🍂 When you’re not where you thought you’d be

Happy weekend!

Enjoy today’s read, where our Editorial Director Emily McGowan shares how she’s thinking about the next stage of her life after seasons of change. 💛

Warmly, Kate
Community Manager

Happy Sunday!

Last week, Grace wrote about how she holds the beautiful perspective of what if everything is already working out for you? It brought tears to my eyes as I was reminded of how powerful it is to move through the world with hope and intention — and when I realized lately, I’ve lost that feeling for myself.

Instead, I’m looking at my life, wondering how did I get here?

Divorced, no kids, living in a rented apartment with my cats. A recent breakup has me licking my emotional wounds and dipping my toes into the dating world again. My meals are frozen dinners or takeout more often than I’d care to admit, and to be quite honest, I still don’t really know what I want to do with my life.

Some days it feels like I’m just sitting and waiting for the grand vision to finally reveal itself to me — like one morning, I’ll wake up with clear eyes, fire in my heart, and a body rested enough to carry me forward. Until then, though, what am I supposed to do?

Many of my friends are in the fog of this same question; I’m sure some of you readers are, too. (Hi! 👋🏻) It’s the kind of aimlessness I felt after I graduated school — after a lifetime of being on someone else’s schedule following someone else’s curriculum, I was given a blank page and told “now draw your own map”.

So I did, to the best of my ability! I put in the roads I thought we all were supposed to follow, the landmarks of life events, the hills of hobbies and fields of friendships along the way. That’s not the map my life followed.

And it’s not a bad thing.