Hi neighbor!
In early February 2020, I traveled to Washington, DC with five close friends. Giddy from wine and time away from our children, we decided to visit a local psychic on a whim. Our readings were remarkably unremarkable, except for my friend Danielle’s. As Danielle tells it, the psychic took her hands, looked deep into her eyes and confidently declared that 2021 would be “her year.” My reading, on the other hand, was a series of vague platitudes about chasing my dreams.
Two months later, the world shut down (you would think the psychic would have mentioned an impending global pandemic!). Eleven months later, Danielle was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer. One year later, on November 12, 2021, she died. I brought this up to my friends recently, incredulous at the psychic’s prediction. “Maybe it really was ‘her year,’” my friend Genny said, “but not in the way you would expect.” (Perhaps, but I still felt like Danielle deserved a refund.)
Bestselling author Suleika Jaouad, who I’ve written about here before, touched on this in her latest newsletter. She described visiting a psychic (also on a lark) while in remission from leukemia, in the fall of 2015. Near the end of the session, she worked up the nerve to ask the psychic if her cancer would return. He told her it would, but not for a long time. (He was right; her leukemia came back in December 2021.)
We all want to know what will happen and when, and we want to know NOW. (You should see my Google searches.) But the truth is we can’t. Instead, we must react to the constant curveballs life throws our way. Sometimes we knock ‘em out of the park; other times we strike out. The best we can do is keep swinging.
XOXO,
Kate