Advent Calendar Blog 2025— Choosing Life as it Shows Up

I’ve said all along that these blogs, while they may be entertaining for you, are deeply therapeutic for me.

Writing is where I make sense of my life. Many of these reflections are first born in my journals, but when they carry enough energy — enough truth — they find their way here.

The meaning doesn’t arrive all at once. It reveals itself slowly, on a need-to-know basis. Yesterday’s revelation was this: I miss my old life.

The routines, the habits and the fun when Pierre was still in it. For the last two years I’ve been building something new, learning how to stand again, how to live forward. But the truth is, I want my old life back.

And because I can’t have it, I’m now grieving what can never be recreated. This, I’m realizing, is the growing-away part — the quiet, necessary work of letting one life end so another can eventually begin.

Woven through all of this is gratitude. Deep, steady gratitude for the life I have lived, fully and richly, and for the life that still surrounds me now. I am blessed to have many friends who show up, and family who anchor me, and bring moments of laughter, connection, and quiet grace.

Gratitude doesn’t erase the longing, but it softens it. It reminds me that while one chapter has closed, the story itself is far from over—and there is still so much life, goodness, and beauty to receive.

And maybe this is where spontaneity matters most. Not as a personality trait or a bold declaration that I’m fine now, but as a quiet act of presence.

Because when the life you loved is no longer available, the only place life can meet you is here.

In the unplanned coffee. The unexpected invitation. The moment that arrives without warning and asks, Will you come anyway? Saying yes to what shows up now doesn’t mean I’ve stopped missing what was. It means I’m choosing not to abandon myself in the waiting.

Spontaneity becomes a way of staying awake to this life—the one I didn’t ask for, but the only one I have.

And in that choice, again and again, I practice being here. Not in the past I long for, not in a future I’m trying to control—but in this moment, where life is still happening, still offering itself, softly, patiently, asking if I’ll step into it as I am.

I’ve noticed that when I try to define what fun is, it often comes back to being spontaneous and the word that keeps surfacing is reckless. Not careless or irresponsible — but unguarded. Less cautious. Less rehearsed. As if fun, for me, has always lived just beyond the edge of safety, in moments where I stopped overthinking and simply said yes.

I’m beginning to understand that this sense of recklessness isn’t about danger at all — it’s about freedom. It’s what happens when I loosen my grip on control, when I stop protecting myself from imagined discomfort and allow life to surprise me.

Perhaps what I’ve been calling recklessness is actually presence without armor. A willingness to be seen, to feel, to participate fully — even if it’s messy, even if it doesn’t come with guarantees. And maybe that’s why it feels so alive.

So perhaps spontaneity, for me, isn’t recklessness or impulse at all — it’s an act of tenderness. A way of saying yes to this life, as it stands today, even when it isn’t the one I miss.

It’s choosing to stay open when plans fall apart, to follow a nudge when it appears, to trust that something meaningful can still unfold in the unscripted moments. I may grieve the life I loved, but I am also learning how to live inside the one that remains.

Now that I understand what I am feeling, I can begin moving forward, with presence and gratitude, and life will meet me there too — full of possibility.