“If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.” ~Lao Tzu

Sometimes it’s totally obvious to us that we need to set our sails in a different direction. Maybe it’s a way of being that isn’t working, like the stance that everyone is out to get us, or no one cares, or everyone leaves or cheats, or the world is a cold and unsafe place. It could be a relationship that we know we can’t save or a job that just doesn’t feel right and hasn’t for a long time. When those are the kinds of shifts we’re facing, it’s not a surprise to us when we feel depressed, scared, defeated or totally paralyzed. We expect to feel dreadful during a breakup, or when we’re fired from a job, or faced with the reality that we’ve alienated the people who love us most with our own actions. What surprises most people, though, is the feeling of sadness or anxiety that can creep up around positive changes.

A couple of years ago, a guy who takes my class came up to me one night and asked if I had a minute to talk. He told me he had this job opportunity that was very exciting to him. He’d be making more money, and he’d also have more free time, and the best part was that he felt very inspired by the kind of work he’d be doing. He felt stuck because his current job was one he’d had for years, and he was used to the non-stop pace and high pressure, the lack of any kind of down time, and the boredom he felt most days. Then he told me he wasn’t sure what he should do. So I just repeated back to him what he’d said to me and we started laughing, because really, the choice seems obvious, right? But you have to be ready and willing to step into a new life, a new adventure, a new way of being. He told me he wasn’t sure he’d know what to do with all the time he’d have. The unknown is a funny thing. We can fill it with all kinds of ideas, or we can open our arms and say yes (which he did).

I know women who longed to have babies, only to feel confused, guilty and ashamed when the baby came and along with all the feelings of thankfulness and joy, was also the dawning realization that the old life was over. Long lunches with girlfriends, sleeping in, walking out the door without having to think about anything except their phones, wallets and sunglasses, lazy Sundays reading the paper, nights out with their spouses on a whim, gone. The new role of mother feeling overwhelming and confusing and like this huge responsibility of being enough, weighing down upon them. It’s all normal. It doesn’t lessen one iota the joy, gratitude and excitement around welcoming this little person you may have been waiting to meet for quite sometime, but it’s the death of your old life in many ways, and the birth not just of your child, but of you as a parent, and of a whole new life that includes the well-being of someone else. A baby’s first birthday is a milestone for most parents, too, because it’s the celebration of the beginning of a new chapter now that everyone has picked up the thread of the new plot. Most parents have also discovered by then that the joy, love, fulfillment, connection and absolute awe you have for your little person or people far outweigh any long lunches you might be missing, or hours of sleep.

Sometimes people experience sadness as they start to fall in love after having had their hearts broken. The heady, intoxicating feelings for the new person, intermingled with sadness about what’s in the rear-view mirror because falling in love is the definitive sign that the old chapter has come to a close. Human beings are funny, some more than others. We can never be sure of anything. We come to a fork in the road, and maybe it’s a good one, and maybe it’s been forced upon us but you can only go one way, right? I mean, you could just stand there, looking at the fork for an interminable time, but that’s really just a slow death. You have to keep moving at some point, and you can only go the way you go. You don’t get to take two paths simultaneously and then choose which one feels better, so for many people, the doubt and questions can be crippling. They’re walking and wondering and looking back over their shoulders. They’re circling back to examine that fork one more time even if the chosen path feels pretty great; the what ifs and relentless imaginary scenarios can take a lot of energy if you let them.

The thing is to allow all your feelings. So many people reject the stuff that isn’t wanted and wonder what’s wrong with them for having feelings that conflict with the happiness and the gratitude, but it makes sense. Everything is always changing, and one day we’ll exhale for the last time, and we know that, even if we don’t want to know that. So we embrace something or someone, but even as we do, somewhere inside we know, this too will change. Maybe it will change for the better, maybe it will be beautiful, but nothing can be grasped and that’s difficult to acknowledge. I look at my children and I’m so blown away by them and so inspired, so thankful to watch them grow and learn and open, and yet part of me thinks I’d love to just slow it down and stretch it out. Get to do this part when they’re four and almost-seven for three years instead of one. Another part of me knows the next part will be just as amazing, and that if you parent well, you do it in a way that teaches your children to soar from the nest when they’re ready. The beautiful parts slip through our fingers like sand, just as the heart-wrenching parts do. It keeps shifting and changing, and if you let it, the mourning and the melancholy can inspire you to take nothing for granted; to be present and engaged and aware of every single gift you’re given, because you don’t get to own the moments, you just get to experience them.

Sending you love and the hope that you experience it all,

Ally Hamilton

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