Displaying items by tag: path

“You must give up the life you planed in order to have the life that is waiting for you.” Joseph Campbell

When I got married, I thought my life was going to be predictable. My husband and I had our own hobbies, habits, routines, and traditions that we introduced to each other and we were starting our own together. I enjoyed cooking and baking new healthy food from the YouTube channels I watched, I did Yoga, and I worked out probably way too much. My husband played Magic the Gathering online and in person, went fishing, played other video games, and was part of the Men’s rugby league in our city. We were both teachers and had the same days and summers off. Every few years we would go to the Florida Keys to fish, snorkel, and kayak. We visited our family in the summer and at Christmas. His parents would come to spend Thanksgiving with us. I couldn’t imagine, nor did I want to imagine, anything other than that. It was familiar, comfortable, and safe.

“I think everyone should attend a grief retreat at least once in their lives,” I told my friend asking me how the experience of attending a loss and transformation retreat was. “It should be required for navigating tough times.”

As humans, grief is an inevitable part of life. When we open ourselves up to love, we risk losing it. In October of 2022, I went on a life-changing trip to Bolinas, CA to a house of hope and healing called Commonweal. There, I delved deeper into the grief over my mother’s death and my marriage’s failure. During the course of six days, I met wonderful women from all over the country, from all walks of life, and who were experiencing their own personal loss and seeking the same things as me: to feel loved, to be heard, to squelch the loneliness, and to heal.