Crash-Landed in Colorado

I landed in Denver, Colorado on Memorial Day of 2013. I had all my belongings in a moving van, a key to a new house, and plans of a new life. How does the line go? If you want to see God laugh, have a plan. I didn’t mean I had a plan, with a little “p,” I had a plan, a big one. Think PLAN. I had made the choice to move to Colorado to be with an amazing man, to build a home with a white picket fence and have 2.3 children. I mean this plan had been conditioned into me since childhood. Then, it happened. He opted out of the plan. I’ll spare you the not so pretty details.

Picture it, I’m living in a new state, I know nobody, and I don’t have a car or know where anything is. It’s true. I crash landed into Colorado. After buckets of tears, I did this; I chose to rebuild my life in Colorado. Resilience, as both a trait and an experience, I would soon create.

“Resilience is accepting your new reality, even if it’s less good than the one you had before.” Elizabeth Edwards

When you crash land in any aspect of life you have the same choice I did, become resilient or stay wounded. As you choose to get up, here are some things I lived:

1. Live One Moment At A Time

While now five years later, it is easy to look back at the things I did to survive at the time that I thought would kill me. The first thing I did was give away the plan. I chose to make every moment count. I stopped being in the anticipatory fear of what could go wrong. I stopped living in the grief of looking back. All I had was the now moment, and I was going to make every moment a stair step back to health and life.

2. Stay in the Question

Next, I let go of my need to know the answers in the moment. Each day I would get up and ask the question. Why was I staying? What did I need to accomplish that day? I would let my inner voice tell me. Then, I would ask over, and over, question after question, to keep my baby steps moving forward. With each question, eventually the answer would come.

3. Stay Open & Willing To Let People Help You

When I crash-landed into Colorado I had the few possessions I’d packed in the moving van and that was it. Suddenly my “support system” had left. I had to find most everything from the grocery store, post office, restaurants, to a new hairdresser. I even had to find and negotiate to buy a car. In this time of resiliency, I learned to ask, and ask, and ask… both my intuition for answers and people for help. Then I had to let them. I would ask a grocery clerk for the post office, a librarian for the dry cleaner. I learned that to be resilient is to recognize and allow yourself to need and help one another.

4. Be Grateful for Every Little Baby Step

Life is not about the crash, it is about how you bounce. In addition to the very real basic needs I had, I made a list of things that would keep me happy in Colorado. You see; I only planned to stay one year. My Colorado bucket list had things like the peaches festival, Rocky Mountain National Park, shopping on 16th street. It was all the “tourist” stuff. To be resilient is to find pauses to be happy on the resilience journey. I’d celebrate the day I got my car, hosted my first friend for dinner, Halloween with snow, every moment was a resilient moment of me climbing back to life.

My crash landing in Colorado was a do it to myself project. At every moment I had the option to move in fear or in faith. I chose faith. In resilience, you also get to live the ability to respond to the choices you make. My life project has been full of plans, and the best-laid plans gone wrong. Good news is, eventually the wrong turns get you back on the path.

Life is never about the fall, it’s about the bounce. I continue to bounce and you will, too! Wherever you are in your life right now, I’ll venture a bet there is some part of you feeling a little challenge, maybe finances, relationships, or health. Pause look at the situation. Stay in the moment. Is it really as bad as you think it is? Stay in the question, keep your heart, hands and mind open to what is possible and be grateful for everything. Resilience is not a trait I wanted to grow when I landed in Colorado, but I’m glad I did. These techniques made me and my experiences full of resilient memories that now make me smile.

This article originally appeared in the Autumn 2018 issue of CHOICES Magazine