Feature Article
One Small Statement
by Brandi Powell

I remember when I was going through my divorce 5 years ago-it was in the middle of a college semester-and the emotional impact was so devastating to me that my initial reaction was to withdraw from classes and head home to my parents. My parents, god bless them, strongly encouraged me to stay in school and complete the semester as they knew if I moved home, I'd soon be stuck in the small, narrow-minded town in which they live with no job options and nothing to do. I'd be even more miserable than if I stayed in school. But I was going to move anyway because the pain threatening to tear my heart in two left no room for anything other than it. I was like a wounded animal, trying blindly to escape with no thought to the consequences once I got free of my trap.

But then I was talking to a friend of mine about going home and she said, 'well, that's a shame that you're withdrawing since you only have a month until the semester is over.' It was an offhand mark but it literally changed my entire direction. Until I heard those words, I had been running solely on fear and emotion and my world was reduced to the black chasm of pain, seemingly never ending. With that remark, the blinder was taken off my eyes and I was back in reality, one with time lines and more definitive borders. Yeah, I thought, I do only have a month. And maybe I don't know how I'm going to get through the next 5 minutes but I know that a month isn't really that long. Am I really going to give up with only a month of school left?

I started looking for a new place to live that day.

And I finished the semester on the Dean's List.

I don't even keep in contact with that person anymore but her small comment-and the impact it had on me-stays with me to this day.

Fast forward five years.

I've been on this journey of self-discovery and acceptance since the divorce-with immensely positive results. Oh, there are road blocks and places where I stumble but I've come to realize that they are just as necessary-if not more so-for my growth and healing, than the light and airy parts of the journey. But in a way, the journey has become routine, just like anything in life will if you do it enough. I know what books I want to read. I know my beliefs on karma and healing, meditation, etc. I feel the vibrations in nature and know when to fully engage with the universe and when to take myself out of the loop and sit quietly by myself. I know why I do things. I know why other's had done things to me.

But knowing isn't the same as KNOWING at an emotional and cellular level. Knowing isn't the same as doing. Knowing isn't the same as being. And I've dropped some of the tools I needed to DO and to BE.

Then someone says something, writes one sentence and all of a sudden, the switch is flipped and I am much closer to really feeling the lesson.

I CHOOSE TO BE CONSCIOUS TODAY.

That was written by someone I don't even know on a message board. Yet the one small sentence stopped me, as a friend had done years before, and pulled the veil back from my eyes. My reality became clearer. I had a CHOICE. For the last few months I have been struggling with a niggling feeling of disconnect and emptiness. I'd tried meditation and reading and runes, got out into nature and hugged trees, consulted various enlightened sources and still I felt 'left out'. I couldn't shake the feeling that something was missing and was doing my best to find it. Quite frankly, I'd started to get a little frantic in my searches as nothing seemed to help.

That one sentence, stumbled across on a message board, changed my direction.

The lesson for me-and I think there's a lesson in everything-is that the universe always listens and always provides. To always be listening, to be conscious of what it's showing you is the only prerequisite.

Brandi N Powell
Copyright 2004