Not only is the season opening up and bursting with new life, I am looking around at all the colors in bloom, grass growing and trees budding, it's the time of year when we shed our winter layers and get out of "hiding" and re-energize. We get to grow up to the sun just like nature does. Because of vaccinations, this spring feels a lot different than last year for me. This spring brings more possibilities. It may not look like life before Covid, but it certainly doesn't look like this time last year when we all go the memo "everything is cancelled, stay tuned..."
I feel we have a responsibility to take this opportunity and "grow" with it. We have been given a second chance at creating the life we'd like. We have had a long year of mulling things over, noticing what's missing, noticing what's not working, being surprised by what you have come to discover about yourself, your lifestyle. Maybe the go-go-go of pre-Covid world is something you are glad to leave behind, and as you re-establish your social life, you will be more discerning about when and where you engage? Maybe you have realized that since you do have a second chance, you are not going to waste any more time on things that don't matter or on relationships that have run their course?
Years ago, when my daughter, Natalie, got cancer as an infant, everything in my life changed abruptly and forever. It was a time when I realized who my real friends were. The people who showed up for me and my family made all the difference in the world. After six months of hospitalization, I wasn't the same person. I couldn't even do the same job I had before she got sick. I rewrote my next chapters because I wanted different things.
I feel like this time of year, full of hope, color, lightness, longer days, nicer weather--brings a world of optimism, things to look forward to and opportunity. Seize the season, count your blessings that you and I are those people who get to rewrite our next chapters and make them exactly how we want them to be. We get to use this as pivoting point in our lives to appreciate what we have been given and make the best of it. We have a "second chance" in a way, and we have a unique opportunity to honor what that means. Life is not the same as it was pre-Covid, and neither are we. Let's celebrate what we know now and make our lives even more precious.