Ivanna Be Brave

I was chatting with my friend Ivanna (not her real name) the other day.

Ivanna is one of those people who seems lit from within with a bright golden light.  She is strong and passionate and vital and driven.  She is capable and beautiful and creative and hard-working and fun.  She is both interested, and interesting.  She’s a great friend.

Ivanna will take charge and get things done and she takes her responsibilities and commitments seriously.  She has been very responsible and committed for a long time.  Her daughter is away at college now and is doing well – grown to be strong and independent as her mother had hoped.  She didn’t come home at all this summer and Ivanna is good with that – it’s the way it should be.

Ivanna has been doing her best to take care of other people – and animals – for as long as she can remember, and she has been doing a good job, but they are pretty much all dead now – or gone away to college – and for the past few years Ivanna has been turning more of her attention to herself.

Ivanna is married – still – to her daughter’s father.  Ivanna loves him – they share an amazing daughter, and a roof.  Things are amicable, and for Ivanna at least, completely unsatisfying.  Over the years, Ivanna’s vision of the world has expanded and deepened, her husband’s has not, and the fundamental differences between them have lost what excitement and romance they may once have had.  They went through marital counseling a few years ago.

Ivanna is convinced that things are as they will be.  The question – she said the other day – was whether she could “stand it.”

This amazing woman – fully aware of what she was saying and still saying it with a straight face – was stating her criteria for how she should live the rest of her life. Ivanna is dramatic, and was speaking partly for effect, but her fear and uncertainly about what change might bring was causing her to apply a standard to herself that she would never apply to another.

“I just have to decide,” she said, “if I can stand it.”  Ivanna is brave.  Once she put the situation in those terms, she really had no choice.  A tiny part of her was hoping that her inner voice would speak up and say, “of course I can stand it, it’s not so bad, lets just keep on keeping on, at least I know what’s what.”  But Ivanna’s inner voice said “No.   I can’t stand it.  This is not how I am meant to live.  This is not what I want. This is not who I am.”

And so Ivanna is opening herself up.  She is considering possibilities.  She is facing facts and figuring things out and all sorts of scary stuff.  But as she is doing so, she is also opening herself up to dreams, and hopes, and desires.  She is beginning to unfurl her wings – giving them little flicks to help them dry out.

My friend Ivanna is a great model:  she is speaking what she wants and dreaming big dreams.   She is getting ready to fly.   I want to be brave like Ivanna, too.