I remember the feel of my dorm room’s concrete block wall digging into my shoulder, the edge of the wall holding me up, but also uncomfortable. Like it knew I needed both support and a strong nudge too.
“You want to do what now?” My mother’s voice from 200 miles away sounded tinny through the phone line, and mildly perplexed.
“I’ve got it all worked out. If I get the RA job, then the room and board I would have paid next year will cover the cost of my study abroad trip.” As a college sophomore, I’d just pitched this idea: I want to study for the summer in Mexico. I could sense my mother’s mental wheels spinning furiously–trying to parse out the financial implications as well as the very daring proposal I was making. I had never even flown on an airplane, let alone traveled to another country by myself.
I held my breath, the hard black receiver of the wall phone clutched to my ear. Would she say yes?
“Well, if that’s what you want, then let’s talk about it when you come home over break,” she said.
Victory! I had never pitched such an expansive idea to my folks before. As it turned out, I did get the RA job, setting in motion my trip to Mexico that summer. It was the first of several personal growth thresholds I would cross on my way to full adulthood, but in the moment, I had no idea that’s what they were.
Turning points rarely announce themselves with much fanfare. Yet, this small victory of my parents’ agreement to let me use some college funds for a travel abroad program was indeed a threshold of sorts–and one that I didn’t even realize I was crossing.
That’s the thing about turning points: they might feel like small victories in the moment and nothing more–a means to a very specific end. It’s only later that we look back and realize the new path that was emerging or a new perspective that was being birthed.
A turning point is rarely just an event. It’s a moment when something inside of us begins to take root and grow—when the story we were living begins to bend toward something new. Sometimes the change is visible right away. Other times, it takes years to understand what that moment set in motion. I found this to be true with my study abroad experience: while in Mexico, I was learning continuously, absorbing, drinking it all in. Loving every minute of it. That was the immediate benefit I saw. But it wasn’t until years later that I was able to see the larger picture of how that experience shaped who I am as a person.
Maybe that’s why I return to these moments now and then—not to relive them, but to understand them. Turning points are the places where our lives subtly change direction, where something in us says yes before we even know what we’re agreeing to, unfurling delicately toward possibilities.
And when we take the time to look back, we begin to see that our lives have always held these thresholds: small choices, brave asks, unexpected doors opening. That’s why I love being a story coach. Because guided life story writing simply gives us a way to notice our turning points, honor them, and recognize the person we were becoming all along.
When you look back on your life, what are the thresholds you stepped across that sent you in a new direction? Were there any you decided not to step through? And how did those decisions shape the person that you are today?
image credit: Kit from Pixabay
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