By Becca Rowan, author of Becca’s Byline

For the past 10 years, I’ve had a great part-time job, working in a small office with an amazing group of women. It offered flexibility, decent pay, an easy commute, and, yes, those amazing women who made the work environment lots of fun.

Sounds perfect, right?

Yet, two weeks ago, I resigned.

In spite of all the positive things about my job, I realized something was missing. While I had started out as strictly a technical writer, I eventually became “head of the department,” which in reality meant I was doing more paper shuffling and organizing than actual writing. I’ve handled that pretty well for several years, because it was routine and required minimal effort. But in the last year, our business has taken a decided upswing – in fact, it’s growing by leaps and bounds.  That’s fabulous of course, but it means I have LOTS more paper to shuffle.

I just turned 55 years of age, and I’ve realized I don’t want to shuffle paper anymore.

Many years ago, every Wednesday night I would run down the basement stairs in my piano teacher’s house.  I’d take my seat at her Baldwin grand piano, and she would settle into the dining room chair placed just slightly to my left.  She would lean back against the chair, close her eyes, smile, and say “alright.”

Then I would start to play. Perhaps it was Beethoven or Chopin, or the Brahms Rhapsody I worked at for such a long time. When I finished (if I was very lucky and if I had practiced very hard) she would sigh deeply and say, “That feeds my soul.”

Perhaps it’s selfish and unrealistic in today’s world to hope that your job will also feed your soul.  How lucky am I to work where I’m not only paid well, but respected and valued?  How happy do I really expect to be?  It’s a JOB, after all – shouldn’t I just suck it up and look elsewhere for soul feeding?

Well, maybe.  But then again, I’m 55 years old.  How much time do I have left for soul feeding?

So I took the leap, hoping and trusting that the universe will provide me with the right opportunity, as it has done so generously in the past. Already, I feel more excited about life in general than I have in a very long time.

In the five years that I’ve been blogging, I’ve met amazing women (like Angie!) who have set their sights on some pretty impressive dreams. In that span of time they’ve developed talents they didn’t know they had and parlayed them into successful business ventures. They’ve embarked on new relationships and embraced the changes those bring. They’ve taken great leaps of faith when it wasn’t logical or practical, and with hard work and commitment, they’ve made their dreams come true.

It’s the inspiration of family and friends that give us the courage move forward in this life, to do those brave and daring things that allow us to grow and change for the better. I’m excited about what lies ahead for me, and I have faith that with some perseverance and some willingness to open myself to opportunity, I will find that special something to feed my soul.

How about you? What feeds your soul? How have you made it a part of your everyday life?

What we learn on our individual journeys, no matter how big or small, can inspire others on theirs.

You can find that line on my “about” page. And that’s why you’ll begin to hear from new voices on this blog. My idea is to have at least one guest post per week. But I’m not going to make that a hard and fast rule. (Because I’ve already broken it. This week, there will be two.)

So I hope you’ll come back tomorrow and Thursday. To read, be inspired and participate in the conversation. Because it’s not just my story. It’s your story, too.

My grandmother, Frances, and my mom, Debbie, in 1973

Today is my grandmother’s birthday. She would have been 73. On a whim, I called my mom and asked her to write a guest post. It arrived in my inbox an hour later. Mom’s good like that.

When I read her words, it reminded me that we can’t always wrap our stories in a pretty bow. Sometimes, we must take the endings we are given and make our peace with them.

Yesterday, I had some fun at my mom’s expense and gave you a peek inside our west coast adventure. Today’s post reveals another side– the woman who’s quite brave.

So ladies and gentleman, here’s Mom. But you can call her Debbie:

As a young girl, I wasn’t that close to my mom. I was a daddy’s girl. When I walked into a room, his face would light up like a Christmas tree. But my mom and I really struggled with our relationship. We were always butting heads.

But, when Dad died in 1988, our relationship began to change. The love of our lives was gone, and now, all we had was each other. We had many talks to try to figure out what went wrong in our relationship, and finally one night over dinner, she told me she’d been jealous of my relationship with my dad. Quite a brave thing to say, I think.

And despite that, my mom was always there for me in a crisis, no matter what that might be. She stroked my arm while I was sick, wiped my tears when my heart was broken and had my back when I needed it. Maya Angelo has said, “When you know better, you do better.” And my mom did.

My mom married at 18 and had a life of extremes, in the relationship and financially. But there was plenty of love and laughter, even in the most difficult times. I lost my mom many years ago, on June 11, 1993– the day that would have been her 35th wedding anniversary. Instead, she met my dad in heaven.

As we approach Mother’s Day, I’ve watched on Facebook as friends change their profile pictures to photos of their mothers. It made me wish I had a scanner, because there are several I’d love to post and be proud.*

I love and miss you, Mom, every day of my life.

*Thanks to the ability to take pictures of pictures and email them to ourselves, Mom’s wish has been granted.

Mom’s moderating the comments today. Feel free to chat with her below, or tell her hi on Facebook.

I’m a busy mom of three boys. With my first two children I took a year-long maternity leave (don’t hate me – I’m Canadian!) [Read more...]