Cheers to a new calling...

When Your Calling Has Had Its Season

For years, I built a career that I had dreamed of having. I poured everything into it. Long hours. Missed holidays. Delayed vacations. Friendships that slowly drifted. Family moments I couldn't always be present for because someone else needed me.

I don't regret the time and work...ever!

I loved working on saving lives. I didn't love helping people make impossible decisions when there didn't seem to be a right answer. I feel standing beside people during some of the most vulnerable moments of their lives is such an honor. Being a source of calm in someone else's storm wasn't just my profession—it was my calling.

Walking away may have presented lots of relief, but has also presented a lot of grief. Can't remember names, but faces are forever implanted in my brain. I'll never forget that I was the one to tell you your last good bye.

The moment that stays with me most wasn't submitting my resignation or cleaning out my locker. It was the moment my husband looked at me and said it was time to walk away. He even wrote my resignation note.

Something inside me exhaled...fully! Triangle breathing and all...was out the door. Well, maybe not the the triangle breathing, but the rest was gone.

We often talk about finding our calling as if it is one destination, one identity, one thing we are meant to do forever. But maybe that's not how life works. Maybe we are called to different things at different times.

This season shaped me. It taught me more compassion then I ever knew before, resilience I never knew I had, and some form of acceptance that life isn't always fair. It gave me stories I will carry for the rest of my life and will spend some time in therapy to also get over, most likely for the rest of my life...

I'm discovering that I haven't abandoned my calling. I'm simply allowing it to evolve. Soon you should see this lady educating on the importance of public health for women..fingers crossed.

Who we are is bigger than what we do.

Perhaps this next season isn't about saving lives in the way I once did, but in a different way.

Leaving a career that has defined me isn't the end of my story.

Sometimes it's simply the moment you finally become the author of the next chapter...