Having to Re-Purpose #35 #cong22

Reading Time in Minutes

3

1. Finding happiness.
2. How major events can alter your idea of purpose.
3. Connecting with others can drive your sense of purpose.
4. Connecting with nature adds to a sense of fulfillment.

I’m a mother to four wonderful boys. I live and have always lived in the Dublin mountains. I enjoy swimming, hillwalking and generally being outdoors. I love socialising and good music.

By Claire Golden

Most of us have a purpose in our life at some stage. As we travel through life we can enjoy the purpose of living, whatever that means to us. I think we are here to make the best of life and if we don’t have a purpose we tend to drift which is fine for a while, this could be the time where we are trying to find our purpose or want to change it. We can be guided by the people around us or a love for something or perhaps inherit it from our parents. Either way, we all should have a purpose to keep us motivated. Life throws many things in our path and sometimes we have to re-purpose and it’s not always by choice.

I thought life was wonderful, I was healthy, happy, reasonably fit and comfortable with my lot. I was married to a man who was my best friend. When our children came along, we decided I would care and rear them at home. This became my purpose in life, I was happy and felt I was making a difference to the way our children would grow up.

Life moved on and we were very busy with four active teenagers when things changed for us. My husband was diagnosed with an extremely rare tumour which he bravely fought for eighteen months until he lost his battle two weeks before Covid shut down. Six months before he died, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I was on treatment, grieving and in lockdown. Unusual time for everyone, but in my eyes my world had just collapsed.

I had plenty of time to think, probably too much time. Why was I still here? What was life’s purpose for me now? I was heartbroken and at a very low ebb with treatment. It was a challenging time. My children would grow and move on with their lives, my husband and I had great plans for when he retired, I had lost my closest friend. I really found it hard to find happiness, I had lost my purpose in Life.

As we started to come out of Lockdown, I decided I had to re-purpose, which to me meant getting out and interacting with others. I joined a sea swimming group which has brought great healing to me. I try to centre my leisure time around a swim. It has brought immense purpose and pleasure to my life mentally, physically and socially. This new purpose is helping me retrieve my confidence, build on my health and well being, focus on trying to find happiness again, reminding me to smile even when I don’t feel like it, a feeling of achievement and being in touch with nature on the long swims, meet new people who have since become great friends, to look out for others and care as everyone has a story, to be kind and share laughs at our chats and hot beverages afterwards, a sense of fulfillment.

I know this is only the start of my new purpose, I intend building on what I’m learning from others and reaching out to do other things.

Life is for living, spend time doing the things that make you feel happy to be alive.

This new experience for me is what I think Purpose is all about…..Motivating yourself to be yourself.