Entering the Great Unknown

Have you ever packed up and moved?  Either by choice or necessity?  When I was seven, my parents did just that.  They moved our whole family into the great unknown.  And it was probably for both the reasons I gave:  choice and necessity.  

One Saturday soon after Christmas, while we were shopping in a town a few miles away from our farm, our house burned to the ground.  This was long before cell phones were invented.  In fact, most people who lived in the country didn’t even have phones in their homes.  But the grapevine was working, and we were soon alerted of the tragedy.  I can still recall the look of total unbelief and horror on my parents’ faces as we drove up to the smoldering mess that had been our home.  Then the relief when the realization struck them that, thankfully, none of us had been at home.  The house was a total loss, but we were all safe.  Then came the uncertainty and, perhaps, a little terror of what to do next.  

It is a horrifying thing to suddenly find yourself homeless, though I didn’t think of it that way.  We stayed with my grandparents and that was grand for me.  It was soon decided that we would take the giant leap and move away.  Out of the ashes would rise the phoenix of a new beginning.  They were excited.  I was not.  Because it had begun to dawn on me as a seven-year-old exactly what that meant.  I was losing everything in my little world.  I was being ripped away from everything I had ever known.  It was not a fun-filled adventure for me.  It was terrifying.

I was going to an entirely new place, hundreds of miles away from all that I knew.  My grandparents, my cousins and aunts and uncles, my friends.  My security of familiar things.  Into the complete unknown.  I did not like it!  But, as a child, I had no choice.

In my new book, The Teacher Learns Love, the main character, Caitlin, finds herself in similar circumstances.  She is an adult, not a child, and she has consciously made the decision, of her own accord, to move.  She goes to the Navajo Indian Reservation to teach English and Literature in one of the high schools.  But she feels many of the same emotions I did:  being set adrift in a sea of unpredictability.  Not knowing what to expect.  Wondering if this had been the right decision.  Not knowing the culture.  She is lost!  But she, like me, is made of stern stuff and she conquers her fears and uncertainty and achieves her goals.

Sometimes, we are subjected to things that we cannot control.  Things that can break us if we let them.  But if we manage to set aside our fears, we can come out of the storm stronger.  

Have you ever moved away from all you know?  Out into the great unknown?  On your own?  Or, have you done something equally as challenging?  How did you cope?  And, in the end, was it a good thing?  

I hope you will share your stories.  I love hearing from you.