When one door closes, another one opens

Sometimes it seems like the bottom has fallen out of your life. I know it felt like that when I got so sick I had to give up my much-loved career. It felt like the end of my dreams.

For a while it was. I was too ill to work more than a few hours a week, and couldn’t find anyone who wanted to hire me for that little time. But I knew it was important to focus on a goal, to have a sense of purpose so that I didn’t get depressed. Luckily, I had the book I’d been working on in my spare time for some years.

I started a routine of trying to work each day on my book. I turned the period of illness around and looked at it as a chance to write. Some days I couldn’t manage it at all, other days I wouldn’t feel well enough to write until evening. But I kept on with it, and got an enormous amount of satisfaction and pleasure out of it.

It took me a while to find work. After a couple of short-term jobs I hit the jackpot. I got a job writing articles for a national website. Over a year later I’m still doing the job, and loving it. Writing articles was the kind of work I’d been wanting to do for a while, but had found it difficult to break into. So while getting ill was stressful and unpleasant, and closed a door to one successful career, it has opened one new door for me that I feel very happy about.

Have you had an experience where as one door has closed, another one opened? If so, I'd love to hear about it.

Resilience - picking yourself up when life knocks you down

Not every day is easy even when you’re habitually happy. Today did not have a good start. While I was practising being a good alpha bitch and ignoring the dog he proceeded to tear the stuffing out of one of my good cushions. When I saw it I pulled him off the couch onto the floor, screaming ‘I don’t have many nice things and you’re not gonna destroy them’. Then I sat down and burst into tears. Not the procedure recommended by The Dog Listener, although it did have the positive effect of stopping the dog in his tracks.

The truth is some days it all seems too much. While I am truly grateful to my brother for providing a home I can (almost) afford to live in, I miss my lovely house and my sea views. I miss my friends. I’m excited about the possibility of a new career but it’s a huge effort to try and write regularly when I’m often lacking energy for even simple household tasks. And I miss the perks of working – not only the income, but the status, the socialising, the feeling of being a useful member of society.

Which leads me to ask – how do we cope when life knocks us down, whether through illness, bereavement or recession? For myself it’s always been a matter of picking myself up and looking for the next opportunity. In my experience even when all doors seem closed, there will be one that is open. I say to myself ‘phoenix from the ashes’, which reminds me that that’s my nature. No matter how low life has taken me, I’ve always risen again, bigger and better than ever. And I look for role models, in my case people with ME who have developed successful careers as writers. All of this gives me hope, and motivates me to keep trying. I can’t completely stop bad things from happening but I can control how I react to them – to at least some extent – so that’s what I focus on doing.