Long time…. no post.
*knock knock*
Are you still out there?
Where has the time gone? It’s been over two years since I wrote a post on this blogspace. Those two years have been the characterization of God’s Plan being bigger than Your Plan. There have been a lot of changes since I last wrote. As I’m writing, I am sitting in the apartment I share with my roommate, Nicole, in Central New York. I, uh, am not on the West Coast – or Toronto. (If you’d asked me a few years ago where I’d be, I would have told you Portland, OR, without hesitation.) The good news is, I am in my final year of graduate school (!!!) in a degree field I adore – but not for what I’d originally set sights on when I’d begun writing my blogs.
When I started this blog, I was on the path to being a Naturopathic Doctor. (Shadowing and interview doctors. Organic Chemistry. Even going so far as to fill out applications for fall enrollment. The whole nine-yards!) After a moment of realization, a visit to a Naturopathic medical school in Toronto, and a “reckoning” (think of it as small Dark Night of the Soul centered around the realization that I did not want what I’d thought I’d wanted), I found myself back at the drawing board.
I wiped the slate clean.
I stared. Oh, I stared a lot at that shiny, clean, empty slate. Some days, I just wanted it to talk back to me. Tell me what to do next, where to go, something.
This vision for my future had been a part of my life for at least ten years, maybe longer. I had been working toward this goal long before I graduated undergrad or high school. There were a lot of tears. There was also a lot of time spent in numbed confusion. For someone who’d always had a direction, I no longer knew what to do with myself without a True North to walk toward.
I prayed for guidance, tried to research, made passions lists, developed vision boards and visions for my future which I revised over and over again, pulled cards from my tarot and daily affirmation decks, meditated, and interviewed health care providers – anything to figure out where my compass was supposed to point. But, mostly, there was a lot of waiting. I was in a void of transition that, for the most part, I had no control over. The control was in the hands of a force greater than my own. (Call it God, call it the Universe, call it whatever you choose to name it.)
The unknown is a scary place. My inner perfectionist screams in agony at the vulnerability that comes with not knowing. Want to set the Anxiety Meter of the charts? Drop me into unknown.
That was the lesson in this time without answers or clarity: to find comfort in the unknown. There is a beauty – a freedom, even – in having the constraints of your vision ripped off. Once you go through the necessary freak out and feeling lost, you get to start from the ground up again, building a new dream. Once you can surrender into that, beautiful, exciting things begin to happen.
I’m not very gracious in my surrendering control.
In every meditation, every card I pulled, my answer was always “Be comfortable in the freedom of the Unknown.” Which always left me grumbling. I wanted direction! I did not want to sit and wait. At some point, kicking and screaming internally, I hunkered down and practiced active listening, searching for the guidance in subtle ways around me.
Then, one day, a coworker sent a Reiki client to me. This client shared her experience with an acupuncturist. Beyond the beauty of the story, I thought nothing of its significance at the time. That is, until I began to weigh out important goals and visions for my life and found that an old dream I’d long ago discarded fit perfectly. All of my dreams and goals could align rather than compete.
Acupuncture.
My mother stumbled across the name of a school – the same school a friend from undergrad had attended. That school was having an open house in June. By that point, I’d found some grace in surrender. I was willing to flow with wherever I was led. So, I reached out to see if I could still attend. The response to my email was: if I could get the material in by the end of the week, they could set up an interview for the fall at the same time. This was huge. Once I tore down the N.D. dream, I believed I’d have to wait a year, work and save up money before I went to graduate school.
But, sometimes when you’re where you’re meant to be, events move rapidly to conspire in your favor.
By the end of the week, all of my materials were submitted, including references.
At the beginning of September, I moved onto campus to begin my Acupuncture & Oriental Medicine journey. As they say, “the rest is history!” Fast forward two years – two sets of Outcomes Assessments, two Assistantships, one-and-a half trimesters as an intern, a few moves, and many adventures later – and I have one year left.
So, that’s what I’ve been up to.
Somewhere amongst it all, this little beloved blogspace fell through the gaps of time and priorities. I’ve missed this space greatly. I tried to filled the void by posting on Instagram, but it is not the same. Recently, it was laid upon my heart to start writing again.
I am excited to share life’s adventures with you and whatever else shows up along the way.
Bear with me through this process. Still being in the throes of school, it might take a little while to update my blog info, bio, or other odds-and-ends around here to better reflect where I’ve come, where I am, and where I am going.
In the meantime, let me know in the comments what kinds of posts or topics you’d like to hear about!
xoxo,
