A new chapter for A Good Place

There are times when life changes shape before we quite feel ready for it.

This is one of those times for me.

I’m writing this in advance, rather than in the moment, because I know I need a little leeway right now. There is quite a lot happening behind the scenes, and I’m learning that sometimes the sensible thing is not to add another task to the list, but to give yourself some room.

This week marks the end of one phase and the beginning of another. It isn’t quite how I imagined it would be.

I had pictured moving into a finished, beautiful, renovated home. Instead, the renovation has gone over schedule and I am taking a rather more creative route while I get things back on track.

It’s not the picture I had in my head.

And yet, there is a lot of gratitude in me too.

I’m grateful for the home that has sheltered me through this phase. Grateful for what I have managed to achieve. Grateful for the people who have helped along the way. And grateful that sometimes a change of plan can still lead somewhere good.

A Good Place in person

One of the things I’m particularly looking forward to is beginning in-person counselling at Willow Grace from 23 September.

I’ve been made very welcome there, and I’m genuinely grateful for how supportive they have been as I find my feet. The space suits me very well, and I’m excited to begin seeing clients there.

A Good Place will continue to offer online counselling too, but from 23 September there will also be the option of meeting with me in person by appointment.

That feels like an important new chapter.

There is something quite fitting about starting this next phase at a time when so much else is changing. I spend a lot of my working life talking with people about change, uncertainty, difficult decisions and the gap between how we thought life would look and how it actually looks.

I’m not immune to any of that myself.

Perhaps that is one of the reasons I’m particularly aware at the moment that change isn’t always tidy. Sometimes it involves excitement and sadness sitting alongside each other. Sometimes there is relief alongside uncertainty. And sometimes the next step doesn’t look anything like the plan you started with.

That doesn’t necessarily make it the wrong step.

For now, I’m looking forward to 23 September, to opening the door at Willow Grace and beginning this next part of A Good Place.

And I’m allowing myself to feel a little sad about leaving this phase too.

Both can be true.