Beginning, Again...Still.

Well today marks a new chapter in my life that I didn’t see coming...I am returning to the practice of law. No one is more shocked by this development than me. Through a series of events that only the Divine could orchestrate, I start working for a firm in Maryland today. 100% remote, of counsel position. It is crazy. And I am so happy.

I will still be doing the coaching and mediation practice, but now I will be doing this as well. And it couldn’t have come at a better time, or with a better firm. I know the managing partner of the firm, have known her and used to practice with her a million years ago. She is balanced, mature, funny and we have 26 years of professional as well as a personal relationship to support us in this new endeavor.

It is a little scary but also invigorating to be back doing something I thought I retired from long ago. I am a little nervous in I haven’t had to appear for a court appearance in Maryland since 2001. But I am sure it will all come back, once I get my feet underneath me and learn, or rather re-learn, what the practice of law looks like in Maryland.

I am beginning, again, still. The repeated mantra of my life, again, still. That seems so apt a descriptor of my life. I keep doing things (again) but they are so frequently the same things that I have done before, but with a varied twist or turn that I never see coming.

Again, still shows me that life is circuitous. We visit and re-visit the same issues, problems, loves, heartbreaks, pains, joys, sorrows, losses and everything in between over and over.

Again, still, gives me such powerful peace. I know that whatever I am going through is likely happening again, and that it has happened before and I am still here to tell about it.

Again...

Still...

I am a big fan of ... if you haven’t already figured that out, I mean it is again, still in abbreviated form. It promises that the future will be and that there will be a familiarity with it that will be similar to the one before. And that brings me immense comfort and also sometimes a not so mild panic. But to be clear, I have survived it all so far and while there have been many things that I would like to avoid re-feeling, or doing again in my future, I know that even if that happens, it will be ok. I will make it through the life events, the losses, the wins, and I will be able to move forward.

So today I begin anew something I used to do but haven’t in a long time. I am going back (at least virtually) to the state I was born in to practice law where I first began my legal career. It is kind of perfect. I feel such an affinity to my home state and to my early beginnings as a new attorney. And it is pretty sweet that I am going back new again, with a whole other trajectory laid before me...

I like beginnings, much more than endings but I have been alive long enough to see that they are really the same thing. We all begin and we all end, daily, again, still.