2019 Update: Interestingly enough, I wrote this piece in 2018 when I had a contract on my home, thinking my husband and I would be moving into the next phase of our lives. However, when the sale didn’t go through (after waiting for 6 months), we pulled our house from the market and decided to finish the renovations. We finished them, and now, here I am, almost exactly one year later, reading what I wrote and seeing how much it pertains to my life still, right now.

Our travel plans were put on hold, but we have not wavered from our plans. The house is back up for sale and we are now in a period of waiting. Just like the flowers in nature right now, we are waiting to bloom. Waiting, still, to move forward into our new lives.

Blooming can take quite a while and almost seem like it’s never going to happen. But, it will. And when it does, it will be beautiful.

I think this is true for many people. Blooming into who you are supposed to be and living the life you are supposed to live can take a while. You just have to be patient. Read on and see the advice my grandfather gave my grandmother. I believe it can help you understand how to make your life bloom in the way it was meant to.

Original Blog Post from 2018:

As I pack up and prepare to sell our home, I am coming across many items. Then I have to go through a process of what to hang on to and what not to.

During this process, I came across my Paw-Paw's love letters to my Nani that he sent to her while he was in the Navy in WWII.

One would think a bundle of love letters would be full of sweet poems and romantic ideas of their future together. My grandfather, however, wrote an amazing amount of advice to my grandmother.

After reading through some of them, I definitely see where I get much of my sensibility from. He died when I was in the 8th grade, so I only got to know him as a loving (his last name was Loving, which was very fitting), funny and supportive person. The letters helped me understand he was a much deeper visionary than I knew.

As my husband and I transition into new adventures (selling our home, traveling, starting a business and more), reading my grandfathers words made me know that life only is beginning to bloom for us. We have lived in Louisville our whole lives. We've traveled a bit, but know that there is so much more out there for us to see.

It is hard for some to understand why I left a stable job and why we are selling our home and letting go of so much, but I think my grandfather summed up my feelings in this paragraph in one of his letters:

"If you ever have a chance to enjoy yourself in a nice way, don't ever let anyone stop you. If you can't explain the situation to them so they can understand, just go ahead and hurt their feelings. You have that in writing Carol. Save it so both of us will read it over and over. Life is too short to let one person make it miserable. I am going to enjoy myself and do I what I like, aren't you? They call it being broad-minded and that is what I preach."

He understood that you must let go of what others think in order to live the best life you wish for yourself. I believe we were all born to bloom and become exactly who we want to be. It may take some effort, but you may end up being miserable if you don't.

I will definitely be keeping my grandfather's letters. There are some things worth hanging on to and his beautiful words and ideas, even from the 1940's, still ring true today.