Navigating the River

Author

Sharon Welch
April 28, 2024

I have spent the last few weeks connecting to friends, family, professional contacts, places, and activities that I left behind for several months to travel. I have been pressure-testing familiar parts of me that had gone into hibernation while I ventured out of my comfort zone to explore new and emerging parts of myself. It has been an unexpectedly bittersweet process.

I have experienced the joy of reconnecting to the people and things I love “back home.” It’s like Christmas morning every time I revitalize those parts of me. This has been the part I expected and looked forward to when I returned. What has surprised me a bit - something I did not necessarily think of or prepare for - are the ways in which I don’t fit back in as comfortably as I did before I left. These have been a bit of a shock to the system. There is a saying to the effect that once you step out of a river, you can never step back into the same river - different person, different river. In other words, life goes on, and people continue to grow and move forward as well. So it really should have been expected that home is not a time capsule that sits in suspended animation while I continue my own journey of exploration and growth.

But it wasn’t. So as I bump up against the ways that I have changed - and the ways that I have remained unchanged - it can be a little disconcerting to find that the world I was familiar with has done the same. I feel a bit disoriented when I find one of those pockets where what I expected to find is now different than how I remember. It brings up feelings of self-criticism, frustration, confusion and hurt even. And when I zoom out and think about the bigger picture, it can pile on even more of those feelings when I play out how this might also happen if and when I attempt to return to the “new” connections I made while I was traveling.

That anxiety of experiencing the loss of connection or comfort that can come with growing and moving forward on my path can become a seductive argument for staying in place, muting myself, holding myself back, and suppressing my curiosity about myself and the world in trade for guaranteed belonging and acceptance in my comfort zone. And as delicious as that feels in the moment, it feels pretty icky as I write it and have to look at it in black and white.

Everything changes. It’s just nature. Even in the purely physical sense, we as human beings regenerate every single cell in our bodies every seven years. We are quite literally different people every seven years. Wild, right? We cannot help but grow and change. And when we artificially try to game the system by suppressing growth and change just so we can cling on to something that feels comfortable, nobody wins. We end up miserable deep down, and the people around us feel that too. Change, loss, letting go . . .all part of our uniquely human experience.

They say that people and things come into our lives for a reason, a season or a lifetime. But nobody knows which of those it will be until we have hindsight. In the meantime, we have to grant ourselves the grace and vulnerability to be engaged in every single one of those - knowing full well that there will assuredly be a mixed bag of joy and loss. We have to embrace it all or we risk losing ourselves. Our fear of the icky side effects of change and growth requires us to deny our natural and inalienable right and responsibility to be our fully expressed selves. That is the bigger loss in the grand scheme of things.

I am so happy to be back in this place I call home. Just as I am wistful about having left the other places where I created a sense of home as well. More and more, home for me is less a physical place than a feeling created by the connections and experiences I am creating as I explore myself and the world. I am so grateful for everything and everyone who has flowed along the river with me for a reason, a season or a lifetime. That gratitude overshadows the sense of loss or grief for the parts that floated away on their own paths along the way.

===Looking for more ways to connect and go deeper into these topics?===

1. I have a podcast! It's called A Brave Journey - Reclaiming Your Identity After 40. I would love to hear what you think - and if you like it, you can subscribe on pretty much any of your favorite podcast platforms like Apple and Spotify.

2. For the first time in quite a long time - I am opening some spaces in my Year-long Journey To Brave and my 12-Week Transformation programs. These are opportunities to go deeper with me one on one to get specific and intentional about re-imagining and re-curating your own belief system and authentic identity. I have missed this level of connection with you - and if you have been missing it too, reach out!

Until next time! Be kind to yourself, be curious, and be BRAVE!

—Sharon

I am so grateful for the time you take to read this blog. It means the world to me! I have also made it possible to share a virtual cup of coffee with me if you are so inclined! 😉 ☕️