In the winter of 2008, my husband began saying that the real estate market was looking, "not so good". This was "not so good" for us given that he owns a real estate development company. Let me first say that I feel extremely fortunate to have a husband like Michael who shares his joy, sadness, excitement and fears with me. Let me also say that as he shared worse and worse news each week, getting more and more depressed, I started to feel downright giddy, elated if you will, like a giggle was rising up within me. A cruel sadist you say, let me share that I, myself was a bit confused by my reaction (which, by the way I did not share with him right away, being the nice person that I am  )

It did not take me long to realize what I was feeling.

It was a feeling of lightness that is part ‘so what’ and part ‘what if’; it’s how you can feel while staring at the prospect of losing everything and choosing to see you have nothing to lose. More options are what I saw; great big, juicy, delicious, platinum opportunities. The ones that never seem available when your kids are in school and you’re strapped with a mortgage and growing a successful business at the same time. Of course hindsight will always laugh at the options you never saw, the ones that you could rattle off a million reasons why they would never work; the ones that were always there. Maybe you even stated them wistfully out loud at times, as a lark, “Don’t you wish we could…?”, or “Let’s just…”. If somebody didn’t laugh at you first, you’d give a shrug and laugh at yourself, once again automatically letting yourself know it was impossible.

Saying ‘so what’ to the impossibilities and ‘what if’ to the possibilities is where the crossing begins.