When you inject life in your world it bounces off on multiple surfaces at first.
Remember if you are still in the Waiting Room and you invited life to come back, it will try to find you in the confined space.
Sometimes we step out of the Waiting Room in quick bursts.
On our way back inside, life comes in through the door with you.
Now imagine if you have been reentering for a few weeks, the life you are creating requires time for a new job, new friends, new home.
Dating. Clothes. Self care. Time to yourself. Meditation.
Life’s friends are many and the Waiting Room is too small for them.
It is also why it feels overwhelming at first.
Why you will want to kick her out. Don’t.
Just start moving out of the Waiting Room slowly.
Spend more time letting go of the old schedules and routines.
Don’t let the survivor self convince you that you still need that friend who is rude to you but always apologizes. Just because you have known her all your life it doesn’t mean she gets a pass. Don’t be fooled with any thoughts in regards to your missing out on your old life.
One thing I know for sure is that when we say goodbye to an old identity we also say goodbye initially to the comfort of the familiarity of that self.
It hurts to change.
It makes you want to run back to yourself, back to that Waiting Room, back to the familiarity of those walls and the non living existence.
Life is painful and why we avoid it.
I have been reentering so much lately that it is a little scary at times.
My survivor self is keeping me up at night.
It is questioning me.
Can you really live out loud Christina?
You won’t be able to keep up.
You will break.
I responded back the other day and said ‘If I break myself from living so loudly then let me break. Let me break inside a firework.
Let me exhale inside a big canvas.
On my way to the beach.
Inside the words of my new book.
In the midst of helping the homeless, the grieving, and living in the most unapologetic way.’ Now you know why I need a strong body, why I am training, why I drink all that water.
At 2 am last night I submitted my last homework for my first semester of my MFA.
I was listening to opera and witnessing myself showing up outside of that Waiting Room.
I will be working while traveling a lot in the next month and my mind is pushing back, but here is what I think.
My life could end at any moment.
It could leave me not just by my heart stopping but from any type of illness or injury.
One day I may not be able to draw, write, speak, help, live, sing, move.
But what I do know about that day is that I will have no regrets.
I am walking myself to my 50th year of life and I will skip, and skateboard, fly and live like my life depends on it.
Because it really does.
I hope you let life break you and end this journey one day inside a big and loud firework.
With life bursting at the seams
Christina
PS. I hope you had the chance to listen to the conversation with my daughters about grief.
PPS. I speak in length about the Waiting Room in my book SECOND FIRSTS. I hope you have it.
