Sunrise With An Expanding Mindset
Every time your dream expands, you must develop new hopes — that you will rise to the occasion, adapt, and find allies that will help you along the way.
-Miriam Clifford
2024 feels different for me, and I hope it will be different for you, too, if you struggled last year, or if fate took your hope away. Whenever a new year is upon me, I tend to look back and assess my life up to this point. It is a strategy to take in what I have accomplished, dreamed up and lived. It makes me appreciative of life, and it makes me see the beautiful power of fate when coupled with tenacity and will to change our lives.
Historically, the last few years have been difficult for many people. Some are still recovering from the aftermath of the wreckage of a global pandemic that uprooted our dreams and kept us home, isolated from the world. Last year, I began to feel myself again after putting a pause on so many things indefinitely. It felt like 2020 was a time warp that stole so much time from me — and it created a deep-rooted anxiety that anything terrible could happen at any moment. It took me some time to get rid of that feeling.
What I discovered these last four years on assessment brought me to write this post — hope. And I wish someone had told me about it a few years ago — hope is a gift. It fills our minds with the thought of the impossible, but it makes it seem within our grasp.
I call it having an expanding mindset. Every time your dream expands, you must develop new hopes — that you will rise to the occasion, adapt, and find allies that will help you along the way. The universe conspires to help you, if you are still and listen.
Before the pandemic, I got pregnant with my last baby. I wasn’t sure I could have another one, but I was so happy when it happened. Jack was a little bundle of happiness during the pandemic, and he filled our lives with so much light. He was a very happy baby, and still is.
I had the baby on December 26, 2019 — Jonathan (Jack) is now 4, and the fear of him being so young and getting sick kept me home longer. Because of this immense and beautiful responsibility, I put many things on hold, but I don’t regret it. In 2020 and 2021, maybe a little after, I avoided going out much at all, I suppose, for fear of his immunity not being strong enough to withstand the pandemic. My dad passed away from COVID early on in the pandemic — and even though we were estranged at the time, it was a difficult period to assimilate his loss, especially knowing that he died in pain — it was a hard blow to deal with. It got me more scared of COVID, and so having a new baby, perhaps you can imagine my fears.
On top of that, after having the baby, I got pretty sick. I needed surgery in 2020, and with the difficult things going on in the world, it was not an easy time to go into a hospital and know the risk involved, but it was a surgery that could not wait and thankfully, it made me healthy again. I can be thankful for so many things in the last three years, and that sense of gratitude is an important ally, I am incredibly grateful for how everything turned out. I am healthy again, and Jack is a healthy boy, so full of joy.
In 2021 and into 2022, I put my health as a focus. I began eating healthier and working out. I was healthy again. I finished my Masters in Marketing Research with a 4.0 GPA and landed a job in my field. The job allowed me to work remotely from anywhere, so we moved to Hawaii.
I decided after my health scare that it might be the last time we would have the chance to live somewhere like that, and so we took the risk, knowing well it may not work out.
It had been a dream of mine to live in Hawaii since I was a child, and now it is a dream I can say I lived, although it only lasted six months. It was worth it, every single day. I do not regret it. It taught me that dreams come true and that we are the ones that make them happen.
Hawaii is the only place in the world I enjoy waking up at 5 am to see the sunrise. I would begin the day walking the yard outside with my bare feet, the grass still wet with dew, and not really worrying about the bugs, something that usually freaked me out. In Hawaii, I would see a spider and respect the natural balance of the environment. People there taught me that. We had visitors in the yard — the mongeese — they are like squirrels, but a little more moody. At first, I was scared of them — but then I got to know their antics and gave them space.
Seeing the sunrise in Hawaii is the most beautiful natural moment I have ever experienced. That same sky gave me rainbows and expansive clouds — it felt like you were in the middle of the world, far from everything. I was at peace and felt I had everything I ever dreamed of.
Hawaii
But as suddenly as it began, it ended. We returned to Seattle, and our life in Hawaii came to a close. I got other job offers to stay there, but by then, it was all too late — I had already left Hawaii when they came in, and my husband also had to return to in-person work. That chapter in our life closed.
I began writing again. I had been writing creatively since 2015, but I never had time to commit to a book. My writing became a lifeline. It helped me assimilate all the immense changes that happened those years of my life.
I had a dream about my mother — more so an experience — where she came to me when I was recovering from my surgery before leaving to Hawaii and told me to let everything in my past go — all the past hurt, all the pain, all the bad memories. She said it was like a balloon that I needed to release in the air. That same day, I understood I had a calling to be a writer. I didn’t want to accept it then, but I knew deep down it was not something I could ignore much longer.
That time is here now. This is the year I want to finish my book. The underpinnings of my writing began as a freelance non-fiction writer, and writing articles is something I have come to feel very comfortable doing.
Yet, creative work is more challenging. It makes me feel incompetent because I need to familiarize myself with its beat. Every writing has a pulse. Creative works have their own melodies — it’s like trying to play guitar on a piano; it doesn’t work. Every craft is different.
I am trying hard to read and relearn everything about writing. Last year alone, I read several foundation books on writing. I’ve revisited the classics. It’s like getting a brand new education, but some days are filled with immense doubt.
Walking away from something that you know to an unknown world feels very scary. The trick is just to keep going and not get lost in the abyss. If we spend too long looking down while we cross a bridge, the fear gets the better of us and wins. Right now, I really have no choice but to keep crossing the damn bridge, even when it’s shaky as hell.
Photo by Carl Newton on Unsplash
Creative work is still difficult for me. But this year, my goal is to make it less difficult.
A novel bleeds part of you on the page — because you must go into your subconscious mind through the characters. You unravel things that you did not know about yourself inadvertently.
You create something out of nothing — a world, a state of feeling, a mood, a mindset. It is like you are a god of another world, where you get to call the shots, but you put your characters through the same type of apocalyptic nonsense that was 2020. It hurts sometimes to do that.
The key, I think, is to trust in yourself. To trust in the universe. And to believe that anything is possible if you believe you can. This year I hope you have the audacity to listen to yourself and to believe that anything is possible. From an expanding mindset, anything can grow.
