Finding abundance

I haven’t written here in awhile. 

Life has been abundant. 

The past few months have been so full: with fresh beginnings both related to moving from Valencia to Barcelona and not, with settling in and choosing not to settle, with trying to map mysteries while still leaving space for serendipity and surprise, with new responsibilities and leadership and people in my life, with crafting memory boxes to treasure or to seal away of those who have left or of things or people I’ve chosen to leave behind.

These months, I have been making space to live, to reflect, to build. Not so much to write. There is some writing that I can dash off in a flash; it’s rote and requires next to no thought and I was a professional writer, after all. There is also the kind that has heart and mind and soul woven through it. I want more of the latter, in writing and in life.

Life can go through momentous shifts so swiftly.

One year ago, I was in one of the most challenging periods of my life. I’d been in a car accident a few weeks earlier, in the passenger seat as we crashed head-on into a tree directly on my side. I suffered whiplash and herniated cervical discs and a concussion, and ended up on medical leave for more than two months due to dizziness, inability to be on screens for any length of time, and severe pain, among other symptoms. I was dealing with this while in a new city and country, with support of new friends but far from my closest friends and family.

Simultaneously, in separate situations, I dealt with the disappearing act of a person close to me and events that threatened both my integrity and the life I wanted.

Those several months felt like an eternity, accentuated by the severe effects of the car crash.

As long as that time dragged on, it feels like a bad dream. Did it really happen? It did, but it thankfully it only lives on in the lessons learned (and the neck pain/migraines from herniated discs) and the gratefulness to be in a better place.

I’m in a different life.

Living in Barcelona, working at a different job at a different company, trading an ático con terraza for a first floor piso with high ceilings, and not leaving too much air for would-be ghosts of the past to haunt the present. While I still go to physical therapy or other treatment almost weekly for lingering effects of the car crash, health is good.

One year later and a million miles away.

Health is probably the most obvious foundational part of life that can shift dramatically in no time at all. But relationships, finances, jobs, a job offer or an entrance to a university or a prestigious program, a happenstance meeting - they can all change one’s life in next to no time.

The good changes are much more likely to happen when we do things, when we step into the unknown, when we take chances, when we veer from the routine. There’s less certainty and more risk in going this path, but for me at least, I’d rather regret trying and failing, loving and losing, than being afraid to do either.

I take the abundant mindset over the scarcity one.

Life is abundant and oh-so-wonderful.