Renewal
It seems only fitting I would write this blog post from my hotel room in San Francisco. I traveled to the Bay Area to spend long-overdue quality time with my youngest son, but this trip has shifted in an unexpected way.
The City, as it’s called by locals throughout the Bay Area, holds many fond memories for me. The first being an impromptu rainy afternoon when my dad picked me up from school to ride into the city with him to get his paycheck from work after which we would go Christmas shopping. I recall the moment we turned onto Market Street and I was in awe of the towering high rises. I gazed upwards, enchanted by the splashes of color from the stoplights that gleamed in the tiny beads of raindrops on the windshield. It felt both magical and powerful and, in that moment, my dream called to me. I was a junior in high school and declared to my dad, “I’m going to work in one of those buildings one day.” I didn’t know in what capacity, but I felt a strong tug in my soul, my declaration audibly affirmed, I hear you universe and I am in alignment.
I recently heard this saying, “It takes roughly ten years to become an overnight sensation.” The same is true for manifesting your dream. Once you get a glimpse or sense of your dream, achieving it sets you on your own hero’s journey. Life has a funny way of connecting the dots to our dreams and I can assure you it’s never a straight line. Six years would pass before I accepted an entry-level position with a very small ad agency south Market Street (way before it would ever get its gentrified SoMA moniker).
As I walk the once familiar streets, that do not look familiar at all, I feel like I have bumped into 23-year-old me filled with dreams about her future. I can vividly see the shadow of her: trying to cobble together her writing portfolio, discovering herself in this energized, bustling environment; making friendships that seemed like they would last forever, and like an old photo have faded over time.
The timing of this reflection couldn’t be more perfect. As a young career-minded woman getting started, I didn’t even entertain my life beyond thirty. Marriage, of course; children, sure; becoming older, not on my radar. Milestone ages seemed like a destination, a distant endpoint; now, at sixty, I see that’s not true at all. This is a time represented by a number, and it’s how you perceive that time that matters.
“There’s no age limit on your dream, if there is, it’s likely self-imposed.”
I briefly imagined what would be like to literally bump into my younger self on one of these familiar streets and treat her to lunch, during which I would share where we are today. That one day, she will spend the weekend in one of these fancy hotels in a room with a sweeping view of the city and bay. Her days of rude roommates and living off grilled cheese sandwiches and Captain Crunch cereal will not last forever. I will share how she built a successful career as a copywriter including writing for the iconic Barbie doll. I’ll tell her how she’s a mom to two amazing humans. Would I share the rough part of the journey where she gets laid off from her dream job, and in the same year endures a contentious divorced? Do I tell her how she followed her entrepreneurial instincts and started two businesses only to lose both plus the home she purchased on her own after the divorce? How would she respond hearing she would have to rebuild her life, her credit, and her belief in herself to start over? Do I share how her grit and resilience led her at fifty-plus years old to answer yet another dream and pursue a career outside of writing? Challenges aside, the only thing I would tell her is, “thank you for never giving up.”
The trip was a long-overdue weekend to see my son, and, in the process, I saw me. The experience feels like a fluid then-to-now vision, a mash-up of who I was and who I am and the next leg of the journey that’s currently underway. I can see a common thread from my early dreams to now in that a fluidity. I can see now that the dream isn’t merely a calling, but it’s an inner calling to becoming what my true self is meant to be. In coaching I refer to it as aligning with your north star. Perhaps it is fulfilling a spiritual contract; it whispers to us from time to time to keep us aligned with our purpose.
This website is ushers in a long-awaited restructure of what I previously had and my desire to create something more meaningful, authentic and elevated. I had many thoughts about the transition and transformation and the word renewal came to mind. It is my dream reclaimed, redefined and redesigned.
Here I am at sixty, reimagining the vision of me and daring you to do the same.
It’s never too late, and you’re never too old to live the life you want.
Here’s to renewal.
