If you’ve been with me since this blog was initiated in 2016, we’ve been through a lot of transitions together. Moving across the country (multiple times lol), new jobs, new hobbies, and new relationships. The only constant over time has been change.
With nothing being guaranteed in life except for the transience of it all, I want to take a moment to *pause* before yet another new beginning. Tomorrow (Monday, May 9, 2022), I am starting a new job. The interesting thing about this job is it’s in the same city I’ve been living in. Unlike most of my previous new positions, this job does not require me to pack everything into a UHAUL. What it requires, though, is more than packing tape and corrugated cardboard could provide.
The most beautiful thing is every moment gives us opportunity for new beginnings. Wherever you are today, join me for a little reflection as we step into our future with courage and welcome a new chapter.
While I have not yet verbalized the complete journey I’ve recently had with my health and wellness, I am going to skip to the ending (not the “good part”). In the last few months, I’ve seen what high levels of stress can do to my body and mind. From my work-related back injury in September 2021 to now, I’ve experienced a wide range of physical and emotional pain.
The pain I experienced asked me to look at my life from a different lens and evaluate what things needed to change. I took a break from my job (which was causing insurmountable levels of stress) and dove deep into healing. It was months of deep work to unpack all I was experiencing.
Now, a few months later, I have found renewed energy. I feel more like myself than I have in the last year – which really tells me how long I’ve had to endure this feeling. I decided to close the stressful, painful chapter of my life and make a transition based in love for myself, my values, and my health.
Tomorrow, I start a new job as a Pediatric Physical Therapist in the Boston area. I recently realized I haven’t started a new job without a “big move” before. I’ve moved from New York to Florida, started travel physical therapy across the country in Washington State, and made the big move back to the east coast. All these transitions required packing boxes (or suitcases lol) of my favorite items and bringing them into a new city, new home, and new life.
Tomorrow, however, I won’t be moving into a new apartment.
I won’t be in a new city.
I will have the same amazingly comfortable mattress. The same coffee maker. The same boyfriend to wake up next to, car to drive, and streets to walk on.
What is different, though, is myself and the way I am showing up to the new day at a new job.
I didn’t know my journey through physical and emotional pain would bring me to this transition. I stayed open to the possibilities and different ways I could create new beginnings. I decided to begin packing the pain into figurative boxes in my mind. As I healed, I was able to treat each painful memory and experience with kindness as I gently placed it in a box, wrote FRAGILE across its surface, and put it in a storage unit far, far away. (Imagine shipping all this pain to the furthest place you can imagine… Guam, perhaps?)
As I move further from this pain, I won’t forget it. I will periodically look back in the rearview mirror when I experience another glitch – another moment of pain, difficulty, and disconnect. I’ll look back and say, “Ah, yes, we’ve been here before. What did we learn?”
I can take all I learned from my experience into this new chapter, without needing to unpack all the boxes.
The only thing I’ll be unpacking is my true essence and my strongest virtues. I am bringing my strengths in love, curiosity, gratitude, zest, and love of learning.
When I wake up tomorrow, I won’t feel like much has changed.
Yet, tomorrow will be a new day. The sun will rise at a slightly different time than it did today. The weather will be different. The world will be different.
When we get set in our routines, we forget how much is constantly changing around us and within us.
You see, life is transitions. This is the essence of life – impermanence. Change.
We celebrate the solstice and equinox, but forget the seasons have been changing all along. Spring is transitioning to summer, summer to fall, fall to winter, winter to spring. Constantly flowing, constantly changing. Alongside nature, we ebb and flow, change and evolve as well. We cannot rush the process of change, but it can start at any time.
A pearl, for instance, takes 6+ months (sometimes 4 YEARS) to be created in a mollusk. As an oyster, for instance, is exposed to irritants, it has to build up a protective coating around the oyster’s mantle where it got damaged. It coats this invasive irritant with fluid secretions and layers of the nacre substance used to create the oyster’s shell. Layers upon layers of protection form around this irritant and, eventually, this becomes a pearl.
Over time, the harmful invader creates something beautiful.
As humans, we may not be creating pearls every few months/years, but we have the ability to make something beautiful out of the challenges we are given.
Every day, we have the option to choose love or choose fear.
Remembering who we are, we have the power to always choose love.
Sometimes, this new beginning and celebration of our self love could be simple. It can be starting anew with a fresh set of sheets on the bed, a grounding/deep breath, or a snuggle with a pet. It can be moving to a new city, or getting rid of something we don’t need anymore.
A new beginning can be grand, or it can be simple.
Your new beginning is waiting for you, loved ones. What will you do with this precious moment of transformation? How will you embrace change here and now? How do you want to create change in your future?
Letting go of the past, I move into the future with love, curiosity, gratitude, and zest. There’s so much to be grateful for and I can’t wait to see where this new journey brings me (and us!).
Cheers to you for having the courage to find what works for you.
Whatever you decide to do with your precious life, I wish the best for you.
Time to begin!
xoxo,
Kristen
