Where Do We Go From Here?

“If you aren’t in the moment, you are either looking forward to uncertainty, or back to pain and regret.” ~ Jim Carrey

“Fear is often our immediate response to uncertainty. There’s nothing wrong with experiencing fear. The key is not to get stuck in it.” ~ Gabrielle Bernstein

I was glued to the TV on Wednesday during the Inauguration ceremonies. Rarely do I watch the news, but on that day I turned on the TV at 8:00 a.m. and we had the news on until about 8:30 at night. I wept, I felt hopeful, I felt the ground shifting underneath me.

I’m on board with healing our country. But, I have questions about how we do that. I saw a headline on the news app this morning, three days after the Inauguration, indicating that we hadn’t progressed very far in that yet. Really!? Three days! It’s going to take a long time before we can heal our divisions. It’s work that needs to be done one person, and one day at a time. That’s how all changes happen, one step forward, and several steps back. Mistakes will be made. And we need to allow the people in the government, social groups, and even individual people to try to reach out to those who don’t think or experience the world the way they/we do. That can be a scary proposition, but I’m willing to try.

I mean, in my personal life, that’s how my big breakthroughs have happened. I tried to clean up my wounds. From the outside it looked like a miracle happened on the spur of the moment, but it was a result of years of work. 

I do not propose to have answers to the question of how we heal our divisions, except to say as I always do, that it’s an inside job. If I heal my expectations, attitudes, and prejudices, then I might have a chance to listen to and accept other people the way they are. It’s amazing how accepting someone opens doors to communication. I’ve seen that happen over and over again as I’ve been teaching. Accepting someone as they are, not trying to mold them into some ideal I have in my head, liberates them to be themselves. If you have ever seen the relief on someone’s face when they realize they can say exactly what they’re thinking without censure, you’ll know what I’m talking about. 

I mean think about your own experiences. Who are the people that stand out in your life? The ones who just accepted and encouraged you, the people who didn’t expect you to be the way they wanted you to be. How did being accepted so completely make you feel? Those are the people I think about and cherish. They’re the ones who helped me become more open and accepting. That’s not to say I didn’t learn from the others too, but it’s harder to get rid of the feelings that they judged me. It’s harder to forgive them and release those feelings that I was not good enough.

I’m rambling. But I feel that the atmosphere has changed, that the human race is now going in a new direction. I’m not quite sure where I fit into the new picture, but I like it that I don’t feel such emotional heaviness any more. I’ll wake up now and see what the new day brings me.

About what I wrote last week, I am still trying to figure out how to send a personal thank you to all of you who have liked my blog and podcast in the last few months. But I do want you to know that I’m grateful and humbled that you read what I write and listen to my conversations with my Story~Power guests.

I’m in a kind of transition period in terms of my life path, and personal growth so I think I’ll end this post here. I’m excited to see what the next months bring for us.

Blessings to you all.

Lucinda Sage-Midgorden © 2021

Lucinda is the author of The Space Between Time, an award finalist in the “Fiction: Fantasy” category of the 2017 Best Book Awards.

Have you ever experienced life shattering events? Yeah, most of us have. In The Space Between Time, Jenna Holden gets slammed by her fiancé walking out, her mother’s untimely death, and losing her job all in one week. But she receives unexpected help when she finds her three-times great-grandmother’s journals and begins the adventure of a lifetime.

The Space Between Time is available in all ebook formats at Smashwords and for Kindle at Amazon, or you can find the ebook at iBooks or Barnes and Noble. If you prefer a physical copy, you can find a print-on-demand version at Amazon. Stay tuned for news when the audiobook version is published.

Lucinda is also the host of Story-Power a new podcast where she and her guests discuss the stories in all formats that have changed their lives. It’s available here on Sage Woman Chronicles and on Apple, Google, and Spotify podcast apps. Please rate and leave a review. It helps people find me.