First, let me tell you that I just spent $6.57 on an iced macchiato due to my homesickness for Italy and my daily cappuccinos and macchiatos. Those cost around one euro by comparison and the taste here does not come close. At all.
If I had a nickel for every friend sending me fancy coffee maker links, I could afford to purchase one. That is not entirely true. I have been quietly looking at them since last summer. Was it a coincidence that four of the seven countries I traveled to were known for great coffee, and the rest still had great coffee? No.
I hope to have one selected by early fall, and once in, and after a day of watching how-to videos on YouTube, I should be good to go. What did we all do before YouTube?
I digress.
I had lunch with a friend today. The kind of friend you have been close to for so long that you log the friendship by decades. Like some of my dearest and longest-lasting friendships, this is one where you play a form of verbal Ping-Pong encouraging each other whenever you are together. I love the role of cheerleader/encourager, and I do not step into it with someone I do not genuinely adore.
Okay, the truth is that I have before (I have a friend who will read that last sentence and send me a text to correct me), but I do not do that anymore. Lesson learned.
Again, I digress.
When you, or someone you love, is entering/in/exiting a transition season, let me offer the gentlest of counsel, they need extra encouragement. Every last morsel you can share with them. They are spinning a bit, and at worst, they are wrestling through some PTSD. My friend used that last descriptor with me today to describe his own (and our mutual friend’s) transition seasons, but I understood. Completely.
Transition seasons, whether planned or thrust upon you out of nowhere, leave the participants disoriented, and that is putting it mildly. Months, or years into it, something can trigger you resulting in an uncharacteristic reaction. I have had some emotional pulls, but my friend described someone’s physical reaction to which I was both shocked and nodded because but of course. Transitions play out through the same guidebook as grief.
Our friend is doing great. My friend I saw today is doing great. I am doing great. So, the result was old friends pointing to a few old war wounds and sharing the story about how they all healed.
I found the whole experience healing.
Welcome to reason 798,098 why storytelling is one of my favorite things.
Storytelling has the potential to engage, motivate, inform, and yes, even heal.
My favorite people are all fabulous storytellers, and most would never call themselves one. They are though. They move people when they speak. In meetings to classrooms. Across dinner tables and in boardrooms. When I am with them, I am generally in one of two modes — rattling words off at a rate of one million miles per hour out of an urge to share (or impress them with something), or I am rapt with desire hanging on every word they say. Some, that I particularly love, do a verbal dance with me between the two modes with comfortable periods of silence.
I hope you can understand what I am about to say when I tell you that between storytellers, silence is a special kind of trust.
I have only known it a couple of times in my life. When in it, well, it feels like magic.
Magic.
In the coming months, I hope to be exploring storytelling in some new (and old) ways, and I promise to take you along for the adventure. I am elated by the opportunities popping up over the past few months. A friend called me this afternoon and said, “You are letting things unfold naturally…not franticly…thinking you have to have the next ten years planned out. It is a different level of trust and faith you are sourcing now versus a year ago.” I need to have her record that for me because I am pretty sure I have never been told that I have let ANYTHING “…unfold naturally…” to which I am laughing as I even write the words.
Isn’t life funny?
If you take the time to heal. To listen to the beat of your own heart. To learn what you really need and want. And then if you are brave enough to ask for what you need. To ask for what you want. Sometimes. Just sometimes. The answer is, “Yes.”
After a transition season that even as recent as January of this year, I was convinced was going to kill me, my natural tenacity and perseverance. Scratch that. My refusal to give in until I learned the lesson(s) I felt this season wanted to teach me has led me to the richest of clarity about the life I want to lead, but even more importantly, the life I need to lead so that my heart/soul/mind/body can operate fully integrated. The quadrants of the pie chart I sketched out in Norway last August are not complete, but every day I am getting closer. The colors are revealing themselves, and my voice is getting stronger when I ask for what I want.
I wish for you, and for me, a life that brings joy, fulfillment, and lots of love.
Take a risk; bet on yourself.
Embrace the transition.
Learn the lessons.
Tell your story.
Be brave.
Ask for what you need.
Listen for the “Yes.”
Feel the love wash over and through you.
You are worth it.
One rollercoaster. One ticket.
Love, Heather
Love this. It brought me to tears. Tears because I love seeing what is emerging and celebrate every moment. Tears because I feel so close and yet so far from this, some new wounds not yet healed.
I love love love reading the stirrings of your heart and I love how you are processing life post Italy
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I also miss the coffee of Italy !!! I do make coffee in my Italian espresso on stovetop