Walking My Path

#Trust30 30-day writing challenge from ralphwaldoemerson.me

When good is near you, when you have life in yourself, it is not by any known or accustomed way; you shall not discern the foot-prints of any other; you shall not see the face of man; you shall not hear any name;—— the way, the thought, the good, shall be wholly strange and new. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Writing Prompt
Can you remember a moment in your life when you had life in yourself and it was wholly strange and new? Can you remember the moment when you stopped walking a path of someone else, and started cutting your own?
Write about that moment. And if you haven’t experienced it yet, let the miracle play out in your mind’s eye and write about that moment in your future.
(Author: Bridget Pilloud)

My Response


I have always walked my own path, I believe we all do. In hindsight it may look like we were treading the steps of someone else, because at that moment we were a different individual. It is in those steps we take and the choices we make that we evolve, hopefully closer to our own truth.

I can look back and wonder who that woman was who taught seventh grade, who looked for ways to skip gym in high school and who was brave enough to leave the school system for the corporate one. There are photographs of a woman with permed hair, or short hair, in suits with shoulder pads, a woman with extra pounds, a very thin teenager. But if you look at the eyes and the smile, she was always me, albeit a different version.

But in those moments of the really big changes, when I moved to DC to take a promotion or moved back to NYC to enter a different segment of my industry or left the corporate career to be where I am now I felt an energy rushing through me I thought I had never felt before.  Those first moments of big change are like the early stages of new love when you feel so alive and full of excitement for the unknown that you wonder if you will ever feel that again. The air seems cleaner, the flowers more fragrant.  You smile at everyone and it seems they are smiling right back.

Even as you are rushing forward to a new part of you, there is a slow down. A noticing of what will be different. From the place you get your morning coffee to how your interactions with new people and places will shift and change you.

Each time I knew something was different and I was about to change.  I was always careful to pause and  snap a little photograph for my memory book  of what was my truth in that moment.