A new journey

The past two weeks have been filled with these periods of personal and spiritual growth. I realize that much of the growth is postpartum hormone inspired, but hormone induced or not, it is happening. In the midst of the deeper days of postpartum inspired loneliness, I've been doing a little soul searching and spiritual deepening. As this is happening, I also notice that the theme of spirituality and emotional connections and callings has been ever present. One lazy afternoon I joined my neighbors for a discussion of gardening and landscape design and the conversation then flows to how one finds their spiritual side and brings it into the everyday. Then at church, classes on everyday spirituality and contemplative prayer open up doors for me. I feel like I am being talked directly to in these 2 Sundays and in the course of a week, I find that walls that have been in place since I was a child are beginning to be knocked down and I find myself having late night conversations with my husband about these new inspirations, about the push to find my place and the organic nature of which these thoughts have made themselves known to me.

They've presented themselves in bits and pieces and I find myself wondering if I'm crazy or truly postpartum, but then my husband tells me that he thinks the ideas are crazy but they make sense him and he understands.

So in the midst of the discussion of how one becomes a more spiritually centered individual, I realize that the paths that I have been walking the past 15 years are extensions of what was expected of me, of what I was successful at doing at that time in my life and also what I thought I enjoyed. My love of the natural world and the conservation of it led me to pursue 2 degrees and then to fight to get the jobs that I hoped would allow me to help to make the world a little bit better and to feel fulfilled. But I've learned that the only times in the almost decade I worked that I felt truly happy were few and far between. I spent most of the time bored, longing for something inspiring to happen. I kept thinking that I'd find that time that I felt happy, challenged and creative all at the same time. I longed for something that I felt passionate about. Plus, I had lots of time and money into schooling and I could not just leave that behind.

Then on a recent Sunday morning, the discussion of paths to finding a deeper spiritual self brought up the need for a deeper connection to nature to be able to progress having a deeper spiritual self. Once this was established, then a person could create the spiritual bonds between other people. Listening to this, I felt as if she was talking only to me. I realized that all the years of me studying and working in environmental science had established for me that deeper knowledge and connection with the natural world and that I had needed to go to that level to be able to move to the next level of my own spirituality. Some people need to take walks outside instead of turning on the television, but I needed to delve into the natural world more to be able to move on. With that thought in mind, I realized that I now needed to allow myself to put my education and career behind me and allow myself to walk forth to connect with people at a higher spiritual level than I was finding working in the environmental sector.....

With that in mind, I am exploring the possibility of a new career. More to come as I wrangle with these new thoughts and spend some time with my current responsibilities.