I Am Choosing A Different Life

There was a moment during divorce where I thought I was choosing between my old life and a new one. What I did not understand was that after my divorce, I would first have to exist for a while with no fully formed identity at all.

It was kind of like sitting in a very dark room with no sound, no light, no sense of what was coming. It wasn’t necessarily scary. It was just unknown. In many ways, sitting in this darkness was just like our star, Sirius.

*there is an audio version of this post at the end*

Sirius is the brightest star in Earth’s night sky, and every year it disappears from view for roughly 70 days. But the star doesn’t actually go anywhere. It’s is still there, it’s just hidden by the light. August 8th, also known as the Lion’s Gate, is time of year when Sirius returns to the morning sky. Astrologers sometimes refer to it as our “Spiritual Sun,” believed to illuminate our intuition and higher consciousness.

When I got a divorce around three years ago, I was expected a grand life transformation to occur. And I thought transformation would look like becoming more. More certain, healed, successful, independent. More light, more happiness, more ease. I thought I would be fully capable of explaining exactly what had happened and where I was going next.

I was wrong.

As much as I hated to admit it, I was very lost. I not only let go of my marriage, my home, my life and my identity but there were all sorts of other types of loss occurring. I let go of a business I started. An identity I had worked very hard to earn. Friendships and romantic relationships. Entire ideas about what a “good life” was supposed to look like.

I was so terrible at sitting in that darkness during those years that I started filling the gaps. Trips, work, friendships, nights out. I knew I was walking down a new path, but I never stopped to look at the map. I bulldozed past every energetic roadblock. Instead of sitting in the uncomfortable, I grabbed a shovel and started filling in the gaps so quickly that I never even stopped to look at the hole. I never stopped and asked myself “What do I really want this to look like?”

I jumped into a new project, a new relationship, new books, new friend groups. Before I knew it, I was living a brand new life I had never really stopped to consider. I didn’t know what the future would look like. Honestly, I couldn’t see it. So I stayed busy and made one up as I went along.

Well, guess what…I wasn’t happy.