I remember the day that I learned to dream big.
I wasn’t naturally a big dreamer. In fact I had concluded that mediocrity was where I was destined to go in my life (you know, that part of your 20’s where you just can’t see past where you are). I was at a point in my life where I was barely coming out of the depression that I was struggling with in my late 20’s. I was just at that point in my life where I was starting to take photos with my very basic camera phone (of the era of 6 years ago…remember those) and truly just a month or two after I had taken my first photo in which I felt that spark that photography was something I wanted to explore.
I had been a postpartum doula for a couple years and I loved the work. The moment I learned to dream big was when the call came telling me who my next client was.
That call, on the side of the road waiting for the bus to come was the moment the glass ceiling of possibility was shattered.
My next client was someone well known, very much so. She was also someone who’s work I had been a big fan of since I was in my early teens.
Yup, here’s the point where you might be like ‘What Viv? You aren’t going to tell us who? Alas, I’m not gonna tell you who she is cause it is really not the point of the story and I have wanted to share this moment with you but want to do it in a way where I am respecting her privacy….but lets just say you have definitely heard of her.
She was also one of the first musicians I ever bought an album of (it was actually the era of tapes).
I thought of that girl going to the mall and getting that tape and how much my sister and I listened to it and let our voices soar with it.
Then a decade later, waiting at a bus stop, hearing that same woman’s name as my upcoming client.
Now, here’s the thing. This moment didn’t burst the glass ceiling of my expectations because I had the opportunity to work with someone famous. It wasn’t as though this was going to be the highlight of my life. It wasn’t about them even. It was that this was the moment when I realized that I truly didn’t know what life held for me and that it might be far, way far, beyond my bubble of expectations.
Because this was so outside the realm of the small bubble of the life I thought I would live. Never in my wildest dreams did I think that I would get to work with this incredible woman who’s music had been serenading me my whole life.
It was that moment when I heard the universe loud and clear. Don’t put your life in a box, because nothing is impossible and you can’t predict the amazing things that could happen to you if you open up to possibility.
I had worked with one very well known person before (I just can’t stand the word celebrity when referring to these incredible down to earth women) and loved being able to work with these women in the post-partum time of their lives and giving them the same support as I would any other client. It was beautiful to just get to relate to them not as fan to artist, but to support them as women and mothers and get to see their sweet, humble, kind selves that they truly are.
Working with her was wonderful, she was kind and so down to earth. The day of my last shift with her was the night I turned 30. As I brought her sweet baby into her room for her middle of the night feed she wished me a happy birthday and it felt like a blessing as I was at the precipice of letting go of a truly rough decade of my life and left me hopeful for the one ahead.
The next day, the day after my birthday, a flower truck pulled up to my house and a man got out with the biggest bouquet of flowers I had ever seen. It was for me. From her and her family wishing me a happy birthday.
Getting the call months before that I was going to work with her opened me up to the possibility that I didn’t know what life held for me and then to get these flowers, grand, bold and full of abundance filling my house with beauty felt like a YES.
Yes.
You don’t know what life holds for you.
Yes.
You can’t predict what is ahead, only to be open to the possibility of it.
To stop holding up a NO to my own life.
Now of course, this moment didn’t instantaneously change the old patterns of dreaming small, but it woke me up and was a catalyst in making changes and not holding my life hostage from goodness and possibility. From my experience, waking up to dreaming big is actually a lot of work. It is a lot of showing up for ourselves and doing things that feel absolutely scary. Then once you go for one big dream, there is always another one, an even bigger one, awaiting us. So in a way, not thinking big for myself was self-protective…as it is hard scary work to dream big. But so worth the risk.
I still have the roses from the bouquet that I dried to remind me of that moment.
To remind me of the unknown beauty of life that is yet to unfold.
Even almost 6 years later I hold that moment close when I stopped believing my own stories of mediocrity and stopped believing that I wasn’t worthy of a beautiful life
And started to let life unfold.
There is still so much to unfold in my life (and yours) and I’m holding on to the trust that we don’t know what is going to happen and that it could be even better than we could imagine.
Have you ever had a moment when something happened that was so far out of the realm of the unexpected that you had to stop and listen and wake up to the possibility of what could be?