Serenity is the eye of a hurricane. It’s what happens when we choose to let the world swirl around us while we let peace and calm into our soul. Experience the eye of a hurricane or typhoon is like nothing else I’ve ever experienced in my life. After being cooped inside for days listening to the wind howl outside with gusts over 100 miles an hour, see the window panes flex with the wind, and feeling the barometric pressure shifts within my body, nothing could have compared me for the unnatural quiet of the eye of the storm. All of a sudden there is no wind and there is an eerie sense of calm. Looking at the weather map, I could see the storm swirling around the island, but for that minute in time there was peace.
After my divorce when life was going all to hell and it seemed like pain, grief, and chaos were swirling around me, I wanted to metaphorically find my way back to the calm center of the storm. I wanted to feel the strength of peace and calm instead of being blown around by the winds of change circling my life. However, wanting something and making it happen are two different things and I realized that if I wanted to find the eye of the storm that was my life, I was going to have to search for it.
Letting Go
When you’re in the middle of a typhoon, you have two choices: Protect things by bringing them inside or letting go and letting the wind carry them away. I had to choose for myself what in my life was worth protecting and what I needed to let go of to survive the storm. I chose to protect myself, my kids, and my dog. Those were the things that found shelter within my heart. I had to make the difficult decision that I could not save my marriage once my husband chose to walk away.
Unfortnuately for me the decision to let go was not that easy and I felt the typhoon of change tugging at my heart for the first year as I struggled to hold on to a marriage that was dead. I wheedled, I begged, I cried, but the winds of change kept blowing and I finally had to choose to let go or have my sanity ripped to shreds by the winds of change. The day I chose to let go of my marriage and file for divorce, I felt calmness and serenity start to creep into my heart.
No Expectations
I not only hold on to things I should let go of, I also try to control outcomes that I really can’t control. My second key to serenity is learning to let go of expectations. Once I’ve done my part, I let go of expectations about what will or won’t happen. In the past, I’ve sent out resumes and gotten really excited about the idea of a particular job only to be devastated when it hasn’t happened. I’ve learned that all I can do is my part and once I’ve done my part, I need to let go of any expectations I have about how things will work out. It’s difficult for a control freak like myself, but letting go of those expectations has helped me find peace and calm within my soul.
Trust the Universe
I am one of the least trusting people you could ever hope to meet, but for me to have serenity, I have to do my part and get out of the way and let the universe do its thing. I have to trust that the universe has my best interest at heart. I’ve gotten a refresher course in that the last few weeks. I found out I was going to be laid off and my initial instinct was to go into panic mode. However, I took a step back and realized that I was being given a lesson in trust.
I reached out to my network and let folks know what was going on and within a week I had a job created just for me, I even wrote the job description. And when I got the formal job offer, it was over 10 percent more than I was making. It was a hard lesson in trust because there were multiple times where I was a
Detatch
Detatchment is a program (AA, Al-Anon, etc.) term that sounds simple, but can be hard to put into practice. Detatchment means detatching from people and situations that you cannot control. It is similar to having no expectations in that you do what you can and let go of any expectations, but it is also about detatching from people you have no control over and not rushing in to do things for others that they can do for themselves.
For instance, if my daughter procrastinates and isn’t writing her graduate school essays, it’s not my job to write them for her or hound her to keep writing them. She is an adult and she is responsible for her own essays. However, if my daughter falls and breaks her leg, she probably can’t get herself to the hospital so I should call an ambulance for her. This one is hard for moms especially because we want to take care of our kids and fix things for them, but by continually rescuing people, they never learn to be self-sufficient.
Take Care of Yourself
Serenity is not something that happens to us, it is something we make happen and it starts with taking care of ourselves. It’s hard for me to feel serene if my stomach is upset because I’ve been eating junk food and not exercising. And it’s hard for me to feel serene if I haven’t taken a shower and feel gross. My pathway to serenity includes meditating, journaling, praying, and pulling tarot cards every morning.
I’m not perfect in my serenity, but I have come a long way over the last seven years and I’m much more able to slip into a serene state of mind than I once was and I don’t even need a typhoon battling down the door to get there.
Cairn by Cairn 