Crossroads

We all have them. What we do with them is up to us.

Actuarily speaking, more of my life is in the rearview mirror than ahead in the windshield. Along the way, I've encountered a bunch of crossroads as well as incredible synchronicities showing me my life journey exists on a landscape designed by the force of a much larger map maker. Here are a few of the highlights. Hopefully my story will help you recognize the many crossroads you have experienced in your life, your lessons learned, and how you can use that wisdom to help create your next adventure.

One of my earliest crossroads was actually at an intersection, a red light waiting to turn left over a bridge that let's just say was nearing the end of its life. My dad was driving me to high school. He was a college professor and counselor. He taught a lot of the members of law enforcement in our small state. Before the days of more structured crisis counseling services, they called him if someone was having a mental health emergency. The night before, he responded to help someone thinking about jumping off a different bridge. With no previous thought and for no reason apparent to me, while sitting at that red light, I told him I was going to be a counselor just like he was. Sometimes the first glimpse of a landmark drops into our lives like a mirage only to appear real later.

A few years later I dropped out of college, swearing I would never go back to school. I felt lost and had no idea of what direction to head. My parents were from a generation influenced heavily by gender. Ruling out careers they believed were common for women but required a degree like teacher, nurse, or librarian; they suggested my best option was secretary. Lacking connection with my own inner vision, I looked outward for direction and became a secretary. I was not very good at it nor was I particularly committed to doing a good job. Sometimes, our crossroads can be influenced by intersecting factors like gender, age, race, socioeconomic status, experience, culture, or tradition. We can also choose to hand off our creative power to others and make decisions based on their influence.

Synchronicity and the force of a much bigger map maker led me to another crossroads. This one was not at a red light but over lunch. At a luncheon given at the small Catholic boarding school where I worked as a secretary, my mom sat with the president of a local college to which I had applied in high school. Neither ever shared the specifics of their conversation, but a couple of weeks later I received a letter of full admission and a financial aid package too good to turn down. After swearing I would never return to school, I went back to college earning three degrees in four years. This taught me that swearing I will never do something increases significantly the chances I one day will.

The next crossroads included a parking lot invitation, a surprise love, a dare, and another degree. In the parking lot after work, a friend invited me to join her at a new book group. I went. Thanks to that whim, I made a circle of friends that have only deepened in the last quarter century and met my spouse. I was working as a mental health counselor, and my partner was a student in the department where I earned my graduate degrees. She told me one day a former professor asked when I was going to come back to earn my doctorate. Never having considered a doctorate, I told her maybe one day. She dared me to go that day. So I rode my bike over to the department and picked up an application. Ultimately, I was accepted and earned my doctorate. Remember that stoplight conversation with my dad? By the way, I was also a crisis counselor who was called out to assist people who were suicidal, among other emergencies. I became a professor and a counselor. These several crossroads helped me see that I could be circling the approximate destination, with stops in places that felt almost right. An inner gut check would reveal mixed motivations and effort. The view from the ground appeared unclear, but a much higher perspective would reveal a clearer route I could not see.

The crossroads that followed taught me about loss, changing directions, adapting, and recognizing purpose wherever I landed. I loved working as a counselor and a professor, and I was good at it. I was laid off from one counselor educator job but found another that was an even better fit. Finally, I thought I had arrived at my destination, and motivation aligned with effort.

We bookended these productive years of professional development with personal caregiving, providing primary caregiving for three of our parents and helping with other extended family through the end of their lives. Then I was diagnosed with multiples sclerosis and became the one in need of care. Ironic considering this metaphor of crossroads, I experienced the effects of an internal infrastructure potholed throughout my brain and central nervous system, wreaking havoc on my body and life. I retired from academia after only 10 years when my health declined. I added a specialty of life coaching to my counseling work and changed directions, moved across country and opened a private practice with my partner. I worked with a small number of people as I continued to lose ability in my hands, the ability to walk, drive, and take care of myself. But if I considered my life a train wreck, I would have missed the incredible friends and professional caregivers who shared generously their love, support, and talent. I would have glossed over the wisdom and mercy of humor, humility, and tenacity emerging out of the most ridiculous situations.

