Three years ago a sisterfriend of mine pulled a group of women together for an evening of visualizing. We had fun activities, good food and open dialogue about what a life of wellness would look like. Not the usual self-care stuff...real *wellness*

I will never forget meeting one woman who told her story about losing her mom who had been her very best friend. Her mom had always talked about living well. Really living well not necessarily (or solely) through things but through experiences.

The sister had a real deep love for being out on the water and always had this "crazy idea" of learning how to captain a small yacht. Her mother told her to stop calling it crazy and just to do it.

"Well, how many black women captains....." and all of that.

She had this idea of taking a class, getting her sailing license and starting "some kind of business."

But...she had a solid career, was also an advanced practice nurse (I think she was in anesthesia, can't remember) and had no real reason to disrupt that.

Well, when her mother passed away the loss hit her really hard. She mentioned it taking close to a year to even get perspective about her mother's death, let alone move thru the grieving process. She said one morning it was like her mother had sent her a direct message.

She got up, got on the internet, registered for a class, started working on her license. Fast forward she got her license and then went out and bought a small yacht with a portion of the life insurance money her mom had left her, docked in Baltimore.

Needless to say she is one of few black women captains (at least in this area) and recently I learned from my friend that she now takes women friends and their friends out on small, weekend Girls Only sailing retreats.

She named the yacht after her mom and told my friend that she has never been happier in her entire life. If I recall correctly she's somewhere between 52 and 55.

I say all of this to say that there comes a time when you really do have to start living from your heart space.

It's not an age thing bc the clock is ticking for all of us but age does play a big role in it.

When so many other things have been done and have been front and center for so long, what else is there to embrace and run towards but your own vision of what wellness looks like?

I think a lot about people who say they "love their work" or "love their business" and I wonder if "loving work" is simply a psychological substitute for embracing those scary, ridiculous dreams of the lives we *really* want to be living.

And I realize that big dreams are scary. There is a tiny slither of psychological space between the work we have to do and the life we want to live. I get that. The real work is figuring out how to close that gap, inch by inch by inch until the gap is no longer there.