“And suddenly, you know: It’s time to start something new. And trust the magic of beginnings.” ~ Meister Eckart

In August of 2016, my world crumbled around me. What I experienced as a cataclysmic shift, including the sudden loss due to a stroke of my long-term partner, Bill, the inexplicable defection of a close pal who claimed he could no longer be my friend, job instability which catapulted into a financial danger zone and the stinging criticism of my family who had never understood me anyway. My son, the Civil War historian, had applied for graduate school to the University of North Carolina and received his acceptance that same week. In the midst of a crippling despondency, I pondered the implications of a move from the San Francisco Bay Area to what I judged to be the hinterlands of Greensboro. All the neighsayers lined up to say, “moving would be a huge mistake to that hillbilly land full of rednecks and social backwaters,” but one person (my therapist) said – give yourself (and your boy) a second chance and start again. That graduate school acceptance is an opportunity to justify a relocation and, as the old maxim says, grow where you are planted.”

Several days later, we were on the road with a car full of most of our belongings and a 3,000-mile ride before us. We landed in The Gate City at 3:00 a.m. in the middle of a fierce thunderstorm in a landscape that looked pretty much apocalyptic. I did a lot of learning that first month as I adjusted to my new environment. As terrified as I was of leaving California and all that implied, the concept of a second chance made me realize the opportunity before us to rebuild our lives which had been shattered by overwhelming experience, the death of a loved one and the betrayal of a dear friend and family members. Taking a chance to reinvent ourselves in new terrain did not mean erasing the past, but rather finding a new way to emotionally live with it.

The reality is that second chances come along for us all of the time if we just recognize them. They may evolve out of hardship and darkness, and one may need a sort of passion as a propellant to move forward and traverse that foreseeable bridge of anxiety. If we can take a second chance to reconstitute and repopulate our lives, that essentially means we are not held hostage by the past. The idea of second chances reminds us that our past does not define us. The fact that I worked for 22 stressful years in the legal profession on the west coast simply did not mandate that I had to do that for the rest of my life. I began to contemplate a career as an elementary school teacher and found eventual happiness in that choice. My son’s graduate school admission gave us both a shining, improbable chance to live in an entirely mysterious and unknowable physical and cerebral continent so to speak where we were no longer bound by former native hometown prejudices and outlooks. At the core of the second chance conceit is nothing less than believing in the power of the human spirit to adventurously pursue new dreams with vigor and determination.

Taking a second chance is an essential catalyst for personal growth and a recognition that each individual is a continuously evolving work in progress. Taking that second chance doesn’t mean we have made mistakes which we somehow want to hide or extinguish – it means giving oneself the grace to negotiate any new obstacles they are certain to confront and allowing one’s imagination some free rein. When a colleague recently asked me what I thought about taking a second chance on finding a partner, I found myself confiding to her that I had, by happenstance, met (when I least expected to) a man on the train to Raleigh who turned around in his seat and began talking to me. It has been three months, and we are still talking and becoming friends. We have emotional intimacy, we laugh and it feels wonderful not to have the yoke of expectation about my neck. I don’t know what that connection between us means, but I realize the correctness of author Stephen King’s statement that “life always offers you a second chance.” I am not by nature a brave person, but Wayne Gretzky, the legendary NHL hockey player, was right: “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” I’m so grateful we decided to take the North Carolina shot.