In a continuation of yesterday's topic, how strange that I should write the blogpost The Art of Reinventing Yourself only to then interview (on the same day) a woman who has hosted a transition circle for mid-life women and is interested in launching one here on Salt Spring. Her name is Francine Z. Carlin.She has a public relations and communications education and background and is from the U.S. She has worked in Washington, D.C. with national unions there as their spokesperson to name just one type of work she's been involved with.
More importantly, she's done a lot of other personal development work (conflict resolution, group dynamics, work focused on soul) that she incorporates into the work she now does with family run businesses.
After I interviewed her, I realized that there was something very important that I'd left off yesterday's list (well, actually, I'm sure there are many more than that) but I forgot to add:
Make it a priority to create an amazing support network around yourself of people who unconditionally support whatever you choose because they have faith in your wisdom and your abilities based on their experience of you and that's good enough for them to offer unconditional support.
When I was in Vancouver in the last year or two I felt that I had done this. I very consciously let go of anyone who was not supportive of me or who I didn't feel had faith in me.
It's amazing what you end up with when you do that. You end up with the most amazing circle of people who even if they don't necessarily understand your choices or even agree with them will, because of their faith in you as an individual, go with it and be supportive. I have that - in Vancouver - and now I need to create it here as well.
That understanding was life changing for me. When you grow up in a family environment that's highly critical, you don't necessarily understand that it's a way of being you can choose to have nothing to do with.
Recognizing that you can choose who you let in and who you consciously choose to let go of is very freeing.
The thing about this "transition group" that she's interested in bringing together is that there is such a lack of sacred space to speak about things that affect us at a deep level and the time to look at how we're living intentionally, rather than just moving from morning to evening, over and over without any personal reflection on how we want to be living and how to take the steps to make change.
Intentionally taking the time to focus on how you're living in comparison to how you want to be living is the first step to begin to make change.
As Francine said yesterday, "Life's too short to talk about the weather".