At the heart of awakening is the word “YES”.

Though your bones may dread it, say Yes.

Though the cells in your body scream NO, say Yes.

When you have to give away nearly everything you own, say Yes.

When the list of reasons to say No, play out before your eyes, Say Yes and Yes and Yes.

And in 30 days time, when the lease you didn’t want to agree to has been signed…

When the 20 foot long Chester recycling shed has been stuffed to the gills with all but your most treasured paper and belongings….

When the couch and the bed and the kitchen table and the bookshelves have all been shoved into the back of a Salvation Army truck…

When the desk Genie gave you has found its way to another writer’s home…

When you’ve spent your first night in the new house, you will awaken to the sun through the East windows, glaring off the solid snow, shining through the blue and green glass, and your entire body from your toes to the top of your head will shout YES, and you won’t mind a bit having to go back to Chester to clean out the fridge, to scrub down the tub.. to vacuum 9 years of cobwebs and lost love off the ceiling and floors…. because you said YES and kept saying Yes… and now a whole new world has been created during the month you walked into and through your fears of change.

I wrote the above piece right after moving into what came to be known as The Mouse House (see previous blog entry).  And I don’t regret the move into that cabin.  Saying Yes, making the first move in 9 years, catapulted me into a brand new life.

It’s easy to say No.  Because change means inconvenience.  Change means chaos or, at the very least, upheaval.  Because change means entering the unknown world.

Some people are like trees: content to live and grow in one place.  They cull all the lessons they can soak up from that one geographical area.  But I’ve always been made more of feathers than leaves.

The trick is in knowing that there’s no right or wrong way… there’s just the way that’s right for you.

The title of my blog: YesRiskJoy comes from a Louise Gluck poem, Snowdrops.  A poem that has been integral in my healing and in the lives of many other writers I know.

SNOWDROPS

Do you know what I was, how I lived?  You know
what despair is; then
winter should have meaning for you.

I did not expect to survive,
earth suppressing me. I didn’t expect
to waken again, to feel
in damp earth my body
able to respond again, remembering
after so long how to open again
in the cold light
of earliest spring–

afraid, yes, but among you again
crying yes risk joy

in the raw wind of the new world.

by Louise Gluck

Not expecting to survive, feeling smothered in earth, leads one to respond with No rather than Yes.  But saying Yes allows you to manifest… furthers you along your path… forces you to turn in a different direction…. reminds you that you have the power… the power of choice.

Say Yes… keep saying Yes.