Breaking a Pattern

The act of courage that I anticipated was unfamiliar to each fiber of my being, but I knew my only choice was to accept this invitation to grow and change. On my tree of life I wanted to be a vibrant component, rather than a withering portion of the whole. Is it possible to be alive with possibilities and consumed by fear at the same moment? I certainly hope so, because that is exactly how I felt as I headed off on this new adventure.

Remember me? I'm the one who had created my own version of Pandora's Box for the explicit reason of avoidance. Rather than confront an uncomfortable conversation, occurrence, or feeling, I would simply make a deposit into the box and move forward in my life, or so I thought. I realized much later that I wasn't truly moving forward. How could I have been moving forward when in truth, I was stuck in a pattern of boldly familiar avoidance? It was finally time to free myself from that old established fear, and break the evasion pattern! As a classroom teacher, I was accustomed to formulating a lesson plan, but when I tried to create a plan to accomplish this goal, I had no idea where to begin. Too bad that Nike had not yet invented their now famous slogan, "Just Do It," because I could certainly have gained wisdom from that advice. In fact, after experimenting with a variety of unsuccessful attempts using other ideas, this was exactly what I discovered...just do it, inch by inch, step by step. Such a simple concept with many convoluted predecessors. The power of those three words was almost lost on me due to the sheer simplicity of its message.

I spent days crafting a my talk, speech, presentation or whatever you want to call it. All I know for sure is that I had never put so much time and energy into writing. Throughout my college years I would certainly put quality effort into the assigned papers, but those were education centered, not personal accounts of a relationship. It felt as though the more I wrote, the deeper I connected to my years spent with Jon, giving me new insight into our time together. It gave me a more profound understanding as to why our relationship had little chance of survival unless I had been willing to deny my core value system. Reflecting back all these years later, I was grateful for having the courage to face this task because it allowed me a much needed clarity concerning the demise of our marriage. Now if only I could get a stand-in to present my
material to the high school students. Since that was not an option, I wanted to create a daily mantra that would keep me focused on a positive message. Eventually I chose, " I know I can do this, I know I can do this..."