“It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood…”

Howdy, neighbor!

Most mornings, sometime in the first few hours after waking up, I walk outside and sing a little Mr. Rogers. To anyone who cares to listen. And probably a few who don’t.

I’ve always loved that song.

Growing up in the country, my closest neighbors were woodland creatures, cows, and their farmers. In that order.

The idea of living in an actual neighborhood, surrounded by actual humans, was exciting to me. Especially humans my own age.

Funny how life works.

These days, my husband and I sometimes describe subdivision living as being confined to a city cell. Everything feels tiny. Close together. A little too close, sometimes.

We never intended to stay here this long.

Our plan was to move into a larger home when the kids reached middle school, then eventually return up north after they graduated.

And then a global pandemic arrived.

The housing market changed. Our financial calculations changed. Moving no longer made sense if we wanted to preserve the bigger plan.

So we stayed.

In a house that was already too small for us, raising teenagers in rooms we never expected them to grow up in.

We hadn’t planned for lost income, either. Or catastrophic illnesses. Or the countless other things that rearranged our lives without asking permission.

And we certainly hadn’t planned to come out the other side looking at one another like a couple of polished gemstones.

But here we are.

Not remotely where we intended to be.

And somehow, in some very important ways, better for it.

That realization has me thinking about the lives we didn’t get to live.

If you’re someone whose life unfolded exactly as you planned, congratulations! I mean that.

I also hope you recognize how fortunate you are.

But I wonder something.

If everything had gone according to my original plan, would I have gotten what I wanted?

Probably.

Would it have been what I needed?

I’m not so sure.

More likely, I would have continued doing what I’d always done. Relying on the same habits, assumptions, decisions, and strategies that had gotten me that far.

Was all of that bad?

Not necessarily.

Could there have been something better?

Abso-Smurfn’-lutely.

And that’s where things get interesting.

When circumstances forced me outside my carefully constructed plan, I had to acknowledge that the plan had failed.

And then came a much harder question.

Where else might I have gotten things wrong?

Not as an exercise in shame or blame. As an opportunity to examine what I believed, what I expected, and what I might choose differently knowing what I know today.

There’s a part of recovery we don’t talk about nearly enough.

Grieving the life we didn’t get to live.

The career we imagined. The home we wanted. The relationships we expected. The version of ourselves we thought we’d become.

We can be grateful for the lives we have and still grieve the ones we imagined.

Those things aren’t mutually exclusive.

And sometimes, giving ourselves permission to grieve what didn’t happen is exactly what allows us to recognize what’s possible now.

Especially for those of us in Generation X.

We’re navigating midlife while raising teenagers, launching young adults, caring for aging parents, managing changing bodies, and adapting to a world that operates nothing like the one we prepared for.

Technology changed. Social expectations changed. Economic realities changed.

And so did we.

Maybe the question isn’t whether we successfully executed the original plan.

Maybe it’s whether we’re still measuring our lives against a plan that no longer fits.

Because looking back, some of our greatest wins didn’t come from getting things right the first time.

They came from recognizing when something wasn’t working and having the courage to do it differently.

So, howdy, neighbor.

Where are you in this journey?

What part of your life looks nothing like you thought it would?

And more importantly, where have you discovered that doing things differently was actually the win—not the loss?