#1 Stories Written by Life

It was the day after Christmas in 2015 when I traveled from Canada to Sweden to spend New Year’s with Stig and his daughter.

Soon after my arrival, heavy clouds rolled over his house in a small village, and it snowed for three days straight. Foxes left their footprints in the fresh snow outside the house. I wasn’t up for a New Year’s plunge into the freezing lake, but I entertained his little girl by making snow angels in a bikini. I felt completely alive, energized by the soft cold snow against my back and legs.

With not much else to do during those snowy days, I decided to paint my dream house.

It was a real timber house with a deck surrounding the entire home. Five windows faced the lake, where two large rocks rose from the water. A natural stone path connected the house to the shoreline. Behind the house were rolling hills and trees — not high mountains, but carrying the same peaceful alpine feeling.

As I painted this house and landscape, I built a story around it.

The drinking water would come directly from the lake. The property would be only a ten-minute drive from the nearest town, where we would rent office space to work from.

When the painting was finished, I placed it on the fridge with a magnet holding one of Stig’s flower photographs. His lovely daughter and her friends complimented the painting and filled it with good energy.

Personally, I didn’t think much more about it after I returned to Canada.

Until a few weeks later, when Stig confessed something to me.

After we had an argument, he threw my painting into the fireplace.

His reaction took me by surprise, and it hurt my feelings. Creativity and manifestation are deeply personal experiences. It felt as though both had been dismissed. What stung most was the belief that someone who cared for me would do something like that. As a child, all my drawings and paintings were thrown away immediately — as if my creativity had no value.

I guilt-tripped him a little, telling him I'd never do that to his artwork, especially since he was both an artist and photographer.

But the story continued.

After I moved to Sweden in 2017, we decided to sell his house and move into a condo. Two weeks after buying the new place, he told me something unbelievable.

My dream house — the exact one I had painted, with the large deck, the five windows facing the lake, and everything else — was for sale near the Norwegian border.

I was stunned.

I can’t say I was sad that it fell through, because we were moving into a beautiful condo. It was more the adventurer in me that wanted to experience that landscape — the privacy, the vastness, the feeling of being surrounded by nature with barely any neighbors nearby.

Manifestation and loss.

That experience ultimately made me stronger in trusting my dreams. Even though that particular possibility disappeared when my painting went up in flames, life still carried me toward other magical places in Sweden.

Overall, I valued both the experience and the lesson it brought

Many of us are good at manifesting, but it still matters how we hold our dreams afterward. What energy do we feed them? Belief and trust matter just as much as the vision itself. In my case, anger and frustration entered where trust could have been.

You and I aren't the only ones who experience loss in our dreams. Nature does too.

Heavy snowfall this February brought down many trees. Yet sunlight now pours into those open spaces, giving other species an opportunity to grow.

Nature always finds new ways to reach its next potential. It doesn't stop or dwell on what was lost. It moves forward. No regrets. Only transformation.

I've no regrets that my dream house fell through.

I manifested the next home — one that was even bigger.

If you find yourself letting go of a dream, it may simply mean you're making space for new light to enter. Another idea will come, and within you, it'll begin to take shape, ready to be lived.

Not moving near the Norwegian border opened me to entirely different experiences — from living by the sea in southern Sweden to living close to the Finnish border under the northern lights.

Nature never argues with change. It grows anyway.