It’s been over two months since I wrote my last e-zine to you. It isn’t easy writing something redemptive from the land of the lost especially since I’d planned to avoid this place. I had every intention of sailing over this uncertainty (and grief) into my new business adventure when my long-time career of facilitating the Career Assessment Program (CAP) ended almost one and a half years ago. Apparently God had other plans for me.

After a year of heart-wrenching health troubles our dear Papa died. Papa Bird, our pet name for our once barrel-chested father, was reduced to fragile skin and bones near his end. The same night Papa Bird flew Home our son graduated from Grade twelve. I poured myself into the arduous task of a funeral, helping our only son get enrolled and then - all too quickly - moved into university. Grief and loss around my father, my vastly changed role with our son, and my peri-menopausal upheavals plummeted me into the dark, heavy world of the lost.

Swimming in the lake on hot summer days helped to lighten my grey world. After one such lovely swim my husband and I were driving home past our local college. Unexpectedly, fresh grief grabbed me. The Career Assessment Program (CAP) I’d facilitated at that college for 15 years – giving me a good living, adding meaning to my life working with thousands of participants – was really gone! I was being called to attend to yet more grief in my life.

After opening this door to grief I’d denied for over a year, recurring dreams began troubling my sleep. In the dream I am in the college feeling anxious and harried. I am supposed to be leading another CAP but cannot find my room or my materials. Worst of all no one at the college seems to know I am supposed to be leading this program but me.

My grief came knocking. All my well-made plans for storm-free sailing from the demise of my CAP workshops into my own career consulting business via my website www.yourlifework.com could not keep this visitor from my step. I am so grateful I finally said, “Enter.” Through grieving the loss of my cherished CAP career and listening to my dream’s wisdom I see now that unknowingly, I’d clung to CAP when I’d started www.yourlifework.com and my consulting business.

Not having grieved or let go of CAP, I began yourlifework.com with a career-focus clinging to my career-change expertise (although something niggled at me from the beginning). I then enrolled in a ‘Creative Career Consulting Certificate’ course to give my new career consulting business more ‘credibility’ – or so my fearful thinking went at that time (although something didn’t feel right). With hindsight I see I didn’t need more certification but rather more time to listen to my deeper truth.

I have to laugh. Over the last year and a half my actions have run contrary to the sage advice I give to folks in career change. “Give yourself time to grieve; to be; to sift and sort,” I’d said. “Don’t rush into anything; be it work, training or courses. Give yourself time or likely you’ll grasp at what’s familiar out of fear before you have time to explore what you love.”

Now, when people ask me, “What are you doing?” I say, “I’m taking time for myself.” Every morning, first thing, I get up and write three pages. I sit and be. I’ve taken myself on day, and half day retreats into nature. Bit by bit, I work on repainting our home, cleaning, creating sacred space for myself.

Recently I dreamed I am once again in the college. I’m in the cafeteria for lunch and decide not to sit with all the suited professionals I know. Instead I go looking for my friend, one of the most creative people I know, so I can show her my sacred space (which looks exactly like my office at home I recently repainted, organized and claimed as my writing space). Through taking time to grieve my much-loved CAP’s demise I have found a space in my home and heart where my writing creativity is taking root.

I am so very grateful. By taking time for myself; sitting in the not knowing and grief; listening to my inner promptings and my God - truths about my path and creative expression are being revealed to me. I am not saying I am totally clear where this is all taking me but I am trusting my Guidance more so than ever before in my life.

So my friends, if you’ve been parted from something you cherish can you give yourself the time to be with the grief, the not knowing… to listen to the inner promptings beneath the loss?

Warm blessings, Until next month…

Blessings to you all,

Create the Life and Work You Love!

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Remember: Be gentle with yourself. Listen to your guidance. Navigate through life and work with more peace and acceptance.

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© Copyright 2007 by Teresa Proudlove of Your Lifework Enterprises • yourlifework.com