I Consent with Grace

Acceptance doesn't mean acquiescence. Acceptance means freeing oneself to change and make different choices.

The angel card(s) that picked me a couple weeks before I left Kauai.

I’ve been grieving a different kind of grief for the last four months. And because of that, I have remained mostly silent in sharing words here. My words have been penned across pages in my journal, scratched into the sand on various beaches, and have most recently been played on a board while trying to beat my mom at Scrabble.

Words and emotions and feelings have been building up to this moment of leave-taking, moving forward, carrying on. Everything has led to this moment of saying goodbye. Tonight, I am leaving a beloved island and a well-loved life behind with gratitude, grace, bittersweetness, and perhaps a few regrets that I hope to rectify soon.

I’ve spent the last three years on the island of Kauai letting go of my marriage, many friendships, and a life that I thought was a sure thing.

I wish, with all of my being, I could tell you there was such a thing as a ‘sure thing.’

The forecast could say it’s going to be sunny, but it’s not.

The Magic 8 Ball could say “Yes!,” but it’s really a “No.”

The “I Do’s” could say this will last forever, but they don’t.

Perhaps what I could say, if there ever really was a ‘sure thing’, it’s this…

Consent to it all. Consent to the fact that change is likely the only sure thing there is in life.

Much more to say soon, but for now, I gotta get on an airplane and take leave of this place I have always loved. I will always love Kauai.

Love. I guess that’s the other sure thing in this crazy, beautiful world of ours because it’s the only thing we take when we leave it.

With love and aloha, a hui ho.