You're in my heart -

Change is something that has been shadowing me my entire life. Growing up, going to school, changing schools, my mother leaving my father, university, moving to a different city, getting a job, and I could keep going. I think everyone in the world could keep going. Big changes, little changes; it didn't matter what kind of change it was. The fact of the matter is that change used to scare me half to death.

I know exactly where that fear originated. It developed during the time after my mother left. I was twelve then and as the days went by I became more aware of the difficulties of growing up in a single parent household. There was only one income and I couldn't have all the little things that I used to be able to have, because my father couldn't afford these things on his own. Less junk food, less material things, less allowance; to my twelve year old self this was almost unbearable. However, there was an overabundance of love, and laughter, and my father came to every play, every choir recital, every band performance. He gave me his love and support when he couldn't give me all my little meaningless things. This was brilliant on his part and helped me cope with the many emotions that I didn't want to deal with at that time.

Those events happened thirteen years ago, and are bitter-sweet memories for me now.

After my mother left I spent all of my teenage years waiting for the bottom to drop out from beneath me. Something would change and I would pretend it didn't happen. This was the 'run and hide' technique that I perfected over time. I dealt with change the same way a hiker would deal with a rabid grizzly - I ran and prayed it never caught me. I distracted myself from my pain, from my suffering, from change itself. However when trying to outrun a grizzly, you can't run forever.

I, unfortunately, cannot pinpoint the exact moment when I found my courage, and I couldn't really say exactly how one would go about finding their own. However I think it was during my climb back out of the lowest point of my life that I found mine. I accepted change head on and was prepared to make the changes I needed to make in my life without fear. I also accepted my childhood and teenage years, and came to view them with gentleness and I ended up understanding myself more. It's easier to say all that, than it actually was to go through it.

This journal is a change. A new home for my thoughts and emotions, it will also act as my creative outlet, on occasion, and also be a home for my spirituality. If the thought of meditation, knitting, cats, Buddhism, or novelists offends you, then I think you might be in the wrong place.