Ultimately, we moved back across the country where in my mid 50s I have lived in a nursing home for over a year. Here I keep going with a private practice but am no longer able to earn money, because we live in a system that assumes people who live in nursing homes are not able to work. I juggle feeling grateful for receiving federal support like Social Security disability and Medicare while also feeling confined by requirements that kept me financially impoverished. I also experience the dynamics of living in a system made possible by staff members who are overworked, underpaid, and often feel undervalued; within a broader social system that diminishes the value and worth of people who provide personal care and the people for whom they care. Despite feeling like this was a crossroads at an intersection that appeared destroyed with no foreseeable directions, I learned purpose could be found even in what appears most grim. My floor mates are unique and incredible people, including walking angels of positivity, people who love helping one another as their health and memory slip away from their grasp. I've made deep and lasting connections with family members as they sat with their loved ones at the end of life. Truthfully, I do not regret each step along the way that led me to this moment in life. Simultaneously, I want to be anywhere but here. Both can be true.

As I write this story, much of the next crossroads is ahead in my windshield. It's a vision of transformation, hope, and possibility. It's a risky leap of faith. My partner and I are planning a move to northern New England where I will leave the nursing home. We will live together again, requiring I be able to pay out-of-pocket over $100,000 per year for private home care. I will work with a cutting edge outpatient therapy program to help rebuild my deconditioned body. I am curious to explore the interdependent influences of body, mind, and spirit on healing. I will collaborate and advocate with others to transform systems impacting individuals and loved ones with disabilities.

Returning to serve people full-time while balancing health needs is by far the most welcome creation! I am back in business! I am launching Crossroads Coaching, offering individual and group coaching, including a year long virtual program geared towards helping people live in the world from their true self. Reach out if I can help support you creating your one wild unique life, crossroads and all!

Each of our life journeys are filled with wisdom. Here are a few more of the insights I've gained from the crossroads of my life…

• Life is one long journey of experiential learning.

• Anything is possible. What we think is possible is bordered by the limits of what we think we know based on what we've experienced.

• Crossroads are a part of life. We all have them. What we do with them is up to us.

• No point in judging crossroads as good, bad, easy, hard. They just are. Even what looks like the most devastating crossroads can lead to the most unexpectedly wonderful places.

• No point in judging ourselves or others. That only keeps us circling down rabbit holes with useless beliefs and feelings of regret, grievance, worthlessness, uselessness, powerlessness, hopelessness, and helplessness. We can transform what looks like the most horrendous choices when we accept responsibility and own our choices, understand our own power and the consequences when we gave it away, embrace our role as the creator of our lives, forgive ourselves and others, ask for forgiveness, and commit ourselves to perfectly imperfect action towards expressing our highest self.

• When you feel stuck, course correct. Movement can begin with the tiniest step.

• Energy is everything, and anything I create comes from energy. Energy can rise or fall based on feelings, thoughts, and actions. My energy follows where I focus my attention. Focusing on lack, limits, what I've lost or cannot do in the present moment diminishes my energy, vision, and action. My energy grows exponentially when I connect with myself and others, look for openings and possibilities, focus on love, and say yes to leaps of faith.

• Set an egg timer for feeling pissed, discouraged, and sad. Then keep moving. Repeat as needed.

• You can withstand more challenging circumstances than you think possible. Indeed, strength and resilience are sometimes best discovered by seemingly insurmountable struggles.

• Humor can help with the messy and smelly moments.

• Humility, asking for and receiving help can be excruciating but important lessons to learn.

• This may sound ridiculous, but be grateful for all of it. None of it is by accident. Gratitude can be a bright light in a dark moment.

• Synchronicity is powerful and a sign of a larger force supporting our journeys, even when from my perspective of pain, suffering, and loss that seemed impossible. We each possess a unique inner voice, an inner guidance system, that amazingly is always connected to that larger force. Our intuition is how our inner voice and that universal force communicates.

• Mining your life for wisdom and lessons learned is a great way to let go of stuff that no longer serves you and bring with you through the next crossroads the tools and guidance to forge an amazing path.

• Finally, what's the point of all this? Your life journey, including all the crossroads and miles in between can only ever be lived by you, no one else. You and your journey are entirely unique and irreplaceable. Our journeys are for learning, for connecting, for loving, and for creating. One day, we will let go of the body that has enabled us to live our unique life. But what looks like a final crossroad is just the beginning. The journey never ends and has an elegant design to it.

If you are at a place in your life where you are heading in new directions but don't quite know how to get there, I can support you. Check out the services I offer through Crossroads Coaching.