It is with many emotions that I sit down to write this blog.  Ironically, none of them negative.  I view life as a journey.  A journey that when listened too, can lead us to new beginnings.  That time for a new beginning has arrived for me.  I grew up in the southwest and western part of the country, and many westerners believe that once you’ve lived in the west, it’s in your blood.  Whether that is true for everyone, or just for me, it is true.  I have journeyed through the muck of my past and come to know myself through understanding the muck, somewhere along the line, in paying attention to self, I realized I become more alive in the mountains and beauty of the west than anywhere else.  For many years I thought I was “stuck” in Orlando because I had just spent so many years working incredibly hard to build a private practice.  In journeying to understand myself more fully I had to heed my own advice which is “you are only as stuck as you choose to be”.  I also began to give myself the freedom to ask myself, What do I want? and, Where do I want to live?  Inevitably the answer came back to living in the west.  With that, I began to see if it could become a reality.  It could.  It has. 

I came across 2 quotes recently that help sum up the thoughts: 

“Don’t ask what the world needs.  Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it.  Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” -Howard Thurman

“To love is to risk not being loved in return.  To hope is to risk pain.  To try is to risk failure, but risk must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.” –Anonymous

With a much deeper and greater understanding of myself and my soul, with a knowledge of what helps make me come alive, and with being at a place in my life that my fear of not risking is more crippling than the risk itself, and after being at Charis Counseling Center for 10 years (or something like that), I have decided to move my practice to the beautiful mountains of Colorado.

I take with me many great memories.  Stories that will always be remembered and treasured.  Tears shed from the soul that have been offered up to the Sacred Place.  What an amazing privilege it has been! I also take a small little white poodle, the great keeper of secrets and stories.  She will always remember….(especially when she is mad at me about moving her from the sunshine state of Florida to the snow capped mountains of Colorado).

Thank you to so many of you who have trusted me with your lives and your stories and will continue to do so.  Thank you for letting me into those deeper places of your souls that were so hard to get too, and still you went.   You have taught me so many things through the years, things I will take with me into the next phase of my journey that I expect to be more alive, real, authentic and deep because I can’t imagine it any other way.

And thank you to the Charis Team!!  I will leave it there for now, some words are meant to be private.

Thank you!  Journey on!  Travel well!  Travel light! 

Melissa Hunt