A week later, on Christmas Eve, I received one of the first very clear and obvious gifts of this journey. 

It came during our annual watching of “It’s a Wonderful Life,“ during the famous scene at the end when George is overwhelmed by the revelation that he really does love his life, and he begins desperately calling out to Clarence (the Angel) and to God, pleading for their help, shouting “I want to live again.”

As I watched George call to Clarence and God, warm tears began rolling down my cheeks, and my heart swelled and filled with love, as it does each year during this scene. But this time around, something was different. This time, the scene of George’s great revelation somehow sank deeper, deep into a place I hadn’t visited for quite some time. To the place of the “capital T” truth, as David Foster Wallace would call it. To the place of knowing. 

George’s call to live again reverberated through my entire being. I felt enormous gratitude and hope rise in my heart and then it hit me: 

I have been given this great gift of life! This life wasn’t supposed to feel like this, like some kind of slog, something to just “get through.” This life was a GIFT. 

What? How did I not ever get this before now? And why the hell didn’t anyone tell me?

How could I have been so out of touch with this basic truth?

And then another revelation hit me…this gift of life isn’t random. It comes from the One who created all of us and all of life. You may call it Source, Universe, God, Consciousness, or whatever language feels right. I call it God because it’s what feels right to me. 

It’s not like I didn’t know that God existed or was the Creator before this moment, but my relationship with God was complicated. To this point, other than a brief period of rekindling my relationship with God in my thirties, it was more of an intellectual understanding that God was there. More like a break glass in case of emergency type of relationship. 

What changed was that in this moment, I had a flash of direct knowing. An experience of truth. The kind of moment that awakens something in you. And it doesn’t come with any evidence, you just know in your heart, it’s true. So, my heart made this giant leap from intellectual understanding to belief, or to faith in God. Just like that.

Then I remember thinking, God has given you this great gift of life, Jen…. what are you going to do with it?

Then I began flashing back on the past few years, remembering this feeling of longing that had been rising more and more into my conscious mind. I keep thinking - I was not yet living the way I was meant to; I was not yet doing what I was here to do. There was a longing for something I had forgotten, or something I was not connecting to. 

Then, it all started making sense. The dots started to connect.

This longing became the reason I left behind my corporate career. The call had become too loud to deny, and I had to find out what it was and where it was coming from. 

So here it was - this was my shot to find it. I had burned the boats, and I was on the shore of my new life. I was determined to get it right, and not squander this gift I had been given. 

The moment of direct knowing I had that night, became the North Star I so desperately needed in the early days of my journey, to calm the waves of uneasiness. It stuck with me long into the new year, and even now, it is the one thing I think of each day as I sit down to write. It lives as a daily reminder, on a bright orange post-it note on the bottom right corner of my computer monitor.

It reads “God has given me a great gift of life.”

As I look back on the moment, I can see that it was not only the impetus for helping me to get on the path I am on now, but it also kept me from going down a different path that would have led to the same outcome I had just walked away from, achievement and success without peace or lasting fulfillment. 

Finding safety without living my calling.

I have come to believe through the course of my studies this year that these gifts, or revelations, aren’t only available once a year while watching “It’s a Wonderful Life.” These gifts are always available to us. They come to remind us why we are here, to remind us of who we really are. For me, they continue to come as a result of cultivating a practice of stillness; when I shut out all the noise, open my heart, and listen.

Although I wasn’t conscious of it then, the realization I had in that moment came from my inner voice, or my true self. It wasn’t an audible voice; it was more of a flash of insight. I didn’t know how, but I wanted more of that in my life. I wanted to know how to keep accessing these insights because I could sense that they would guide me, and that this guidance would get me on the path that I had been longing for. The path that would lead me to the real work of my life.

So, that is what I have been focused on these past 10 months. In its simplest form, I have been on a mission to connect to that inner voice, and discover why I am here, or more accurately, who I really am. Along the way, I have gained many more insights and experienced incredible revelations. I have experienced moments, then hours, and then days of complete inner peace and joy. I have learned to listen and trust my inner voice, and this has been a game changer for me.

But it hasn’t all been sunshine and roses, as they say.

As inevitably happens as one takes the journey inward, I’ve also come up against some painful truths, and unearthed some past wounds that I needed to face and release so that I could open up more of my heart. 

As the walls began to come down in my mind, the walls I built to keep me safe, I had to bear witness to the darkness that still lived there; to the judgments that I had not let go of, the wounds I had not yet healed, to the shame, guilt and blame that came with living a life disconnected from God and my true self. 

And I had to witness the slow death of the person that I had built to make the slog of life bearable.

No one prepared me, or could have prepared me, for how unbelievably painful and frightening this would be. 

But I was never alone. And that has literally made all the difference.

So, if I were you, after reading this, I might be thinking - you know, this whole awakening thing – it sounds kinda rough. I get it. What I can tell you is that although it hasn’t always been easy, it has absolutely been worth it. I would go through it all again to get to live from this place of peace. The majority of my days I feel at peace. There are still moments my peace is disturbed, but to be in peace most of the time is worth every moment of discomfort I experienced.

My life is new again. I truly see it as a gift now.

I am writing this to share it all with you – the breakdowns and breakthroughs, the fear, uncertainty, joy, love and even the bliss. I hope that it may open your heart and make it so abundantly clear that this path is available to all of us, not just the monks, saints, and enlightened beings. This is my wish for everyone.

This is the story of my awakening.