Dear Friend,

Like many of us, I’ve always had a rocky relationship with change. My entire life I have looked to external markers to let me know that I was growing and developing into the best person I could be.  If I surveyed my life each year and saw a new job, living situation, life philosophy, hobbies, friends, and lifestyle, I felt a deep sense of success and personal accomplishment.

In 2008, my husband, Maikael, and I fulfilled a lifelong dream by embarking on an eight-month journey around the globe, visiting 15 countries spanning five continents.  Convinced this trip would “scratch my itch” and herald the beginning of a new life filled with excitement and adventure, I was shocked to discover, three months into my travels, that what I was desperately searching for was home. And that’s when the real journey began.

These days I make my home in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where I care for my baby daughter, Abra, and try my best to stop waiting for the life I thought I would have to show up, and instead live the life I do have to the fullest.  It isn’t easy.  Like most of us, my life looks nothing like the one I set out to create, and I am constantly battling the pull of that illusive something more. I grapple daily with how to balance “the way things are” with my strivings for a “better” life.  I wonder how I can continue to grow and challenge myself even when my circumstances keep me rooted firmly in place.

While my current path involves mothering and writing, I’d like to think, as one reader put it, that I write as much about “personhood as parenthood.”  My training as a professional counselor informs how I think about my relationship to change, my fellow human being, and the world I live in.  If you’ve found your way to this site, I suspect that you, too, are just as concerned with how we cope with the constant sea of change that seems to wash over modern life.  Here you’ll often find more questions than answers, but I hope you enjoy the journey.

Elizabeth