Creating the door to your future

Women will draw doors where there are none, and open them and pass through into new ways and new lives.(Clarissa Pinkola Estes)


I've been coming across a lot of quotes lately from Clarissa Pinkola Estes, author of Women Who Run With the Wolves.
Most of them resonate with my situation – not just that of betrayal, but reaching middle age, having a career crisis and dealing with kids whose hormones are raging at least as much as my own. Her quotes reveal a quiet wisdom, an understanding that my life must be about finding contentment and wholeness within myself if I'm ever to completely heal from betrayal...and cope with everything else that comes my way.
I love the above quote because it reminds us that sometimes, when we feel that there is no way out of our pain or our situation, we need to draw doors "where there are none." We need to use our creativity to imagine a way out.
It can seem to require more than, especially at this point, we are capable.
But it's often when we feel least equipped that we find a hidden reservoir of strength.
When I look back on what I coped with -- learning of my husband's betrayal with one week before a book deadline and two chapters left to write, my mother dying suddenly three weeks after D-Day, the day-to-day mothering required by three young children – I'm astounded. At the time, I was unaware of my strength. I could barely drag myself out of bed to brush my teeth...and yet I can look back now and see that somehow I found it within myself to "draw a door where there was none."
To find support. To seek out hope. To create a new life. Not the one I thought I was moving toward, but one that -- though it remains a work in progress – shows promise of things I couldn't have imagined for myself.
What can you imagine for your self? What will your new life look like? And where is your door?