And Then The Day Came…

“And then the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”

– Anais Nin

This quote by Anais Nin is one of my all-time favourites.

I had a pretty little framed version of it in my Calgary living room for years.

I hadn’t always lived in Calgary. My husband John and I had lived in Abbotsford, British Columbia for four years while he was going to University. We’d moved back to Calgary in 1996 when he got hired by the Calgary Police Service.

I remember the day John got the call telling him he’d been hired as a police officer. He literally fell on the floor and rolled around on his back, kicking his legs in the air and hooting and hollering. His dream had come true.

As for me? As happy as I was for him, I had significant reservations about moving back to our hometown…partly because John and I were both very happy in BC — so why mess with that? — and partly because of the sheer magnitude of the support system we both had in Calgary.

How could I continue to grow as a person surrounded by so much familiarity?

This attitude became a self-fulfilling prophecy and, in many ways, I spent the next four years…