I’ve been recording my dreams for years. As a kid, I had three-subject mead notebooks filled with dreams—silly dreams about losing teeth, epic dreams about being lost in storms, and even nightmares about serial killers hunting down my family. It’s no surprise, then, that as I got older I took an interest in analyzing what these dreams mean. Sometimes I look up key objects and symbols from my dreams on dreammoods.com for potential meanings, but sometimes the underlying meaning is so clear no outside help is necessary for interpretation. Such is the kind of dream I had last night.

Since my ex-boyfriend of seven-plus years and I broke up eight months ago, I’ve dreamed of him. Usually the dreams are about unexpressed anger, disappointment about the way things turned out, or potential reunions. But last night my dream was not about any of these things. Last night, I dreamed that his sister, who is still a good friend of mine, sent me an email letting me know that he was dating someone else. And while my feelings about the issue were slightly complex, what I realized is that I was OK with it. I realized that, after holding on a little too long to what was, I was finally ready to close that chapter of my life.

I woke up from this dream feeling liberated! And that feeling was so much more than a dream—it was my heart letting me know that I’m truly open to the possibility of miraculous, earth-shattering, life-changing love once again.

So watch out, folks, cause here I go—and this time I’m riding with no hands.

As a child, one of my most favorite things to do was to go to the ocean and climb the rocks along the jetty in Plymouth harbor, MA. My parents and my brother and I would descend from our home in the White Mountains of NH to visit our extended family on the South Shore, and in the summer, we’d all often end up at a restaurant called the Lobster Hut that’s settled right in downtown Plymouth overlooking the harbor. After dinner but before heading for ice cream at Peaceful Meadows, we’d always go for a walk along the jetty in the harbor there.

I can’t pinpoint exactly what it was—maybe it was having all my family gathered in one place; maybe it was the fact that the beauty of the ocean was so strikingly different than the beauty of the mountains to which I was accustomed; or maybe it was just that this place, Plymouth harbor, was in my blood, part of my heritage as a direct descendant of Mayflower passengers—but something about running along that jetty was like magic as I tried to find just the right place to put my foot to bring me to the end of the jetty as quickly as possible.

Today I climbed the rocks of a jetty at a beach near my home. I went all the way to the end, where I sat down, stared into the distance where no land was visible, and cried. There are so many things going on in my life, so many changes and new experiences, and sometimes I struggle with the old emotions that I can’t seem to scrub free from my soul. I felt stuck in that moment of life. So I cried, and I prayed, and I sang to God from my spot on that rock. And when I was done, I lied down and found shapes in the clouds in the sky: a duck, a giraffe, a broken heart. But here’s the thing: when you watch the clouds long enough, they metamorphose into other objects—a duck becomes a fish, a giraffe becomes the loch ness monster, a broken heart becomes whole again.

And all of a sudden, that moment wasn’t such a bad one to be stuck in. I may not have the perspective necessary to watch my life change the way I watched the clouds changed, but I know someone who does: my Father, my Mother—my God. The magical properties of the jetty still exist, but manifest themselves differently in my adulthood. Only instead of magic, it’s an intrinsic spiritual connection to God. And instead of inexplicable joy, I felt inexplicable peace.

Slowly, I stood up from my rock. I made my way back along the uneven jetty to the parking lot beyond, knowing that, while this moment of my life seems long and difficult, it will change with the wind into something different. Someday this moment will become beautiful and whole.

Before today, the last time I was tempted to have a temper tantrum was a few years ago outside the Gordon's Jewelers in the Providence Place Mall after eying a particularly beautiful engagement ring in the display window. I was with my then boyfriend of many years, and seriously considered stomping my feet and screaming, "But I WANT to get married!!!" for every other Christmas shopper to hear. Instead, I took a deep breath, went home, and got a good night's rest. I didn't get my wish that day in the mall (or ever, actually, but that's an entirely different blog post), but I did, eventually, learn a thing or two about myself: I, like 99% of the human beings on the face of this planet, am selfish. I want what I want, when I want it. And, also like 99% of the human beings on the face of this planet, I have moments when I don't want to accept responsibility for my part in why I don't have those things I so desperately want.