Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes....

I have been giving some thought lately to my current life situation. Being recently divorced (December) after 29 years of marriage and after moving out at the end of September, much of my daily experience has been different for me than it has been for many years. My assignment at work has changed dramatically as the school district has changed the delivery of special education evaluation services and I find myself in a single location after a career of being able to come and go as I please. Thank goodness it's in a building where the principal is a smart, reasonable, and at time very funny man who has the interests of the children paramount in everything that happens here. It is a population that I have not spent a great deal of time with, and it provides me with a learning experience that feels revitalizing for my career. I was discouraged and ready to hang it up this time last year.

I live in the city now, after living in the suburbs since 1979, in a house that belongs to someone else and has been established for many years. I am the outsider moving in and have had to be mindful about my impact with the others. It's only now beginning to feel like home to me, but I think that's more a sense of familiarity more than anything else. Don't get me wrong, I feel accepted and welcome but it's just not mine. Sure, I have placed some of my "stuff" around but it'll still be some time before I feel like I'm home.

I have always known that the only constant in life is change. It took me a few years to get up the courage to face the difficulties in my marriage (and the reasons I was the way I was). It took two years of therapy while I was putting my children through a very difficult time for which I still feel awful about. I think often about what I need to do to help repair some of the damage I inflicted. (The guilt surfaces...) I believe I am doing so, and it makes me feel good about all the changes I have been through. I needed to take this journey to begin to grow again, and I can honestly say to myself that I have taken the right path. The journey never ends.