You’ve made your bed

In the years before I left Sweden I was stuck in a trap of my own making. While I longed for my professional and personal life to be different, I was addicted to the security of running my own business and being in a relationship. After all, I loved my work and I had once loved my husband and his home country with a passion.

I couldn’t accept that my life wanted me to let go and move on.

And while I would be the last person to advocate making a run for it at the first sign of trouble, I learned that sticking it out is not always the noble thing to do either. No more lying in beds just because you once made them!

When we let go, life surprises us. While the plan had been to retire together to the south of France, I ended up divorced on a houseboat in Holland. And I smile as I write this because ten years on, I am on friendly and supportive terms with my former love. Living alone on a houseboat, I learned I could be my own woman, reconnecting with that native Dutch bolshiness that once used to scare the hell out of me!

Many of my global nomad clients find themselves in similar situations. While the homebodies may struggle with decisions made and subsequently re-evaluated, ours tend to be on a more grand scale; moving countries or continents for a new love, a new job or just because we felt like it. Sooner or later, as we feel the stirrings of discontent or change, the stakes seem higher, the challenges more insurmountable.

Tangled up in the bedsheets of our own choosing, we often look around for others to spring the trap for us. Instead we need to explore who in us is keeping us there; our inner taskmaster, fearmonger, cynic, romantic and conventionalist. I was trapped by my inner conventionalist and my dear of insecurity. So I clung to the security I knew, at whatever cost to my wellbeing and that of my partner! When I finally did let (him) go, and stopped worrying about what would happen next, my new life unfolded gracefully. As if behind the scenes the next steps had already been orchestrated for me.

And now change again stirs my heart. Since the pandemic separated so many of us from our loved ones, I feel a pull back to Sweden to be closer to my son and his family. But this time I trust the pull, neither pushing or arguing against it, nor trying to expedite it. I practise dancing between letting go gently and moving towards graciously.

Life is an energy that is meant to move freely through us. Sometimes attracting joy, sometimes attracting challenges. Only by connecting to your core can you feel which challenges need to be overcome and which are unnecessary obstacles that hinder the flow of life and love, of moving on and embracing change and transition.

Beds can always be unmade!