Trusting the "No"

Is peace possible when things don't go your way?

Dear Readers,

Like Didion, I believe writing is a process of discovery. Ultimately, I write as a means of survival. It’s my hope you get something out of it too and that I’m not just talking to myself on the page. If you read it and enjoy it, would you please consider sharing it with someone that might need to hear it, too? By hearting the post, you help other readers discover my work. I’m grateful for you.

I’ve been quiet in this space because frankly, I have questioned whether or not I have anything of value to say. This has left me second guessing everything I set out to write and has set off a chorus of, Who cares? Everyone knows this already! Quit preaching! in my head. While I’m not sure anyone noticed my absence here, I want to mark the passing of seasons and mine them for all the meaning I can find.

I started this newsletter in the midst of a dark season in my life.

Last October, not even a year after having been laid off the previous December - which happened only weeks after completing breast cancer treatment - I lost my job again for seemingly no reason - at least none he was willing to divulge. My boss at the time said more than once, “You’re a wonderful person. I’m sorry for the terrible timing.” If there is one thing I don’t question anymore, it’s whether or not I am a good person. But he was right about the terrible timing.

You see, that very same month, in the space of just a few weeks, our daughter found herself jobless and struggling to cope in the horrific aftermath of Hurricane Helene in her town of Asheville, North Carolina. The storm also flooded my parents’ cabin and destroyed several of their neighbors’ homes. Most devastating of all, I found out one of my dearest friends has cancer.

I tried hard to understand what had happened to my job so suddenly. Stunned, I repeatedly asked him if it was performance related and each time he assured me it wasn’t. Their lack of explanation and answers just increased my sense of unease and frankly, did more damage than was necessary. With a little distance it was clear to me that it made terrific business sense for him to outsource my job to his best friend’s wife who was also a designer. Just as he had done with his realtor and loan officer friends, he’d introduced her to all of the clients and they’d all signed on to work with her. This made my work as a selections manager superfluous and repetitive. Not only that, it centralized the selections process and incentivized both the client and the designer to get their ducks in a row faster. Besides, he needed to hire more field managers and my salary would help him do so. I knew this was best for him and his business, but felt less sure of my own insecure future.

After a webinar in which Anne Lamott declared she would strongly consider self-publishing if she were just starting out today, and after receiving similar advice from my editor, I’d bravely chosen to self-publish my memoir and the launch was two weeks away. At work, we’d been so busy developing several sets of specs that I hadn’t put much thought into the preparation for the book launch. The silver lining was that time opened up for me to focus on my book. Alas, the joy of releasing the book sat shotgun with the financial uncertainty we now faced.

You see, the company had landed every single job we’d spec’ed so I’d expected growth and excitement, not unemployment and scarcity. My pride was hurt, of course, and the stress it added to our lives as we navigated through yet another job loss cast a shadow over the holidays. Buying Christmas gifts on severance pay does not make for a joyful season. Truly, just writing the tip of the iceberg here, I am reminded that my family has been through so much and it has made us stronger than we ever thought possible.

Times were dark and stressful. It’s one thing to keep your own spirits up, but another thing entirely if not everyone in your family suffers well. And let’s face it, most of us don’t. It was in this season that, for me, a new spiritual practice was born. I caught hold of a Gabby Bernstein podcast on how to pray to the angels. As a woman with a sizable church wound, this was the first spiritual practice that appealed to me since leaving the church in 2017. In my memoir, Sleep Like Starfish: A Memoir of Healing, I describe the way I prayed as a child, and how when I became a wife and mom carrying a boatload of unprocessed trauma and navigating life with chronic illness, I created the grown-up version of this prayer. I like rituals and Gabby’s approach spoke me. I felt less alone praying to…

Archangel Gabriel to help me communicate better with my family and through my work.

Archangel Michael for protection of my family, friends and me.

Archangel Raphael to heal our bodies and keep us healthy.

Archangel Jophiel for creative inspiration and wisdom.

Archangel Azrael to help us grieve and heal through loss and transition.

I began to feel less alone through this practice and started to attribute what was unfolding in my life as answered prayers. I listened to Signs and The Light Between Us, books by medium Laura Lynne Jackson, wherein she describes our angels and guides as our “teams of light” always working on our behalf. My friend Paige once described it like this: while we are out here struggling to figure shit out on our own, our angels are just sitting around smoking cigs and playing cards, waiting patiently for us to tap them in.

Within a month of implementing this practice, a game-changing opportunity to take on a commercial project as an independent contractor came to me. While I was still applying for jobs every day, I wasn’t panicked. My new spiritual practice and the peaceful sense of hope kept me from spiraling. This opportunity made sense of every bad and stressful thing that had happened the previous years. Not only was it the most fun and rewarding work, it was a financial blessing and bolstered my confidence as a woman in construction. Mostly, it served as a spiritual lesson I will never forget.

The idea that I was not alone deeply resonated with me. The idea of angels and guides felt like something I’d always known, even as a child, but never allowed myself to truly rest in. While working on this new project, I started to hear from my angels in ways I desperately needed and they had my back every step of the way. You might be skeptical. You might pooh pooh it and that’s totally okay. It’s something you must experience for yourself. I’m just here to plant the seed.

There is power in learning to trust the “NO.” When things don’t work out the way we’d hoped, it’s easy to forget that the closed door could be a protection. Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying everything happens for a reason - I hate that with a fiery rage. I’m simply saying, I am learning to trust the “NO” when I desperately wanted the “YES.” I’m learning to trust the longer timeline when I don’t feel like I can possibly wait another moment. Trusting the “NO” as much as the “YES” is a spiritual practice.

For me, asking the angels and my team of light for direction, protection, inspiration, and healing allows me to fully inhabit the present moment and to walk in the hopeful energy I would have if I knew it was all going to work out just fine, even better than I’d imagined. The alternative to that is inhabiting an anxious, harried energy that will surely complicate my life and take me out of the present moment - and the present could hold the inspiration I’ve been longing for or opportunity of my dreams.

It seems the first stage of life has been all about hustle, build, and survive at all costs, while this second stage of life seems to be about trusting myself, trusting the foundation of the life I’ve built and the work I’ve put in, but also a season for believing my spirit guides are with me by relying on my spiritual practice.

This is a comfort for me when old wounds are triggered. I can chose to embody the hurt and feel hopeless OR I can choose to feel seen, loved, and protected, regardless of circumstances, because I know my angels and team of light are working on my behalf. I know which choice is a HABIT and which choice feels better in my body!

The knowledge that I am not walking through this crazy world alone was a comfort for me recently when an exciting work proposal was rejected. I knew I could choose to stay in the disappointment, feeling of rejection and fear over the loss of work and income.

OR I can celebrate the extra time to write and be with my family and believe the “NO” made room for the true desires of my heart. My friends, sometimes the “NO” is a protection. Something model André Douglas said recently to my son applies here, “What God means for you can’t be taken away.”

In the past, I never believed the way I felt was truly a choice - that I could choose to be hopeful instead of hopeless. My emotions were so overwhelming it didn’t seem possible to choose not to believe them. It would have felt like dismissing my own emotions, fears, and disappointments. These days, I clearly see the choice to believe my angels and guides are conspiring to make my dreams come true. Choosing hope and belief creates an overwhelming sense of peace. And friends, peace is where it’s at for me. Learning to trust the “NO” leaves me open and ready for whatever is coming next.

If you’ve read this far, thank you. I hope these words are comfort to you today. Love you!