Scrolling through Instagram, my eyes stopped at this quote, “Don’t live the same year seventy five times and call it a life.” Then my heart stopped. And my breath. Wow, that resonated with me. As many of my readers know, I recently closed my therapy office and will only be doing therapy virtually. This loss has walked me down a path of grief. I grieved for the in-person time with my clients I once took for granted. I grieved for the time with “the Golden Girls”, my colleagues of over a decade. And if I’m honest, I grieved for quiet comfort of going to the office every week. The sameness of it all was like a warm blanket of predictability.

What balanced out the grief was an equally deep sense of gratitude. I would reflect on all the times my colleagues supported me. I remember when the news of my kidney cancer came, my colleague Mary did not utter a word and just held me in her embrace. Because all of us are aging, we often did spacey, forgetful things and enjoyed shared laughter in our less-than-stellar moments. I would think back on key moments in therapy with my clients that would create meaningful change in their lives. While I appreciated it in real time, this reflective time caused me to have a more intense experience of gratitude. This time of reflection and thanksgiving shed light as a travelled this dark path of grief.

Now, this Instagram quote created another shift in my thought process. Maybe… just maybe, this loss is not tragic, but something meant to stir me. Maybe I am supposed to live differently in the time to come. I loved my life before COVID and imagined continuing to experience it is the goal. Keep loving your life, Julie But maybe I am being offered an opening to live a newer, still beloved life during and after COVID. Maybe, this time of loss is a gift. What makes it challenging is that I do not know what this newer life will contain. Still, I know I have the greatest influence over whether it is a life of meaning, joy, and love. And now, I feel something else sitting beside my grief and my gratitude. I feel anticipation. I feel curiosity,

So stay tuned, my dear readers. I am on a journey that will take me….well, I don’t know where it will take me. But the journey will happen, that is for sure. Be well.