May 2005, Miami, FL
“So, what happened with your father?”
I am standing in front of a small crowd in the bookstore and the question comes from an older woman sitting in the front row. This is the 2nd most popular question I get at book signings, right after “How did you get your book published”.
Everyone wants to hear a happy ending. They want to know that after writing that letter to my father and forgiving him for everything, he came back into my life and we all lived happily ever after. But that’s not exactly how the story goes…
As I said in my book, I realized that I had been waiting my entire life for this imaginary father figure to ride in on his white horse and make everything okay….. and he wasn’t coming. I realized that I had to figure out how to fill myself up and nothing ‘out there’ was going to do that for me. Not my husband, or my kids or my career. I had to fill myself from within. That moment, with my father, was the catalyst for me getting really serious about writing a book. That began the journey of figuring out what fills me up. The act of writing, as much as I resist it, writing is part of what fills me up.
But the bigger ‘a-ha’ came many months later, when, at yet another book signing, a woman raised her hand and asked;
“So what happened with your father? Have you heard from him since your book came out?”
My response was not planned and surprised me. After giving her the normal monologue I wrote in the book about filling myself up with good energy, blah, blah, blah… new words came tumbling out of me.
“Beyond your greatest pain, lies your greatest purpose. If I hadn’t been so hurt by my father leaving us, if I hadn’t been so driven to heal that part of me that felt broken because of it…. There would be no Journalution. And I know for sure that starting the Journalution is part of my highest purpose.”
That has become a bigger part of what I teach today. Whatever it is that is the most challenging to you in your life, whatever situation you are going through, that is where you begin to look for clues to your highest purpose. That is where your greatest lessons will come. And you are meant to go out and share your life lessons with the world. Each one of us comes to this earth to share our story. Your story is important. And whether you share your story in a book, or through a song or painting or in your business or just sitting around a dinner table with family and friends, I encourage you to view your life from this ‘larger lense’ and glean the lessons so that your life can be an inspiration for others.
Standing in front of almost 100 women in Santa Barbara this weekend and seeing the recognition of this truth in their eyes was confirmation. That no matter what you are experiencing in this moment, it is part of the purpose of your life. And you must go out and share this purpose with the world.
I guess that is a happy ending, after all.
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