This Is Still Our Phoenix Moment

“Life has no meaning. Each of us has meaning and we bring it to life. It is a waste to be asking the question when you are the answer.” – Joseph Campbell

“We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.”  – Maya Angelou

The year I started this blog, 2013, I wrote an article titled “This is Our Phoenix Moment.” It was about one of the government shutdowns. Obama was President and the Republicans had declared that they were not going to approve any laws he, or the Democrats proposed and to prove it they let the money run out and the government shut down.

At the time I wrote that post, I felt personal and societal rumblings that were going to shake us and wake us. And that feeling has turned out to be right. Everything is topsy turvy. It looks like we’re crashing and burning, but I see that as a good thing. To make a mundane analogy, you can’t clean out closets without taking everything out and making a mess. Chaos brings an opportunity for rebirth and renewal.

I don’t know about you, but my personal life is going through cosmic closet cleaning at the same time the world is going through it as well. In 2013, I thought I’d have become a full-time writer ensconced at home, blissfully selling my work. But nothing ever happens the way we think it will. Which is one of the ways we are forced to grow. We get plopped into an unexpected situation and have to learn to live in the new circumstances.

It’s easier for us if we embrace change. For example, I want to sell my work, but it’s impossible to sell anything if no one knows it exists. Just recently I realized that I can easily think of ways to promote the work of others but not my own. It’s this weird feeling that I’m not worthy to have people read my work. Once I admitted that to myself, three interesting things happened. A friend of ours that we got to see over Christmas vacation, told me she was in her local library and there on an end cap was my book. She was so excited that she took it off the shelf and hugged it, because what I’d written meant so much to her.

Then a week or so ago, my acting friend Dave told me that when he can’t sleep he picks up my book and reads portions of it to calm himself down. “It’s a beautifully written book,” he told me. I was so touched, because what I remember most are the criticisms I’ve received, not the praise.

And finally, I’ve started a new writing adventure with Sivana East. I think I wrote in a previous post that they invited me to submit articles on their site. I’ve done three so far. Any opportunity to improve my writing skills and unfold layers of what I’m learning is welcome and maybe I’ll make new contacts as a result.

This is what I believe: We go through individual times of upheaval to aid our spiritual growth. Societies, governments, and groups of people go through the same thing. And the two are linked. We’re not meant to get stuck in the same routines and ways of thinking forever. We can make ourselves miserable by complaining and fighting the inevitable, or we can hop on the roller coaster and see where it takes us. The ride can be joyful and exciting, or oppressive. It’s up to us.

It’s become clear to me that I need to make more of an effort to connect with people, not just to sell books but to hear their stories, lend them support, and accept theirs in return. I’ll always be an introvert, but it’s not good to stay hidden and quiet all the time. Because the way I grow is by being exposed to other people’s way of thinking and being. That can be in person, or it can by through the art they create.

I’m ready to open the chrysalis in which I’ve been transforming. It’s time for me to become the beautiful butterfly I was always meant to be. Maybe it’s time for humanity to do the same thing.

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Lucinda Sage-Midgorden © 2020

Lucinda is the author of The Space Between Time, an award finalist in the “Fiction: Fantasy” category of the 2017 Best Book Awards. It’s a little bit like Outlander in that it’s a historical, time-travel, magical realism, novel. Except that Jenna’s life is shattered and she must find a way to put it back together. When she finds old journals, she joins consciousness with her three-times great-grandmother, Morgan, rather than traveling physically. She is able to come back at intervals and apply what she’s learned to her own life situations.

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. To join her email list, click here. She will never sell the names on her list.