Starting the Life You’ve Envisioned

I truly believe that an amazing happiness comes to our lives when we listen to our inner thoughts and follow the piece of us that urges us to keep dreaming big and keep going.

This weekend, I felt an enormous tug in my heart.  For years and years, I have always been the pilot’s wife.  I sat in the co-pilot’s seat and stared out the window at the beautiful world below us.  But I never flew.  I was too afraid.  I didn’t think I was good enough, technical enough, smart enough…

I viewed myself as the pilot’s wife, and my job was to sit pretty.

(sometimes I needed a break!)

What’s something that you never thought that you could do? What is something with so many fears and doubts attached to it that you never thought you were capable of soaring?  And what if you started taking little steps toward conquering that enormously fearful, impossible thing?

What if?

I promise we’ll jump back into The Decluttering Project soon.  (I’m just having so much fun in the US right now.  My lungs are filled with this new air and new world.)  Consider this our little summer break!

A quick thank you as well to all of you who have been reaching out to me in the comments and with your emails these last few weeks during our transition.  I understand what friendship means.  And you can bet that if I suspect any of you lives in the same area where I’ll be… I’ll be knocking!

So yesterday as Martin and I flew to an annual pilot event (here’s last year’s!) that involves dropping bowling balls from airplanes and eating plenty of pancakes, I was really struck.  I started remembering all of the doubts I had about flying for so many years. Who was I to be a pilot?  I didn’t know physics.  I didn’t understand mechanics.  I was a pilot’s WIFE.

Martin took this picture of me yesterday.  It’s the first photograph in the air of me – not as the pilot’s wife – but as the real woman in charge… as the pilot of our aircraft.

At the event, Martin and I split and chatted with various pilots and airplane enthusiasts.  And on our way home, Martin told me about this couple he met.  The man was a pilot.  His wife – well she loved flying, and being a pilot sounded interesting – but she didn’t think she could do it.  She wore a jacket with her plane’s tail number on it.  But she had too many doubts.

Doubts.  Fears.  Gremlins laughing, “Ha!  You can’t do this.”

I’ll tell you a secret.  When you start taking steps toward achieving that thing you never thought you could do, an amazing, uplifting thing happens. All of your other dreams start feeling possible.  You lose a lot of that fear.  Those gremlins can’t get at you quite so easily.

I want so badly to reach out to that woman at the fly-in.  I want to reach out to all the women who feel that they will always just be the pilot’s wife or the ____’s wife. We are more than just the wives of our husbands.  Many husbands believe that we are far more.  And it’s so important that you and I believe it, too.

We can be dreamers and doers.  WE ARE!  And if we listen to those secret hopes deep inside us, I think we can really fly by ourselves.  We can become something confident, strong, and beautiful.