A to Z Challenge: Day 12 - L

Lemons and Lemonade by Carmen Botman

While I’ve been handed many lemons during my lifetime (who hasn’t?) there are a few big ones that have stood out.

I’ve always considered myself to be a writer – and this was my ultimate goal. I was utterly convinced that I would be a full-time writer one day, living in a remote cottage somewhere in the world, producing novel after novel. I completed my first manuscript a week before my eighteenth birthday. I was on my way to achieving my dream.

Big lemon number one was when I was told by my parents that I should consider studying something tangible – that is, something more tangible than writing. I ended up studying Occupational Therapy – a profession chosen purely by chance. While I still wrote some during my studies and after, this ‘lemon’ had provided me with a fair amount of job satisfaction and had afforded me the opportunity to live, work and travel abroad. I suppose you could say that I had made my lemonade.

In the years that followed I continued working as an OT and achieved some of the societal goals that are generally placed upon us. In 2010 I received the second big lemon, when my husband and I had to make an abrupt cross-country move for an indefinite period of time. My husband was furthering his studies and we ended up seeing very little of each other for about four years. But in that time, I met a fantastic group of writers who took me under their wings and during that period I was able to complete my first full-length novel and had my first short stories published. I had made some more lemonade and was once again on my way to fulfilling my dream – or so I thought. Just as my husband completed his studies, lemons rained down on us from all directions and we went through a rough patch with little time (or energy) for anything else but survival.

Then I became a mother – under immense lemon-like conditions. And three years after the first, we had another. Suffice it to say that my days had become intensely busy and blurry and exhausting. I suppose one could say that these were lemons being thrown in my way of becoming a writer. Well, if they (my kids) were (the lemons), then I had managed to make the most delicious lemon meringue from it! But every so often the yearning to write – to create – returns. Sometimes so intensely that it takes my breath away.

My point is this: Life will constantly hand you lemons. But we’re able to turn them into something much more meaningful. We don’t have to settle for the hand that we’re dealt. And yes, we may have to adapt the way we plan to reach our goals, but we don’t have to throw up our hands and cry ‘Woe is me.’ And we never have to give up on our dreams. On the contrary. Lemons are opportunities in disguise. We all have the ability to change things in our lives for the better. It might change overnight, or it might take years. But if you’re happy on your journey, does it really matter how you achieve your goals? If I had refused all those lemons, imagine all the opportunities I would have missed out on. No, I am not producing novel after novel, but I am happy with what I am still able to create after the kitchen has been cleaned and my boys are sound asleep. And being happy with and in yourself is all that really matters – isn’t it?

Find out more about Carmen on her website