Why Scotland and what’s happening with our plans?

Posted by Avigail on 24th November 2008

Ever since we started to tell people that we want to move to Scotland, people have asked us ‘Why Scotland?’ It’s a really good question but it doesn’t have an easy answer. Ian and I spontaneously started to talk about leaving Australia around 5 years ago. Scotland emerged in our conversations and our dreams somewhere along the way. We can’t say exactly when and how. It just did.

Not only did we recognise that Scotland was our destination, we also knew instinctively that we need to go to the Highlands, to Inverness. Both of us are quite grounded people with a scientific mind and this seemed very strange to us. Why Scotland and why Inverness? We had no answers other than a kind of a gut feeling, a sense of calling or being drawn there.

When I was in Inverness and mentioned to people I spoke to that I was from Australia and that we were planning to come and settle there in 2009, the reactions were quite stunned. The main comment I got was along the lines of ‘Why on earth would anyone want to leave a sunny country like Australia and come to a country like Scotland?’ People seemed genuinely puzzled. I suspect that many people living in colder, often greyer climates think of Australia as an absolute heaven with abundant sunshine and beautiful endless beaches. Australia is beautiful and is also very diverse in terms of climate zones and culture. It has been a wonderful home to me for just over 17 years, and for Ian all his life. We could continue to live here, do our work and grow old. When I left Israel, I felt I had to leave because my soul was dying there. But here, our life is really good. I am not running for my life any more, and no one is kicking us out…

When we don’t know what to say to people we sometimes mention that Ian is half Scottish, and that he is a British citizen and some people find it a satisfying answer. It is true that Ian feels a strong connection to Scotland. He can’t see the landscape there without his eyes filling up with tears. But the real truth is that we are simply drawn to go to Inverness, where we believe we are supposed to be in order to do the next bit of our work. If you ask me to explain it, I can’t really. I don’t know why. I don’t know if I can explain why I came to Australia but it was the right thing to do. I can’t explain why Ian and I got together but we know it was the right thing to do. I suppose we feel that we are following our destiny.

We had family commitments over the years and so 2009 always seemed like the right year to go. March was when we originally aimed for because of our commitments. Later things changed, and we moved the date forward to December 2008. And then as we were starting to organise the different aspects of our move like closing the practice, removalists, a pet agent for our cats, my settlement visa, a UK bank account, the financial crash happened and we couldn’t sell our house. As we have already told everyone, we had to change our plans because we need the money from the house in order to move and start a life in Scotland. We felt really confused. If we have a sense of destiny and mission, then why can’t we go when we planned to? It all seemed so right. Could we have been wrong all along?

In addition, our very dear friend Rob died last month within 12 weeks of being diagnosed with colon cancer. The last thing we planned while we were organising our move was to be at a funeral of a close friend who we had believed would be around for many years to come. We always talked about how Rob was going to visit us in Scotland. So what do we do with this? Two really big things seem to go wrong at about the same time. We naturally questioned ourselves and whether our intuition was right… Maybe we were wrong about everything.

We still haven’t sold our house and are now aiming towards the original plan of leaving in March. But we don’t know whether we will be able to do it then either. We really do need to have enough money to start a life and a practice in Scotland, and our house is the only money we have.

When things don’t happen as I plan I always know that I must pay attention, that something important is happening. It is very hard for me to let go and surrender to circumstances I have no control over. I had all these wonderful plans for what we were going to do in Scotland, how we were going to live and the work we are going to do. And now I don’t know what will happen with these plans. So I think that I am going through a learning process. I am learning to surrender and let go, and trust that things will happen the way they need to.

When I started my practice in 1999 in Canberra, I did it against all odds. I was terrified and inexperienced. I was not known in Canberra and I didn’t know anyone here. I came here with my Jansen Newman degree that no one knew anything about. All I heard around me was ‘Don’t do it. It’ll never work. You won’t be able to make a living’. I heard this loud and clear, but stubbornly stuck to my dream to work for myself and do this work in my own way. Nothing in my family history prepared me for owning my own business. Previously I had always worked for others. The idea of setting up a business or a company and work in a field that I was new to, seemed like some kind of an impossibility. This was something that only ‘special’ people could do. The thought that I can own my own business and work for myself, seemed like science fiction.

I did consider the ‘safer option’ of getting a job working for a counselling service. I struggled with the thought that I was insane to think I could really make a living owning my own practice, and the feeling that ‘I didn’t have a right’. I even made a couple of half-hearted attempts at applying for jobs while we were waiting to buy a house with a studio for me to work from. But there was no energy for me in the thought of working for others. I had an idea in my head and not even my worst anxieties and fears could banish it. It was a dream that wouldn’t go away.

All I had to carry me through those fearful months after we moved to Canberra, was the strange thought that if my work and what I had to offer were needed, it will happen. I didn’t plan to think like that. It wasn’t deliberate. I just did, and the thought kept rattling in my head while from moment to moment I struggled with terrible anxiety and fear. The circumstances around finding the right house, and the help we received for buying it were also miraculous and felt unlikely. In fact, everything seemed to fall into place by itself and for a ‘doer’ like myself it made no sense…

Nine and a half years later I still run a thriving, busy practice that has built a client base really quickly and has been going steadily and consistently all this time. Even now it still seems like a miracle. I don’t really know how it happened. There were people who without knowing me, trusted me and referred my first two clients in 1999. When a few years later I asked them why they did it given that they hardly knew me and knew nothing about me as a therapist, they said that they just had a ‘feeling’ about it but couldn’t tell me more than that...

From then on it snowballed, and it has been mostly word of mouth with a small percentage of referrals from doctors and other services. I feel like I didn’t do anything to make this happen. I kept on doing my work the way I understood it and everything seemed to happen by itself all around me. And I have never taken it for granted. I have always felt grateful for being able to do the work I do, the way I wanted to do it and for being able to work from home and on my own terms.

I shudder to think of all the hundreds of people I would probably never have met, if I gave in to my fear and went with what seemed like the ‘safer option’ of working for other people. Not that I think that all these clients would not have been OK with other therapists. But there is something unique and special in every encounter with every human being. I affected many people over the years and they have affected me, deeply. I am a better person and a better therapist thanks to all these people who chose me as their companion for the time I have worked with them. It is an amazing privilege and I would not have had this experience, if back in 1999 I gave in to my fear and I didn’t trust that things were going to happen as they should.

When Ian decided to study at JNI in 2006 and qualify as a therapist too, that was completely unexpected. The last thing I expected was for my husband to become a therapist too, and join me in my practice. But he has, and since the start of this year Ian has been working with his own clients and loving it, and we have been sharing the practice. This too is an amazing miracle and I have a feeling that it’s only the beginning of something, and that there is a lot more to come. Only I don’t know what.

So looking at what is happening now, I think that perhaps things will happen perfectly, as they should in their own time as they always have. If we are not going next month it’s probably because it isn’t the right time. We can only see our own little world that is immediately visible to us. But we don’t know in what way our lives are connected to other lives and to other people’s circumstances. Despite our best intentions and our intelligence, our personal vision is limited and the ‘big picture’ is hidden from us.

So I believe that whatever needs to happen will, as it always has and that I need to step out of Life’s way and let things unfold. On the surface it looks like we have come by a big setback to our plans but we will just have to wait and see what happens. And whatever happens, we will let you know.

Avigail