The Oxbow by Thomas Cole – 1836
I want to share something beautiful with you today. I was watching a show about the extraordinary animals, epic landscapes, and remarkable people who live alongside three iconic rivers – the Amazon, the Nile and the Mississippi. What particularly interested me are the meanders of these rivers. A meander is one of a series of regular sinuous curves, bends, loops, turns, or windings in the channel of a river. Many have tried to contain the course of a river and many a time the river has jumped her banks and changed her course dramatically.
I am bring this up today, because lately my thoughts have been about the ways in which I keep trying to control my own nature. Over the years I have set rules and boundaries and very often they have failed. I have made promises to myself and others that are simply endless, stress-inducing efforts to contain the river of my being.
My life would look a lot like these rivers – a portrait of my own heart’s journey. Maybe yours too.
I believe that, after a certain age, every woman in the world could write a memoir that could be called – NOT WHAT I PLANNED. Life changes, we all change. I have felt shame, confusion and sometimes anger too about all the shifts and meanderings. But what if I just trust the river? She always seems to know where she wants to go. Onward.