Perspective

Purpose in My Heart

Posted on by Kaylin Stravalli

I woke up one morning last week with a purpose in my heart. Do you ever have that feeling? The one that feels like some of the thousands of tiny pieces you’ve been trying to fit together finally fell into place in your heart while you slept? It’s a weird one, for sure, but also… one of the coolest.

It was like all the sleepless nights I have spent trying to figure things out, all the working dreams I have had, and all of the things (big and small) that I have done and accomplished over the past several years FINALLY paid some dividends.

There was no real Aha! moment. Nothing that I woke up thinking was new. In fact, it was a bunch of thoughts I have all the time. Wishes I make regularly. Dreams I dream every day and night. So what was different?

This feeling.

I woke with a purpose in my heart to do the things I have been wishing and hoping and praying for my whole life. I felt filled with the knowledge that I was meant for it. I felt certain that it was one of the reasons I was put on this planet, that it was my way to make this world just a little bit better place to be, and that somehow, some way it was going to give me the life I’ve always felt I was meant to live. I felt confident that I was ready to move forward.

Sacrifices, compromises, and a lot of time and sweat equity will be required, but I’m finally ready to make them. I’m finally ready to pursue the things that have long felt like pipe dreams, wishful thinking, or a child’s naïveté.

And when those thoughts creeped in…Who am I to do this? What makes me qualified? What if I fail? What if I make a fool of myself? I answered myself.

Why not me? I have the education, the experience, and the interest.

What if I never try, never just do the darn thing, never put myself out there? I would regret it, and I would always wonder what might have been. I would never know how it might have changed the course of my life in ways big and small.

And honestly, I need to find a way to get back some of the qualities of the girl that I was growing up because that girl beat to her own drum and did not give a rip if it didn’t make sense to other people. It made sense to her; it made her happy; and that’s all that mattered.

Even if I fail or it doesn’t work out or it leads me down a path I never expected, at least I will know I did so by stepping out on a limb, hoping it can bear the weight of a lifetime of dreams. I will have done so trying. I will have learned and grown and ended up somewhere new. My Quality of Failure will get an A+. And that is a much better life than playing it safe and always wondering where it would have led me.

So what is the nagging idea that resurfaces in your sleep and in your daydreams? What distracts you when you’re busy doing all the things you “have to” do and makes you think, I could be doing so many other things, like ______ and is always the thing that fills in the blank.

If I were a betting woman, I’d bet something just popped into your head. What is it? Are you ready to listen to that voice yet? Are the pieces starting to fall into place in your heart?

Maybe they are, or maybe you still need some time to work your way around it before you can zero in on that thing in the center. This process is good and necessary. It leads to the Aha! moments that feel a lot more like the truth you’ve always known making itself perfect clear – in neon.

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2020: A Year in Review

Posted on by Kaylin Stravalli

It’s been a year.

Of course, it has actually been a year – 365 days. It has also been a year – an emotional rollercoaster. This ride had so many ups and downs, twists and turns that we got off, braced ourselves on any nearby stationary object, shook our heads, and tried to remember who and where we were, what the heck had just happened, and how we ended up here. Did I even want to go on this ride? (The answer: Likely a hard no.)

As the year changed and the anniversary of quarantine’s beginning approached, I thought about 2020. People are constantly saying on TV, on social media, in conversation what an awful year it was; and I thought, “Was it really, though? For me, personally, day-to-day, was it a completely awful year?”

So I dug a little deeper.

I looked back from start to finish. I used my planner and did some analysis as I flipped through each day, week, and month. (Mind you, this was not an overly sophisticated process: I did it on my daughter’s construction paper because it was the handiest piece of scrap paper I had at the time.) I wrote the bullet points and the highlights of each month until I had a bird’s eye view of the past year’s actions and accomplishments.

What I found: 2020 wasn’t just one thing. It was all the things, and maybe that is why it felt so overwhelming for so many people. Maybe, like me, they rode that rollercoaster through all of the ups and downs, twists and turns that came so quickly it was hard to catch their breath to scream or settle the weird “losing your stomach” feeling before the next direction change came.

Nonetheless, I also think it is easy to lose sight of the fact that there were ups, and some of those twists and turns took us in much healthier, more productive directions.

For all of the time we spent indoors, inside our homes, inside our heads, we weren’t stagnant. We kept moving. And that, friends, counts for a heck of a lot in my book – especially when moving forward (or even sideways) feels like it is taking more effort than we thought we had left to give.

So what did my 2020 look like? Well, it wasn’t all puppy dogs and rainbows or even sunshine and roses. I can tell you that. Like most, I had my share of the less desirable aspects of the year. Also, it took at least a year to gain this perspective (my personal shit-storm started in late 2019), but this exercise helped me find it.

I highly recommend you do the same and see how your year really was, not the year as told by the media or Covid-19. Maybe you will find that it was, in fact, an awful, no-good year…then again, you might find that it wasn’t so bad after all.

Here is the bird’s eye view of my 2020.

How did I spend my time, and what brought peace and joy to my life?

  • Writing: Freelancing and some writing for myself
  • In the Kitchen: Cooking, meal prepping, and baking both new and tried-and-true recipes
  • Cleaning: So. Much. Cleaning.
  • Doing Crafts: I made dog beds, table runners, and wreaths.
  • With My Daughter: From outside time, dance parties, dress up, making edible play dough, finger painting, and coloring to Mommy & Me workouts and walks outside
  • Entertainment: A huge thank you to Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, and Disney+ for helping us distract ourselves, save our sanity, travel, have adventures, and “get out” from the safety of our living room; to my mom and my sister for recommending the Hoopla and Libby apps that connected to my St. Louis Public Library card and brought to life the audiobooks that helped me “read” more books than I would have otherwise had time to; and podcasts, so many podcasts that made me laugh, learn, think, and feel seen and understood.
  • Connecting: Phone dates, FaceTime, and a few socially distant visits with friends and family
  • Finally Venturing Out: Family drives, visits to the zoo and the pumpkin patch

What did I accomplish?

What did I learn?

  •  Transcription and Tutoring
  •  A TikTok routine with my sister as a gift for our mom on Mother’s Day
  •  Compartmentalizing
  •  The true value of a strong support system
  •  I don’t like to ask for help.
  •  My childhood uniquely prepared me for a pandemic.
  •  This is not new: Watching TV shows from 30-40 years ago confirmed that we’ve been talking and worrying about the same things as a society for much longer than we’d like to think. We are not quick learners.
  •  My husband can cut my hair. Oh yes, it happened.

What does the bird’s eye view of your 2020 look like?