member of society. We go to school, we find what we think is a viable and solid career, we do that career and for a long time it feels like it’s what we are meant to do. Then one day you wake up in the middle of the night with heart palpitations and you are in a panic that something is no longer right. I lived this way for three years. Struggling to go to a job where I no longer felt I was wanted, respected or mildly cared about. The faces were the same, my family, but the machinery that got us going everyday was different. It did not care about us, it just cared about what the system looked like on the outside to those looking in. I am not really good at being run by machinery. The day the machinery took over and wanted us to become like Joe versus the Volcano, I knew I must escape.

So here I am, in a cottage in a coastal town of Maine with my giant dog. I sit and watch the first rainfall since I arrived and I can see color. The green is so green, the smells are so rich and the air is so clean.. I have no idea what the sequel of my life looks like……no idea! But, I do know it looks nothing like my past 17 years. I stopped being attached to things a long time ago. There is a wonderful and beautiful outcome when you have lost much, and that is, that you realize how very little you need to find a rich, simple and happy life. When you have little, you start to realize that what matters most, is not the things in your closet, or in your home — it is the things in your heart that provide you with sustenance.

There is a peace that comes in surrender. A peace that is indescribable but I know breathes life into me. Of course, I will miss my previous role — it is all I know. But now like a child on the first day of school, I am filled with excitement, fear and wonder. My new school is the world around me. I long to spend time in it. To learn from it. To become wiser in it. To become more compassionate in it. To see it with new eyes. To give more to it. To let it breathe new life into me.

As I have spent a week now in the quiet of Maine, gotten to meet new people and spend alone time with this me, the me who is exposed in a unfamiliar world, I know one thing for certain, today I am filled with new hope.

I don’t know anything, none of us do. We wake up and hope for the best. Our best is all we have to give. All I know now is that I wake, and pray that I can give my best. I pray that I will live this chapter out without fear, with love, with wonder, with kindness and openness.

I pray for those who are yearning, wishing wishes, dreaming dreams…..I pray that you be braver than you think you are.

So here I am world, come make something new out of me. For there is no greater love that I have felt, but the love to this one wild life I have been given.

In loving memory of my dear friend and beloved teacher to many, Dr. Peter Hofmann, endless wanderer and lover of life.