I’m keenly aware of the cycles of life these days.
It wasn’t always this way. I spent much of my young adult life blissfully unaware, just riding the wind wherever it took me.

Yet this kind of freedom is deceiving. It feels free—until it comes crashing down without warning. And then there is no plan for dealing with it effectively. The result is usually to avoid or ignore, to move forward on the path that seems to come with the least amount of pain.

Like when my mother was diagnosed with cancer for a second time—a liver metastasis from her colon cancer a few years earlier. I was getting ready to graduate college and start graduate school. My adult life was ready to begin, and yet I found myself moving back home. I didn’t have a plan for that.

And then two years later, when the cancer came back again. And two years after that, when it took over her body. At 27 and just four years into a young marriage, there was no plan for dealing with that either.

The ups and downs of this haphazard path take a toll over time. For me, it resulted in a debilitating case of adrenal fatigue, which forced me to slow to a crawl.

I’ve never gotten fully back up to speed. I doubt I ever will. That’s how incapacitating a lack of awareness can be.

In that forced slowing down, however, I realized I had to find a different way, because what I had been doing clearly wasn’t working. So I spent years studying and practicing holistic nutrition, mindfulness, and self-healing. I attended the “Woman Within” weekend training and joined a local empowerment circle. I started a regularly writing practice.

Slowly, a shift began to happen. New insights began to emerge. A plan began to form.

KEEP READING: https://www.elephantjournal.com/2017/03/three-steps-to-keep-moving-forward-when-panic-creeps-in/