“There is nothing more powerful than watching a woman change her life.”

Or a man.

Or anyone.

I was thinking these thoughts on my run this morning. A run I did not want to go on. Running is hard. Sometimes I just don’t wanna do it. There is always a lot of resistance. But the beautiful Fall weather was calling my name. {Plus, I seriously ate and drank like. Like.  I don’t even KNOW what this weekend and I feel like a busted can of biscuits today. So. There was also that.}

And because I was eating and drinking and being merry, I missed posting Day 15 of the #Write31Days Challenge. When I went to catch up on Sunday night, I could not find a single speck of inspiration for the word MOVE.

What? Come on.

Nope. I looked at quotes. Nothing felt right. Got side tracked on Pinterest. Stopped and started. Stopped and started. I just wasn’t feeling it. What I was feeling was resistance.

Resistance to MOVE. Oh the irony.

The irony.

So on my run this morning, somehow I got to thinking about the power of people changing their lives. My route takes me by a charming little house that used to be in a bit of shambles, I imagine both literally and metaphorically. But this mom. This single mom that lives there now. She decided to make a move to change the future for herself and her kids.

She had some work done on the house and it looks fresh and happy. It looks better than ever. She recently started running and now runs a 5K every month. This summer, she posted pictures of all sorts of fun adventures she took with her kids. I saw two of those kids walking to school today and laughing together. I’m sure she works her tail off. I’m sure there are many, many days she doesn’t know how she’s going to get it all done, and probably some nights she cries herself to sleep in exhaustion. But she decided to make a move and change her life. And it looks like it was worth it.

I was talking to a guy yesterday about life and relationships and making tough decisions.  And he said something that stuck with me.

“I’ve got things I want to do with my life.”

And it doesn’t sound all that profound at first. Except he said it with such conviction that I immediately felt inspired. A few short years ago, one of the things he wanted required him to move. Several hundred miles away from home. Leave a job he loves. Leave his friends and family. Everything familiar. But he did it. He made the move. And better yet, he did it for the love of his life. And now he lives a life he loves.

I’ve written about resistance before and I will write about resistance again.

Because it’s resistance that keeps us from moving. 

And it usually looks a lot like fear: Fear of the unknown. Fear of making a mistake. Fear of not being good enough or smart enough or strong enough. But the price we pay for staying right where we are? That’s so much scarier to me. Because what if you never move? What if things never change? What if they stay exactly the same way they are today? Is that a life you’d love? Is that a life you’d be happy with?

For most of us, the answer is no. Or at least, not exactly.

Maybe it’s an inch. Maybe it’s a mile. Maybe it’s one hundred miles or a thousand. But if you’ve got things you want to do with your life, you have to move.

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Okay, okay, okay. In all fairness, this was obviously not a Five Minute Free Write. It was actually me not being able to skip Day 15 and just move on. So I made up for it . In spades.

The blogging community is like a an heirloom tapestry. Precious. Valuable. Weathered. Dependable. Sturdy. So many people have so many good things to say. People you’d never meet, people you might’ve never chosen as friends in real life. But when you read their words. Get lost in their stories. Glimpse what life is really like for them, you can’t help but start crushing on humanity a little bit more than you did before. That’s the long way of saying please check out #Write31Days and explore not just what is out there, but who is out there.