I’m busy cleaning a wealthy estate in downtown Vancouver. It’s summer 2018. I’ve been running my own cleaning business on the side for about a decade and it’s been easy to get established in a new town by setting up a cleaning business. Despite having a decade experience in education and community development, I run this cleaning business so I can create my own hours and have lots of time at home with my 13 year old daughter. She’s been at her father’s in Fort McMurray for a summer visit and then I receive a text, “I’m gonna live here now Mom.” The words are like a stab to the heart. My heart feels shattered in 1000 pieces. It’s not so much that I didn’t want her to live with her father but that I wanted us to plan it together, to set it up, to do it in time for me to prepare and budget and be able to say a proper goodbye. But all that is taken from me. When I go home and see her room I bawl harder than ever in my life. It feels like she’s died. It feels like a death. The grief is so intense my head falls to the table as I sob and I feel like I will never be able to get up again.

But I do get up again. And in a few days she changes her mind and says she’s coming home on the scheduled flight. What a relief! My daughter is home. My heart still holds the cracks and scars from the experience but she’s here with me now and I’m so relieved!!

When I’m working through a huge amount of negative energy there are specific steps I take to flip the negative to a positive.