The Crossroads

Crossroads. I've had a lot of them. I thought going away to college would have been one of the most major, along with getting my first job in the "real world." However, I was wrong. Very wrong. The last time I took part in these Sometimes Sweet journal prompts, I was at the beginning of the greatest crossroad of my life.

Photography by J. Poling

I had no idea that six months later, my mom's life would come to an abrupt end, leaving my family devastated and leaving me without the one woman who had helped me through it all. The next couple months are all a blur. I continued going back to an unhealthy relationship. I was fragile, unsure, and unsteady. What the hell had just happened?

Eventually, I started to break away the chains that were holding me down. I was tired of being numb. I was tired of being hurt. I was tired of giving the power away. It was time to take that power back and live the life I was meant to live. Somehow, my mom's death propelled me into manifesting the life I had always wanted... the happiness I had always wanted.

In December of 2012, I moved to San Diego. Something that once had just been a dream, was a reality. It's in San Diego that life really started to take off for me. It's where I found peace, meaning, self-love, and inevitably, it's where I found my purpose. It's a huge landmark of my life that I will always look back on because it symbolizes so much of what life is all about to me.

I've since moved to the East Coast where I am pursuing my purpose and my passion as a life coach. So, I guess in a sense, this is another crossroad for me. It's another new pathway. One with challenges and speed bumps and a-ha moments. But the greatest thing about this new pathway, is the peace it brings. To know without a doubt that I'm on the path I'm meant to be on.

And I guess that is what the crossroads of our lives are for. We can't always control our circumstances. But we can control the way we react. We can control the meaning we assign to those circumstances. Eventually, they lead us to the exact path we are meant to be on.