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Stepping Through Oneself — The Beauty of the Out of Control Life
I’m a control freak. At least, I like things to be in their proper places. Like the beloved Auri in, The Slow Regard of Silent Things by Patrick Rothfuss, often I find that things inside of me aren’t right unless things outside of me are.
Most of my young life I had a plan, and for the most part, those plans worked exactly as I wanted. Sure, people would upset me or let me down, or maybe I missed out on an award, a kiss, or an opportunity, but with a plan, I could rush through the pain of failure, get back on my feet, and still be…me.
Twenty years ago, when my birth control failed, I got my first taste of a plan crumbling to the ground with no way to put back the pieces, no matter how hard I tried. Until that moment, I saw the future clearly — I would work in a Fortune 500 tech company, rise to the top as a female leader, and live in a condo on Lake Shore Drive. Then my son was born, and I discovered that the feminist promise of “having it all” had obviously been created by someone not like me. For I couldn’t handle “it all” and after two years of trying to be the perfect working-mom-wife-in-tech, I was far from leaning in, rather I fell out, and into my home, trying to raise two children, with no plan.
At first, I made new plans. Lots of them. Plans were my way to survive, but as the…
