Trusting the path

One word makes a lot of difference

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The Master observes the world
but trusts his inner vision.
He allows things to come and go.
His heart is open as the sky.

Tao Te Ching - Stephen Mitchell translation

For the past few years, inspired by

Satya Robyn

, I have been choosing a word of the year. Six months ago when I set out to choose the latest one, the word TRUST came to me very strongly and it has been very interesting to see how that concept has been appearing for me throughout the year so far.

I have learned to trust my intuition, my heart, more. Regular readers will know of mine and my husband’s need to find a home and earlier this year as our three and a half month housesit in Scotland was coming to an end, we were speaking to different people about opportunities to work on their land in exchange for somewhere to live. But my heart knew that none of them were right and we would be doing it just because we wanted to be still somewhere. But because none of them were right, we wouldn’t have stayed very long. Causing more upheaval for us, and the owners. In the past, I would have ignored what my heart was telling me in order to have somewhere to live, but this time I chose to trust it.

We removed ourselves from the mainstream world of jobs and house renting a long time ago and both of us know that we can’t return there, we have to keep following our hearts that led us on this path in the first place. So we were in a dilemma. Carry on housesitting and moving all the time, or return to North Devon, where we have lived on and off for the past 12 years, to stay in the annex of our friends’ farmhouse. Somewhere we were very reluctant to return to again as many of our good friends from here died suddenly — five of them in the space of eighteen months — and it can get overwhelming in the summer as they have three holiday cottages here.

But my heart was telling me to trust in this place and that everything would be fine. And it is. It was difficult for the first couple of weeks but now it is great. We have a home here for as long as we want. Yes, the summer holidays are approaching and they won’t be fun, but they only last for six weeks! I trust everything I have learned, am always learning, will mean I can cope with it better than I did the last time we were here over the summer in 2019.

Since we arrived at the end of April, the new headspace afforded by not having to search for the next place to be, means I have properly got on with my new novel. And the theme that has emerged in my development work is…trust!

These are the notes I made when re-reading the craft book, Inside Story: The Power of the Transformational Arc by Dara Marks (I wrote about this book here), to get to know what I am writing and why:

Story summary: Two women, former childhood friends, are reunited. One is a former convict and homeless, the other believes it’s her fault. Both must face the truth about what really happened on the night of the arrest 25 years ago, in order to save themselves and learn to trust again.

The internal goal for both women is to rebuild the love and connection they had together growing up. They both need a friend as neither of them have any. The internal struggle they need to overcome is to do with trust. Both feel untrustworthy because of how they treated each other and both can’t put their trust in others as they feel let down by the person closest to them.

In Inside Story, Dara Marks says:

“The basis of all conflict is that something is out of balance. To understand the theme of a story, it’s good practice for a writer to step back and assess what is out of balance in the human condition.”

My story notes in response to this were:

The survival of the fittest mentality is all wrong and leads people to put themselves first no matter what. It leads to a lack of trust in others, in ourselves, in community. And look where that has got us. We need to build trust in all those things again.

So, it feels like that word that came to me so strongly at the start of the year did so for many important reasons. And I am interested to see what else emerges for it during the next six months. I will be keeping my heart and mind open and letting whatever it brings come my way, trusting that it is the right thing as it’s coming along.

Did you choose a word of the year? What was it and how has it appeared in your life so far? Do let me know in the comments as I’d love to hear about it.

With love and a very happy summer solstice to you,

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