Today is December 29, 2019 —the last Sunday of the decade. I awoke early this morning with a…script running through my mind. But since I currently share my small living space, I didn’t have the luxury of simply getting up, firing up my laptop, and (without interruption) transcribing the thoughts in my head into written form. Four hours later, here I sit in my office space inside of a blessedly quiet and warm building in Kennebunk, Maine, recalling as best I can the ideas that were flowing through me earlier….
The end of a decade: Just typing that phrase elicits recollections of the many changes I’ve experienced over the last ten years. I began this decade by deciding to end a quarter-of-a-century-long marriage. During the following 17 months, I prepared to leave behind my husband and dear friend, our then (large and beautiful) home in southern Maine, a great deal of my possessions, and our three beloved pets in order to follow an insistent…voice in my head that informed me that I was to move to the desert—Las Vegas, to be exact—in order to fully explore those many parts of me that I had chosen to suppress since getting married in my mid-20s. While that choice may or may not have been conscious, let me state that it was, indeed, my choice and mine alone. And those now-freed facets of self desperately wanted to continue their lives, despite finding themselves occupying a fifty-two-year-old body. The emergence of those imprisoned parts of me seemingly happened overnight, several months before the start of this soon-to-end decade. And with their emergence began the piecing together of the sum total of the woman now known to others as either Jo Ann or JA Dioguardi.
Most of that process happened during my six plus years of living alone in what many refer to as Sin City. I’ve no doubt that my time spent there was instrumental in making me who I am today. And the last two years spent back where I started the decade—but now in a very small apartment living again with my ex-husband and our one remaining fur baby—has challenged me to grow even more. Now, although I consider all parts of me to be working in unison once again, my process of…becoming continues and will hopefully last beyond the third decade of the 21st century, which we are all about to enter.
From my perspective at this point in time as I attempt to see ’round the bend into 2020, the burning questions for me are these: How can I combine the wisdom I’ve gained from over sixty years of life experience with both my natural and acquired talents and skills in such a way as to best serve humankind in this upcoming decade while, at the same time, providing myself with an income stream and a sense of personal gratification? What truly IS my life purpose—the mission to which my Soul agreed before I incarnated here? How can I be respectful of Mother Earth and all of her inhabitants while continuing to honor my human needs as well as my divine nature?
No matter the answers to these profound questions, of one thing I am sure and can clearly declare: At least part of my mission is to share what I discover with others through both the written and spoken word. Just how I accomplish that—which mediums are best suited for both me and whoever resonates with the information that I’m inspired to share—will be by the grace of the Divine. And though certain aspects of me are hesitant to embrace the changes that are sure to come, the whole of me knows that those…growing pains are what allow for an expanded self to blossom into a radiant being of light.
I pray that all of you who have found your way to my “declaration of intention” (as a citizen of planet Earth) choose to embrace the upcoming changes that are sure to manifest in 2020 and beyond so that you can also blossom into your fullest expression of self!