Serendipitous Connections

Ser-en-dip-it-y. Say it slowly and it sounds a little dippy, kind of funny.

Unexpected.

Serendipity. Say it at normal speed and it has a peacefulness, a flow.

Fortunate.

I love how serendipity has operated in my life. If you do a search on this blog you can read some examples of how. Today I can add to them.

1. At my last journaling workshop only one person had signed up by the morning of. I did not want to cancel because I had various people tell me they may show up. A day earlier when I dropped the dismantled Sunday paper on the table I noticed an ad for a "babysitting grandmother." Although I had not been planning to find a back-up for my mother, I called the number. I told the nice-sounding lady who answered that I was looking for a sitter for the times I was teaching my journal workshops. She immediately began asking me questions and ended up attending that very evening.

As I arrived at the wellness center where I teach I ran into a former co-worker on her way to yoga class. She was grieving the loss of her beloved cat whom she had just had to put to sleep. Being a writer herself, and "coincidentally" having her journal in the trunk of her car, she decided to take my workshop instead.

Turned out the "babysitting grandmother" had also experienced a very recent loss, and together my two very last minute students comforted each other over their legal pads.

2. Today when I took Little Lady to gymnastics I ran into the wife of another former co-worker whom I hadn't seen in over 18 months. We chatted about her fledgling career as a masseuse and mine as a journal-writing instructor. She thought my workshops would be perfect for the residents of the therapeutic community where she and her husband live and work. She took my card and said she would talk to the directors.

An hour later when I returned to pick up Little Lady, my re-acquaintance told me she was so excited by the whole "networking" thing. Apparently after we both left our children to tumble and vault she had run into a yoga-teacher friend at the grocery store. It made her wish there was a way for other local "cool people" like us to connect and promote each other. This got me thinking...

Unexpected. Fortunate.