This Is Your Life

Guest post by Elizabeth Little

This Is Your Life. Really. 

There is no “someday.” If there is an afterlife, it doesn’t matter. 
Not making the most of your life now is spitting in the face of God. 
As an adult, do you ever look back at your time in grade school or high school and think. “Oh my gosh, if I had only known what power I had, how little I had to fear and how much I could have shaped my experience?” That is the way to approach your life now! Things that you think are a big deal now will mellow in time. You have more power to shape your life right now than you credit yourself with. You can laugh at yourself when you feel like a mouse scurrying through a maze because you made the maze.  
Who says you can’t sell everything and move?  
Who says you can’t have two partners? 
Who says children must be raised by a nuclear family? 
Who says you aren’t an artist? 
Who says you can’t sing? 
Who says dinner must be eaten at a table? 
Who gets to tell you how your life should go? 
As my little sister used to tell me every time she refused to follow my directions, “You are not the boss of the mother!” And then she did as she pleased. Be the little sister! 
The mother is energy. Energy is the stuff of life and has no judgement. You are allowed all the energy you need to create your life. Nobody gets to boss your energy.

Your Story 

How do you get a life story? In the beginning you are born into your story with others around you to teach you your character and place. My roll was broadly known as “bad child” which included “mean sister,” “unruly daughter,” and “poor student.”  
As you grow, you get glimpses of other stories and character possibilities. You are allowed to change your narrative and character. All the happenings in your life become a part of your story.  Hard things like death, illness, and despair. Wonderful things like, love, birth, and joy. How these events fold into your life depend on how you have decided to be and live in your story.  I struggled away from my given roll over several years to become a new character who was wicked smart, industrious, and loving. I still carry my “bad girl” origins. It gives me a special understanding of others living their own bad child stories, but it does not damage my current narrative. 

When your story changes.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with any of the stories we’ve lived or characters we have been. For as long as the story is true and fulfilling it is the perfect story. You will know when the story does not fit anymore. There will be a painful growing toward your next life. There is indecision, confusion, and regression. But there is also, epiphany, a feeling of “rightness” and increasing joy to let you know your path is true. 
The character I was living in my second marriage was that of mother, homemaker, wife, and teacher. I had a successful preschool and two wonderful children. My story title was “The Domestic Bliss of the Average American Family.” I enjoyed it for many years until it began to unravel. I began to regret not choosing a deeper relationship with my husband. My husband turned to alcohol rather than me. My daughter showed signs of stress and withdrew from the family story. I began to see my preschool business as a cage instead of an opportunity. It was time for a new chapter. 

Creating your story.

There are many who don’t know they are in a story. Hopefully it is a satisfying story that will always fit. It can be an ignorance-is-bliss situation or a continuous feeling of unease and dissatisfaction. In the latter case the blame is thrown around onto things, situations, other people or even self-blame that however renders no changes.  
Then there is the knowing without the support or courage or desire to make changes. One can  decide, “It isn’t all the life I wanted but it’s good enough.” 
Finally, there is knowing fully that life is what you make it. Your eyes are open to knowing, doing, making, being, and living in the raw! It means taking responsibility for welding this great power and gift of life on the planet right now. We cannot consciously know anything else exists except shaping this experience. If you have glimpsed behind the curtain, you know we are supposed to live “as if.” As if this is all there is. You are all, the universe, experiencing itself.  You have been dropped into a body that experiences only three dimensions and linear time.  Constraints that breed creativity due to the limitations. You are a distilled part of the divine everything. You exist to experience and create. Feel all the feels, do all the things, it is the essence of what you are meant for.

---

​Liz Little likes to do the things Mama says you can’t do like have babies before college, or start a new business with no money, or move across the country and open a cafe/toy store or let people know who you really are and expect them to love you. She is a mathematician, writer, teacher, dancer and serial wife. Find her blog at https://cicadatreeproductions.wordpress.com