May is lush and looks and smells so fabulous, yet I am not feeling my usual bliss.  The problem is, like so many of us people of the world, the sour economy has hit home in a big way.  Though my work is fairly busy and satisfying, my husband has been out of work for almost eight months.  We live with the forboding uncertainty of not knowing if we will need to pack up and move, or take a drastic reduction in our already-pretty-humble lifestyle, all the while trying to keep our respective (heavy) chins up with two sons in private colleges.

I have searched the inner cupboard of my soul for variations on hope many times over these months.  Every time so far I have been able to find a new variety (see Self-Coaching  in an earlier post), and have been able to be in gratitude and patience and even excitement about what is to come.   This time, after a really sweet  job prospect disappeared for him, I really fell on my face and the cupboard appeared ransacked of any crust of hope. 

I can assure you that I don’t like facing the ground I have just hit, but I have to say that I see it not as a regression but as a new form of growth.  I am gropingly, awkwardly exploring methods of accomodating severe adversity while continuing on with the normal chaos of family and professional life.  While I am not happy,  I know I am deepening into some form of greater potential.   And as I learn to bear this discomfort, I grow less alarmed by its existence in my life.   I believe that this is an example of  neuroplasticity, the ability to profoundly affect our nervous system through practice.   Breathe in, breathe out, times a million.

Because I am so receptive to solutions for sanity within all this discomfort at the moment, I happened to notice an artice written by author MJ Ryan.  She coaches people in transition to label the many chapters of their lives.  Once they have done that she asks them to deeply explore what might be next.   When there is a clear, gut sense or vision of the developing dream, she asks that they ‘name’ the chapter. 

That last step really appeals to me.  By coming unstuck from the spinning-my-wheels chapter I can see that I can break free of that darn stage and begin to step again into possiblity, joy and hope.  The present is what I am coping with, with as much aplomb and strength as I can muster, but the future is mine to create. 

Though this post has largely been a story of my present life, I wonder if it has appealed to you because of changes that are happening in your own life.   If you had an afternoon to sit down to label the chapters of your life, what do you think you would find for chapter names?  And, later in that afternoon, when you would have had time to dwell on your vision for what you would like to develop next, how might  that come into focus and how might you name your next chapter?   If that afternoon is just what you need, I encourage you to get out your planner right now and schedule some time.

I don’t have a name for it yet, my next chapter, but I am savoring the new excitement I feel simply from shifting from the difficult present to the possibilities that are imminent.  Feels a little bit like the May lushness surrounding me today.