Life Changing Times

For a change, I don’t know where…

My life in one sentence – jump off a cliff and trust I will fly and land in the right place. And not crash. I know – two sentences

The cliffs change, the destination changes – the overwhelm that builds up thick and fast leading to the cliff jump does not.

I use the term ‘cliff jump’ because it literally feels like that – the journey to the cliff, the anxiety building, tinged with excitement, moving in and out of fear the closer I get.

The ‘fuck it’ getting stronger and stronger, the internal and external pressure becoming almost intolerable, the drive to break free overriding the fear.

The closer I get to the cliff, the louder the noise becomes. People constantly at me, the myriad of responsibilities I deal with daily start to crescendo. The to do lists, the demands, the requests, the reminders, the duties – they get louder and louder.

When I get out of the car and start walking to the cliff, the knot in my stomach is the size of a football, but the excitement is larger. The taste of freedom is getting stronger, the feeling of soaring through the wind is joyful. The doubts are shouting at me – ‘you have no wings’ ‘you can’t fly’ ‘you will crash’.

I stand at the edge and look up, not down. I don’t look behind, I lift my arms and I choose to feel the joy, the excitement, the pure exhilaration of being free. The noise is there, the fear, the anxiety – but I let them be.

Then I jump. And that stomach clenching moment where I don’t know if I will drop and crash, or if the wings will come and carry me. The older I get, the more I have jumped and the more I trust the wings will come.

The feeling when I feel the air under my wings, when I feel myself being lifted up and I am soaring is indescribable. The moment I’d pure joy, the freedom, the leaving behind all the noise and exploding with possibility and adventure.

I soar and I don’t know where I will land. I know now from experience that when I land it will not be easy, it will require me to adapt, to embrace change. It will need a lot of effort to make it work. But fuck it, and fuck it again – I jumped. I made the change. I broke free.

I’ve done this when I’ve left relationships, sometimes with a child on one hip, carting a plastic bag with my belongings. When I’ve left jobs without another to go to. When I’ve moved country, trusting the new one will provide what we need. When I thought cancer would kill me and I threw myself into the treatment.

And now. I’ve written the first draft of my book. I will be on television in 2 weeks. I have a fantastic team helping me push myself out there on social media. This has, arguably, been in the making for a large part of my adult life.

I haven’t yet jumped, I’m driving towards the cliff. The noise is getting deafening and I’m dipping in and out of overwhelm – the car is going slowly, but it’s moving and there is no stopping as it’s in motion. Perhaps train is a better analogy. Except I’m driving it.

And terrified as I am, I can’t wait for the jump. Getting here, as always, has been a mix of rocky, hard, fun, pushing myself out of my comfort zone, doubting myself 100 times a day, feeling the passion and the drive. The latter is starting to win and get stronger each day.

So watch this space. To date, whenever I have aligned my heart and mind and gone for something, it’s always happened. Perhaps not in the way I have envisioned – you never know where you will land when you jump off the cliff, but it’s happened.

And now I’m putting myself out there – topless, shiny faced, raw, talking about the deepest and funniest things, writing. I’ve even set up a YouTube channel. Well, the lovely team helping me have.