Catalyst

I am amazed at how one event, one moment in time with a unique confluence of factors, can catalyze positive energy that results in a cascade of life changes.  Here's what I'm talking about.

Almost two years ago, I was laid off from a job I once loved, but which hadn't been enjoyable for a long time.  The environment I was working in was painfully full of fear, conflict, hypocrisy, and disappointment.  It left me spent, deeply discouraged, just surviving through the aftermath: two years of self-doubt, self-loathing, fighting for my dignity as I applied for one job after another and rarely heard anything.  Suffice it to say that, although I had turned around some aspects of my life on my own, to do so took a tremendous expense of energy, which often flagged.  The resulting state of mind  did not qualify me as a healthy, never mind happy, person.  I was depressed.  Deeply so at times.

In January, unexpectedly, when I certainly didn't feel ready for it, something changed.  I attended the bar mitzvah--the ritual of Jewish adulthood--of a camp friend of my son's.  My family and I spent the entire weekend with people who seemed to exude love, warmth, and celebration of life--this boy's family.  By the end of the weekend, though I didn't know it yet, the self-protective, insulating walls I had built up over years of being knocked down time after time by life's events seemed to crumble.  I was vulnerable again.  I was feeling my powerful feelings--of all kinds--without cushion or anything to numb me.  It was exhilarating and scary.  It was exciting and wonderful to feel anything again and, at the moments that what I felt was related to fear or pain, I grieved profoundly.  The highs and lows shook me.

It so happened that as soon as we came home from that bar mitzvah, I had to kick myself into high gear for my own son's bar mitzvah, just six weeks away.  Anyone who has ever planned a major life event to which many people are invited, and involving multiple gatherings for different sub-groups of invitees, numerous service providers, and complex recordkeeping--this one is coming to this event but not this event, and so on, not to mention last-minute changes--knows that I had my work cut out for me.  Add to that the fact that I was my son's coach for all the service skills he had to master for his ceremony, and you've got a recipe for major stress.

Riding on the energy I felt from that weekend in January, I somehow managed not only to get everything I needed into place (with substantial help from my spouse), I seemed to be attracting more positive energy.  I still had moments of depression.  Self-doubt didn't leave me altogether.  Yet, positive energy drove me forward, in large part manifested in the form of service providers who, one after another, reached beyond my high expectations, and made me feel as if we were their only client--or their favorite one--waiving charges, being flexible about numbers and deadlines, and helping with things that were not normally within the definition of their jobs.

All the events of the weekend seemed perfused with light.  Even when things went wrong they went right.  I felt buoyed by love.

Since then, the trend has continued.  Postponing focus on my new business for "after the bar mitzvah is over," I have found a network of new entrepreneurial women who are supporting each other through the learning curves and growing pains of starting a new business in a tough economy.  I have found a life coach, inspirational speakers and teachers, old and new friends to talk to, and new clients for my business.  Each day, something happens that seems to point in the same direction, with the same message.  "The past is over.  You are able and worthy.  Go forward with confidence.  You are not alone; you will be supported."

Timing is everything.  In the darkest time of the year, this process began.  How fitting.  And how fitting that the deluge last night, with an impressive heavenly light and sound display, gave way today to plentiful warmth and sun.  I pray that the process continues.  You can be sure I'll be doing everything I can to make it do so.