Finding peace and courage: Total Recall meets The Wizard of Oz.

Have you ever watched a movie and felt like it resembled your life in some way? Did it spark something in your brain that got you side tracked from the actual movie and recalling your life for a moment?

I just watched the movie Total Recall and it hit me that my life had a strange resemblance to the movie in a warped kind of way. I led a city life for 20 years with a charismatic husband and was the mother of two busy boys. I worked part-time in my husband’s family business and life was really hectic but grand.

Then one day that life crumbled under foot; everything that was stable and real evaporated before my eyes. It also felt like the tornado scene from The Wizard of Oz and just as Dorothy in the movie had her beloved dog Toto, I emerged from the devastation with my loyal old dog, Barney and our two boys who had an uncanny resemblance to the Tin Man and the Lion!

As the thick haze cleared, I found myself living in the small coastal town I grew up in, not just with my dog and two traumatised boys but with a new adorable puppy, Kobe and two fluffy white rabbits. Through great strength and courage I now had a new career and business that would take almost five years to come to fruition. Luckily I had one true friend in this town and although I moved to be closer to family, I found obstacles ahead as life constantly challenges us to learn our life lessons, especially through family.

My new life after the storm felt foreign, as I had lived half of my existence on earth in my prior life. It was very difficult to just shake off the past and move on as I had been advised by many. I was told by ‘experts’ that I just needed to forgive and get rid of the anger, but no-one handed me that damn guide book!

After a few years of reading numerous ‘self- help’ books, continuing with my practice of yoga and meditation and an eagerness to forgive and move on, I have made some real progress. Am I at the end of that journey now? No, but life itself is a journey and I am constantly open to forgiveness and joy. Somehow courage and peace was easier for me to find. I guess I had been asking for those exact attributes for a long time in my previous busy life as a wife and mother.  Perhaps to find the peace and courage I was seeking, one reality had to fall to another?

I am more conscious of the natural cycle of life now, and to quote George Benson’s song, “everything must change, nothing stays the same… because that’s the way of time; nothing and no-one goes unchanged.” Things naturally have to fall away; like leaves fall from a tree to bring new growth and abundance.

I now enter a new phase of life, where my first born ‘flies the coop’, onto a wonderful new stage in his life full of change, growth and opportunity.  I have now learnt to embrace this change, although I will miss him dearly, he is only a phone call away and his beautiful energy is always in my heart.

New and exciting opportunities continually keep unfolding around us just like an unfurling sail opens to catch the wind and propel the vessel forward; we too can open our hearts and sail on towards the vastness of an endless horizon. What awaits us we can’t know, but to stay stuck and not move forward is to succumb to fear. Let’s instead over-ride fear with courage; feel the fear and choose to soar on to greater heights regardless.