As a young person, I lived under the illusion that life was a process that led to bigger and better things and that  hard work and dedication to personal growth would pave the way to a future of peace and prosperity. While all of this may still be an illusion of a sort (with an underlying element of truth, of course), the one thing I did not foresee was the constant barrage of the unexpected! There is always something waiting just around the corner to derail us; a thing that knocks the wind out of our sails and subsequently takes us way too much time from which to recover and get back on the path toward our best destiny.
It is those very pesky life events that I would like to address. I have thought about these experiences on many occasions as an entity, a force of destruction, a nameless vampire that steals my lifeblood and my desire to rise up and fight back. They have led me to pen reams of articles on how to “be prepared”. Yet, I am quite certain there is no preparation for the unexpected events in our lives. I want to say, get ready! Your turn is just around the corner! But, unfortunately, I have come to believe there is no preparation and if we were to spend time and energy preparing for a catastrophe, we would only spend our lives living in fear. That makes no sense.
I don’t know about you, but I have been leveled by the most ordinary of life’s experiences. I went to college with all the optimism, hope and excitement that any 18 year girl might. I chose a school that promised to live up to my ideals of an “open education” and the freedom to learn only those things that interested me and nothing more. What I learned was that I had been very idealistic and that learning takes more discipline than freedom – although I honestly didn’t learn that until much later. I learned how to drink, how to have a good time, how to fall into a clinical depression from a broken heart and I learned to give up on hope and love…for a time.
I managed to catch my breath, re-group and try again, only to encounter the next unexpected obstacle. I spent a lot of time chastising myself for not having been aware and for not having made the “right” decision. Each time I encountered the unexpected, I’d trip and fall and skin my knee, or worse, break a leg. I’d bandage myself up, take a couple of aspirin, sleep for a day or a month, and then start all over again. I call it “hobbling along through life”, barely making it but somehow surviving.
There may have been a few things I “should” have known or “could” have known, but many that were unavoidable. You can’t prepare for a loved one who falls ill, a husband who has a sudden heart attack, a child with learning disabilities. You can’t prepare for a shattered dream or a downturn in the economy that wipes out your savings; a job lost due to something much larger and unmanageable than your own hard work and effort.
The thing that is unique for me, at this point in my life, is that I am now taking some time to reflect on my method of navigating through life and wondering if there might not have been something I could have done differently, or better yet, something I might change now for the future and pass on to my readers. I have to admit that I haven’t come up with any grand conclusions, yet! I do know that upon reflection, there is little we can do to prepare ourselves, other than eating right and exercising…the key to all good fortune! After all, it is precisely the nature of the unexpected that gets us! The best thing we can do is make sure we are physically strong and healthy in order to cope with the backlash of adrenaline as it pours into our bodies.
Instead, I believe the key is to trust that we will land on our feet, in time, and give ourselves the good grace to take the time we need. Even when things seem utterly and completely hopeless and we feel we have used our last ounce of strength, we can rebuild, we can heal, and we can recover. Women are amazingly resilient and it is this very resilience that makes us strong and allows us to be the survivors we are. In addition, we have the very good fortune of having one another to help us through and lift us up when our own strength fails. We can always rely on women to nurture, love and support one another through difficult times. This website is clearly a testament to that feminine propensity!
Dorothy is a full time freelance writer with numerous publishing credits both online and off. She holds a B.A. in economics from Hope College and a M.Div. from Princeton Theological Seminary. Her writing includes fiction, non-fiction and poetry. She writes extensively on topics that include home improvements, small business, marketing, parenting, issues of aging, women's issues and personal growth and spirituality. Dorothy and her husband have devoted much of their life to loving the home they are in and helping others do the same. As entrepreneurs, they enjoy a thriving home improvement business that has provided much foder for Dorothy's writings. She has two college age sons. She is a contributing writer for Helium. For more about Dorothy click here
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