But What if I Fly?

It’s been a weird year and it’s only April.

After two months of closing bank accounts and dealing with estate matters, my sister, kids, and I laid my mother to rest by scattering her ashes on my father’s grave. After 41 years, my parents have finally been reunited. The entire experience was a bit of a mind fuck. I didn’t know my dad even had a grave site until last year, and the site doesn’t have a headstone. While I know his spirit is long gone, but there’s something so sad about my dad being all along with no visitors and no marker that acknowledges he’s even there. It sounds so terribly lonely. But now my mom is there to keep him company, and my kids used their ingenuity to makeshift a marker until we can have one built. They’re the best.

While this has been a stressful and draining experience, there have been some positives. I’ve been spending more time talking with my older sister after years of losing touch. Our lives always took us in different directions, so it’s been so nice to chat more and reconnect. I was fortunate to have my best friends supporting me during an insane time. My husband stepped up to help me any way that he could and that wasn’t easy. The combination of grief, guilt, homesickness, and loneliness for my friends made me impossible to be around. I was easily angered, I was snappy, but he stayed the course with patience and grace. I had always known marriage to be isolating during hard times, but I’ve learned all about what it means to live those vows as I was definitely for worse and he helped me get back to for better.

But the loss of my mother hasn’t been the only change. The winters are long and roads are closed often, leading to days of isolation. My husband works an erratic shifts as part of his job, and when he was on nights I barely saw him. I was lonely and felt unable to do my job to the best of my ability. I loved my team but the commute, the job stress, and the growing costs of that commute were weighing me down. I felt like I wasn’t doing anything well and I started making changes.

I started going to the gym more. I hate how I look so I need to lose the weight. I’ve been working with Noom and now working out. I signed up for the Million Reasons Run for the fourth year and I’m raising money for Stollery Children’s Hospital (click the link to donate!) I cut out all of the junk food and focused on really being the person I was when I was happiest in my life. It’s been a game changer. Ontario winters are gloomier than Alberta winters, so it was what I needed to shake the doldrums.

Also, and more importantly, I went back to therapy. My entire life has changed in a year. I moved across the country. I left a job I truly loved and wanted to stay at forever. I got married to the love of my life. My mom died. All sorts of things have changed and it was wearing me down. I love my husband so much but he’s not a therapist. He’s my biggest supporter but I needed more to be healthy. So I made a choice to go back to therapy and it’s been a game changer. I feel heard all of the time. I’m learning to communicate my emotions better. I feel lighter. I’ve always been a huge advocate for therapy and I’m so glad that I made this choice for myself.

Finally, the last step I took was get a new job. I spent a long time thinking about what it was about my job with Google that made me so happy to go to work every day. It was the people, the culture, that feeling of being valued. It was building my own schedule and that feeling you got when you spent weeks with an employee and it clicked and they bought in to the Google vision. I wasn’t feeling that. There were positives, but I wasn’t experiencing that excitement to go to work. So when an opportunity to join a new company doing something completely new popped up, your girl was all over it. I work hybrid remote so I have more work life balance. I’m doing something totally different, so I feel challenged. But most importantly, I feel excited. I’m excited by what I’m doing and excited to develop my skills and excel in this role. The better pay helps, but for me it’s all about learning something new and discovering new things about myself. I feel rejuvenated in a way I haven’t felt since I started at Google. I’ll miss everyone at my old job, but I’m so happy that I made the move. Not to mention my view from my home office is pretty great lol.

It’s been a weird year, but also a wild ride. The lows have been really low, but there’s also been some incredible highs that have kept me sustained. Those highs keep me hungry for what’s next, and optimistic about the future while I finally start to feel like where I am is where I’m meant to be.