This Journey

 

This Journey

How do we define one person’s journey?  Do we define it when they tell their story?  What words do we use as we give or don’t give importance to it?  Is it objective or subjective?

Maybe, there is a need for some definition.  “Journey” is a noun with a number of meanings that are mostly geared toward travel, but my journey isn’t about travel.  It is a “passage or progress from one stage to another.” At almost 56, it has been a wandering, adventure, passage, or even a pilgrimage. Yet, when we are hearing someone’s story, are we expected to be objective or subjective?  Dictionary.com defines “objective” as an adjective meaning to “not [be] influenced by personal feelings, interpretations, or prejudice; based on facts; unbiased.”  As humans, are we actually able to be true to the definition?  Or are we subjective?  Returning to dictionary.com, “subjective” is an adjective meaning “placing excessive emphasis on one's own moods, attitudes, opinions, etc.; unduly egocentric.”

This Inspired Journey is my journey. It is my story to tell.  I am letting you know from the beginning that I will be writing and speaking subjectively. I am not that good of a human being that I can look at my own story, journey, and tell it without bias. How you read or listen to my story, journey, will be up to you.  I hope that what you read, or when you listen to the podcast, creates a space where it is safe to discuss, to question.  You may find yourself reaching into your story and making connections.  

Why step out there and put my story into a blog or the impending podcast?  I have often compared this journey to a roller coaster.  I have had some amazing highs and some devastating lows.  On the seventh of March in 2022, my world crashed into one of those devastating lows, probably my lowest to date.  Sarah, my closest and longest friend, died from heart failure after routine gallbladder surgery. There is a lot to this story, but for this, what you need to know is that we were made for each other.  We had retired from teaching careers the previous June together and had planned to enjoy retirement together.  How we did that was starting a livestream on Facebook titled, 2 Moms and a Jeep. It is a public page and you can check it out.  One of the things that we had discussed was taking this to the next level and creating a podcast.  I did not seek out therapy until more than a year after when I was finding myself home, alone.  The greater part of that tribe (some 99% of them) were still working full time in education at the school that I retired from.  I started to feel the loss more and more because I was no longer busy or surrounded by my support system.  Through conversations with my amazing therapist who had allowed me to waffle through my ADHD brain and eventually land where I was supposed to, I had to start a podcast.  At first, I avoided having any connection to the loss of my north star focusing on being a pediatric cancer survivor from 1980 and there being nothing that I could find, out there for us in the means of discussions and forums that would draw us in.  Through the grief process and getting to the last question, “how can I incorporate and honor, celebrate Sarah in my daily life?”  The blog has been created to be the precursor to the podcast and at times a follow up.

My hope for this is that someone out there will smile, feel included, feel a spark that motivates positive change, that something being felt or experienced is validated, and that there is some insight into their personal journey.  Until next time, what inspires you?

PS...look for the first podcast episode to drop on the 15th of September!