Cancer
Until now I had been able only to grieve, not mourn. Grief was passive. Grief happened. Mourning, the act of dealing with grief, required attention.
Joan Didion
Plans change not because you changed your mind but because you changed who you consult when you imagine the future. Six months ago you were asking different questions of different voices, and the plan that made sense then was answering to a version of yourself that knew less about what you actually needed. The people whose opinions mattered most have shifted, sometimes because they moved away from the center of your life and sometimes because you moved toward others who see you more clearly. What looks like a plan falling apart is often a plan finally becoming honest about whose life it was really designed to serve.