“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

When Steve and I went to Hawaii in 2020, he bought a decal that said “Living The Dream” under a palm tree. But in typical Steve fashion, he modified it to suit his own tastes. (He rarely purchased anything without redesigning or customizing it in some way.) He carefully removed a couple of the letters and refashioned things so it read “Living A Dream.”

He explained to me that he modified the decal to acknowledge that one person’s dream is not another’s. We both dreamed of living near the ocean, and we made that dream a reality. But there’s plenty of people who would have no interest in living in coastal Florida. Some people hate sand. Some people are terrified of hurricanes. Some people are too afraid of sharks to be able to enjoy swimming in the ocean. Our dream life is some people’s worst nightmare!

The life Steve and I built in Florida really was our dream life in so many ways. We went to the beach every week, went hiking in the beautiful Jacksonville forests on an almost daily basis, drove up to our cabin in the Blue Ridge mountains regularly, found an enriching church community and formed fulfilling relationships with so many people in a remarkably short period of time. We had our dream dog, dream cat, and dream house.

Then when the dream life we worked so hard to create crumbled before my eyes, I was left standing in the rubble, trying to figure out how to move forward. And I saw the decal he left on the sliding glass door: “Living A Dream.” I felt like that was a message from the beyond. I needed to be reminded that just because I lost one version of a dream life, it didn’t mean that there wasn’t another dream out there waiting for me.

The dream life Steve and I created was a joint vision that married together our various interests and desires. In the immediate aftermath of his death, I kept wondering if I could keep everything we had created and still have it feel like a dream life. And as time passed, I realized that OUR dream life was not MY dream life. For example, we moved to North Florida to be closer to his family in Georgia, but with him out of the picture, I found myself wishing that I was closer to my family. I also realized that living in a huge house requiring a fair bit of upkeep was too much for me to handle on my own. What was my dream home quickly start to feel more like a liability, and I craved something simpler.

When you become a widow, you are given the very unique opportunity to completely redesign your life. As my grandmother so dearly reminded me early on, “You’re free as a bird. You could move to Timbuktu if you wanted to!” Some widows have more complex things to consider if they are raising young children or have a job that is tied to their current living situation. But I had neither of those things. I was hired as a teleworker way back in 2019, so I had the flexibility to move anywhere I wanted. (A huge blessing, I know!)

It certainly didn’t happen overnight, but very gradually, I was able to start dreaming again. I started making bucket lists of all the places I wanted to travel, adventurous new things I wanted to try, concerts I wanted to go to, and fun creative ideas for my future home. I quickly sold my home in Florida and moved up to Michigan to live with my sister, because I knew that I didn’t want to live by myself, and she is my best friend.

Every step I took towards a new dream life gave me a little more hope and a tad bit more energy to get out of bed in the morning. Day by day, I started feeling more enthusiastic about the life I was creating for myself. Like a phoenix rising up from the ashes, I found the strength to let go of the past and fearlessly pursue a new future as a reborn Erin.

I’ve reached a place in my new dream life where I can honestly say I am incredibly content. I chase eagerly after the things that bring me joy, and let the toxic negative things fall away. And I have a profoundly deep sense of resilience that if the new dream life I’ve built suddenly crumbles, I have the ability to create yet ANOTHER dream life for myself. Whatever curveballs life throws at me, I will rise from the ashes and use it as an opportunity to follow my bliss, and that can take many different forms.