That is my two year old granddaughter’s favorite thing to say, “I stuck”.  She will say it whether she is really stuck or not.

Sabbatical…a whole year off from work to stretch my creativity, travel, and explore some of the things I have never had time to do in life. A grand adventure, giving up all your worldly goods and just going with no agenda, no plans, just going wherever the whim strikes you.  Everyone tells me they are jealous and that they wish they could do it.  So why aren’t they?

Because it is damn hard that is why.

Amazingly, I am handling the fear of the unknown pretty well and the ambiguity of it all.  My struggle has come in feelings of worthiness.  What did I do to earn this amazing opportunity?  And it seems like daily, some other wonderful thing is heaped onto me…adding to my guilt about it all and miring me in my inability to embrace it fully.

I am a person who has spent my whole life fighting for everything I have. From being on welfare as an unwed teenage mother to putting myself through college and becoming a tax-paying member of society, I have fought this uphill battle from a place of never having or “being” enough.  My whole life has been focused toward overcoming obstacles.  So now that there aren’t any obstacles, I am stuck.

I guess it is about abundance.  All my life has been life from a deficit and all of a sudden, I have an abundance of everything.  My life is mine to choose what to do and where to go.  I was blessed with intelligence, tenacity, a small amount of courage, and compassion. I have my health, a great job, and people who love me. I can do anything I want.  And that is why I am stuck.

For me, I know how to live a life of scarcity, it is easy to walk that road, it is harder to accept that I have these opportunities and to not feel guilty like I haven’t done anything to deserve them. Or even worse, that I am not worthy of having things work out well for me.  I am struggling with accepting a life of abundance and embracing it.  “I stuck”.