In life, when it feels as though everything is falling apart, it’s actually falling together.
But not in the same way you thought it would…in better ways.
It may seem like we’re getting farther away from our goals - our manifestations - because we’re experiencing more challenges, more bills, losing friends left and right. But as counter intuitive as this may seem, these initiations are happening to test us and teach us to move into our higher self.
Want to increase your earning capacity?
BAM!
Get an onslaught of unexpected bills.
Want to actually pursue being an entrepreneur?
BAM!
Get fired abruptly from your safe 9-5.
Want to really move into a committed relationship?
BAM!
Get dumped by the flakey uncommittal person you’ve been seeing.
You catching my drift?
You see, we can dream up an amazing set of goals and lifestyle and how we THINK we’re going to have and the easy-breezy way we’re going to slide into it but that isn’t how it works.
You can shorten the gap by bringing awareness that this is happening FOR YOU not to you, and that falling apart ACTUALLY means falling together.
Story time!
In spring 2018, I thought I had it all…well, mostly. I started a great job back in healthcare after leaving a toxic and depleting job that I loved, I had a great boyfriend, and I moved into a room in a cute apartment with new roommates. And after what felt like a chaotic year of job losses, unemployment and unstable living situations, I felt as though I had finally begun to get some stable ground underneath me and I could finally begin my life in Vancouver.
Just when I thought I was finally settled enough and able to truly manifest my dream life in my dream city, JUST KIDDING, the universe came in to shake things up. And shake things up it did.
After finally getting in the groove of things with work, one Friday morning before the first long weekend of spring, the office manager called me into her office. And without warning or notice, fired me in one of the most traumatic ways and ended it by saying I was one of the worst receptionists she’s ever met (full disclosure: the next job I got that I had for several years was a reception-based job, so….😉). I remember feeling like a complete and utter failure.
Like, who fails at being a receptionist…without actually trying?!?
I remember just being in shock of what the actual fuck was going on in that moment and reaching out to grab the envelope from the office manager’s outstretched hand, trying to process any response in that moment. I grabbed the envelop with one hand, my other hand still on my coffee mug, as a surge of “HOW DARE YOU DO THAT” washed over me. I shot up and called the office manager a bitch (not my finest moment, but still satisfying to some degree today). I marched out of her undeserved office (she was the aunt of one of the owners), grabbed my stuff and ran out of that office as fast as I could…or as fast as the elevator would come to my floor.
✨the longest wait you’ll ever endure is the wait for an elevator to get you the fuck out of a traumatizing situation✨
I walked down the busy city street towards the subway station, my bag half hanging from my shoulder, coffee and scrunched envelope in one hand, my phone in the other as I angrily sobbed on the phone to my bestie recounting what had just transpired minutes before.
I remember thinking: Can it get any worse than this? 🤷♀️
Once the long weekend commenced and I was back in the tiny room I rented in a cute apartment in the city, Life answered that question for me. I had only been in this tiny room in a cute apartment for two months, this apartment seemed like the upgrade Life was tossing me for my last living situation. It was updated, centrally located, and had two roommates that I was sure would become my friends, like on the show Friends. But that wasn’t the case.
Shortly after I moved in, the other roommate abruptly moved out, leaving me with the roommate who signed the lease on the apartment, aka: the Roommate-in-Charge. Despite what had just happened with losing my job, I instinctually knew I couldn’t let the Roommate-in-Charge know I was unemployed for fear of being unrightfully kicked out. So, for everyday weekday morning, I would get up at the same time as I did when was employed and do my usual routine, but instead of going to work, I would walk 30 minutes down the road to one of two coffeeshops (you gotta rotate them to not appear as unemployed, even though I’m sure the staff eventually caught on), buy a coffee with free refills and scowered the job listings and applied to any job that seemed like a good fit.
I would then follow that up with walking to a nearby park (or in this case, a very park-like cemetery) to read a personal development book (aka: self help book) or conduct a pre-planned phone job interview.
✨ Now, before you go all morbid on me, hear me out: ✨
This cemetery is actually very park like, that rovers over several city blocks, serving as a cut-through for walkers, dog-walkers, mourners and unemployed-sad-people like I was. 😅
And, if you’re ever in need of a cry in public, trust me when I say that no one, and I mean NO ONE, will question you if you’re crying in a cemetery. ✨
Afterwards, I would walk back to my tiny room in the cute apartment in time to cook myself dinner, scroll through Craigslist looking for other places to live, shower and go to bed.
Shower, rinse, repeat the very next day.
Just when I thought life couldn’t get more stressful by losing my job and living in a chaotic living situation, within days of getting fired, I got text-dumped by my long-distance boyfriend. So, now I was back to the big three in life: Looking for place to work, looking for a place to life, and looking for a someone to date (well, sorta but not really since the other two took priority).
It felt as though I was a loser who was losing at life, having to walk everywhere because I couldn’t even afford bus fare. The chaotic living situation came to a head shortly after the textual break up with a massive blow-up argument with the Roommate-in-Charge at 2am over a crying puppy she brought into our no-pet cute apartment and their decision to rent the now-vacant room on Air BnB without my knowledge or consent. I subsequently gave my notice the first week of June to leave by the end of the month. Not ideal, but it had to be done.
The reason why I share this is because, at this time, I truly felt as though I was losing it all, everything I had and was working towards. But that wasn’t the case at all. In all actuality, what I failed to realize in that moment was that everything I once knew that no longer served me on my journey – and into the next chapter - was falling away in order for newer and better things to arrive.
I just couldn’t see it then through the tears and the whoa-is-me’s.
You see, you can’t see the picture when you’re in the frame. And Life has a funny way of bringing you what you want and need when you need it, not when you want it. Shortly after that tower moment - about within a week of accepting the things that had abruptly left my life – I got a good job (one in fact that, up until that time, paid the most), I found another place to live (in the same neighbourhood, cheaper and with a more chill roommate), and the boyfriend? Well, that didn’t arrive at the same time as the job and place to live, but I did meet the guy I ended up dating for a period of time later on during this time. But, if you had told me all of this was going to happen after the shit-storm, I probably wouldn’t have believed you.
So, the next time you find yourself in the midst of a shit-storm in your life, where everything you seem to know and love just abruptly vanishes from your life, don’t take that as a sign from Life that you’re destined for failure – it’s actually quite the opposite. You’re destined for greatness and this is just setting you up for it. Because, after the storm always comes the rainbow…even when the skies get dark and the storm has been ranging for longer than you’d like.
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