15 months ago, I got laid off. I knew it was coming, and I felt I had navigated it in the best way possible. I was prepared, I had 4 different backup plans, I was ready. But was I really?

I had decided that despite my pending circumstances, I wasn’t going to sit around and just wait to lose my job. I was going to live my life, and when it happened, I would already have a plan to get where I needed to be.

I set off in June and planned to return in December, knowing that any day could be the day I would have to engage plan B, C, F, Q, etc. My main goal was to make it through my friends’ wedding in September. I made it 2 days past the wedding and got laid off that Tuesday. Things went perfectly to plan!! Or something like that…

Thankfully, this meant plan B. Not some of the crazy plans I had come up with earlier which involved planes, trains, automobiles and most certainly, missing out.

I departed MA and headed straight for FL. While it meant skipping a month of fun adventures, it was what needed to be done. But I refused to miss out on my favorite campground. The place where I take a breath and I feel myself healing. The place that makes me whole again.

When I arrived, I wasn’t sure what to do. Part of what makes me love camping is that I don’t get bored. I (typically) work all day and relax by the water for as long as I can in the evenings. This place has no amenities. It’s a glorified shell-covered parking lot on the Gulf of Mexico. There are only 50 sites. You can read a book (I don’t read), you can fish (love fishing, but don’t touch fish, won’t cut fish and will only eat prepared fish!), or you can explore the area (I don’t have a car…or, at that moment, a job). So, I sat. I didn’t have much more to do but to sit and learn to be ok with sitting with myself. I tinkered, I pondered, I dreamed, I cried, I broke down, I got back up, I cried again, I fixed things. Always fixing things. Lol. The sunsets here are stunning. They make you rethink everything. They are so powerful, they make your problems seem small.

I spent so much time sitting with myself I learned what mattered to me. I learned what sacrifices I was willing to make and what boundaries I had to keep in order to be happy again. I met myself all over again. I sat there for 7 days. In a chair. Staring at the Gulf. Watching the dolphins play. Experiencing the most vivid sunsets I’ve ever seen. Pondering my next step. Wondering if I would ever have a chance to come back to this sacred place. This place that has changed me in so many ways.

I contemplated selling the camper. I needed money. I thought about never returning home and giving up my home. I needed freedom. I thought about just walking away. From everything. I needed peace. There were so many unknowns.

Yet it was here, that I put the pieces back together. I figured out how to navigate the unknown. I learned who I wanted to be and what I wanted my life to look like.

I had no idea how long I would be without a job (spoiler alert: it was 8 months!) but I knew what I wanted and I wasn’t willing to settle for anything less. I figured out how to turn my childhood stubbornness into adult perseverance. I stayed the course. Even when others told me I should give up, I refused.

And here I sit. One year later. In my favorite campground, same site, to be exact. The place where I take a breath and I feel myself healing. The place that makes me whole again. The place where I get to meet my new self each time….

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson