Three people in the last 2 days have talked to me about making a change in their lives. All of them said basically the same thing: that they had successful careers, but didn’t feel that their life path was meeting their spiritual needs. They felt that it was time to change what they were doing, but didn’t know what the next thing was going to be.

It’s curious to me that this theme was repeating itself in conversation. It also reminded me of my own path. I had been a nurse for almost 30 years when I began to feel the passion go out of it. There were several factors. I felt like my workload was continually increasing even though my paid time stayed the same. I passed my 50th birthday and realized that I just did not have the same stamina that I used to. And I had spent decades running on the working-parent wheel with very little sleep. Something had to give. I knew I just could not keep going at that hectic pace, but I couldn’t figure out how to make it financially at something else.

The feeling that I needed to make a change built up over several years. I felt stuck, needing to move but unable. Then, it was done for me—I was diagnosed with cancer. Everything I was holding in place was torn out from under me. In the space of several months I gave up my job, my income, my body image, and my health. The only thing left was my spiritual life.

I don’t know what the future holds for me. I do know that I can’t go back to what I was doing. I am physically incapable of that. And that is a gift. I have been forced to focus on the one thing I can do, which is write. My first book, Grandmother Dreams, is beginning to move along. A second book is in progress and may be ready next winter. I truly believe that this is my purpose in life. This is what I am supposed to be doing with my time on this planet. Not just writing the books but talking about the information in them.

I don’t know how I am going to make it financially. I am Trusting that that will take care of itself. In the meantime, I am grateful for cancer, the giant change that descended on my life when I was unable to make the change myself.

“In order for something to change, something’s gotta change”.