Photo challenge # 5 – safe in port

“A ship is safe in harbor, but that’s not what ships are built for.”
John A Shedd

I have come to the last post in my series on new chapters in my life which brings me up to the present time and my current ‘new beginnings’.

A new chapter in life often begins by being in transition, a period between the old and new.
That transition involves letting go of the old life, restructuring, then moving on to the new.

Even though it has been over three and a half years since the ending of my marriage of 37 years, it is only three months past our marital financial settlement, and only three weeks since our house has legally become my home.

Photo challenge # 4 – Community activism

New chapters in life generally have phases. Letting go of the old life. A transition tug between old and new. Then moving onto the new.

Sometimes it does not happen like that.

Such was the day when they began logging the valley opposite to where we lived. I was thrust into this next era which spanned ten years, eight with intense pressure. Family life was put aside as we moved into a world of politics, fighting for justice, defending free speech and questioning our own sanity.

Photo Challenge # 3 – New love – motherhood

 

This is my third post of a challenge to post a picture with a story every day for five days. I am writing on the theme of my new beginnings at times of change in my life.

I had planned to be a career woman. That idea came completely unstuck in 1980 when my first baby was born. From the moment I first held him, and for the next eighteen years until 1998 when my first child left home, my focus and drive became my family. I wrote a poem about this in 2013. I am not much of a poet but to me it captures the essence of this next phase of my life – motherhood …

Photo Challenge # 2 – Transition from childhood to adulthood

This is my second post of a challenge to post a picture with a story every day for five days. I am writing on the theme of my new beginnings at times of change in my life.

Adulthood

The second big change in my life was becoming an adult, moving from that secure world of a supportive family base and community, out into the scary world of reality.

Rather than one single change, the period from 1971 to 1979, ages 17 to 26, were for me years of transition as I slowly took the steps away from my old life, and moved into my new life. Almost everything about my old life disappeared. Those nine years were years of excitement. Yet at the same time they were filled with uncertainty and, at times, sadness.

Photo Challenge # 1 – New Beginnings – School

A blogging friend sent me a challenge to post a picture with a story every day for five days. She felt I was ‘facing a sea change’ which is true as I am indeed facing new beginnings on many fronts. I have faced new beginnings and challenges before. I decided that I would rise to this writing challenge by making it a theme of my new beginnings and looking back at those times of change in my life.

School

The first big change in my life was starting school. It was that first scary step away from my parents as it meant that I would now be without them for six hours a day, five days a week. Nevertheless, the years from age five to age seventeen – which represent my school years – were a very stable period in my life.

Home again

I have returned home again, having spent the best part of the last two months, with my siblings, caring for my mother in her final days.

Sometimes I wonder whether I am actually returning home, or whether I am leaving home behind me. I am feeling a quadruple loss. As well as losing my mother, I am leaving behind my siblings, my extended family, my hometown and the community I grew up in. To leave all that behind me, to return home alone has been difficult. What am I coming home to?

Two days after my mother’s funeral, I took a phone call from my solicitor to say that the marital settlement was complete. You may remember that papers were signed earlier this year. From that signing date, the actual process to untangle our various investments and loans took a few more months. Now the process was finally over.

I was very sad that I never got to share that moment with my mother. However, only days before she slipped away, I did share with her my dreams for my future. That conversation had made her relaxed, and she gave me a smile. She was happy to know her daughter would soon be on the road to her own life, with a vision of a life of peace and contentment.

Now, three weeks later, here I am.
Home again.

Yet, it will all be so different …

My home is now actually my home.
My finances are now my own to manage.
The business settlement period is drawing to a close.
I am finally free of the marital entanglement.

Four major changes in my life, and with the death of my mother, that makes five.
My life will be so different.

So today I am clinging on to that vision, that vision I shared with my mother, that vision for my life being one of peace and contentment.

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