6 Years Earlier
To the Optimist,
Our parents’ lives were about to change with no forewarning and no wise soul to help them make sense of it. A busy Charleswood household with a dog and three adult children working, attending university, studying, partying, and living under their roof. Now in just 6 short months, we were all gone. My youngest brother gave them a one-week warning before chasing a job two provinces away, while my older brother moved out with a friend. One month after graduating with my Bacherlor’s, I was gone too and headed the farthest West I could go, Vancouver. Looking back it hurts my heart to think of how hopeless they must have felt. Our family was built on their hopes and dreams, and we were now chasing ours. Like the amazing parents they are, they knew they had to let us all grow and explore; no matter how much it hurt them to say goodbye or come home to a quiet house, remembering one that was once palpable with energy.
Heading West was liberating, and I still feel to this day that it was the best thing I could have done at the time. I was full of wonder, and needed to explore and be independent. I had always been that way, but this was finally my chance to go. I left home in July 2011 just a month after my valedictorian speech with a suitcase, a dream, and no hesitation. People have often said that this was extremely courageous for a 22 year old to do, since I was leaving everyone behind. I respect that opinion, but in my mind it wasn’t courageous at all, it was utterly selfish and I was okay with that. I needed to find myself and I knew that meant breaking out of the norm.
The internal drive for success isn’t something you can just turn off. Soon I found myself in working for a corporate company, where I was having important business conversations and being coached by senior managers. I spent the evenings outside in any way I could, hiking, cycling, roller-blading, running, dating. Any way I could take in this new world and learn more, I would. I truly felt like I had built a career and a home; a beautiful, new home that I never wanted to leave. It was wonderful and challenging and completely my own. After a brief period of losing myself in a poor relationship, I began the most intense regiment of self-love that unknowingly at the time, would drive me straight into true adulthood. Find myself I did, and that is when it all began.
Love from, Canada
Lauren Gavrailoff, T.W.O