Crossing over.

I write a lot about being brave. Some people might think, wow, she is never afraid. (insert nervous laugh here). That is hardly the case. There is no bravery without being afraid. And that’s what makes being brave even more miraculous!

In anxious times, it can feel like I’m “on the ledge.” And I often heard, even repeated, oh, I have to talk myself off the ledge. But I realize now that I have to forget about the ledge. If you talk yourself down, the ledge is still there, with no real answers. So what is the answer? I started looking at the different situations not as ledges, but as bridges.

A bridge. Still a bit of the unknown, but a choice.

And it’s all about the choices we make. We can choose to stay or to cross over. We are offered these bridges as gifts. It’s not always easy to dare to cross over, to get through, to get beyond… but it is a choice. So many rivers to cross. And with one step, we choose… we decide to love, to be loved…
we decide that we are actually worthy of the giving and receiving… we choose to live…and we cross over… we cross over to the beauty that lies ahead. What a journey!

Paul Cezanne wrote to his brother about the Pont des Trois Sautets — “There, there is more freshness…” More than a century later, I crossed this bridge to begin my new life in France, my fresh new life. People often ask me, weren’t you afraid to move there? The decision was not a ledge, I say, it was a bridge.