Pandora's box

A friend asked me how I thought that it was that at an age in our woman's lives that we become less visible to the world around us the that we are more accessible and visible to ourselves?

It has been my experience that as we grow older we become more comfortable shedding pretenses. There is a tendency in our youth to mold ourselves into who and what we think that others require of us in the personal and professional platforms of our lives. It's what most of us were trained to do first by our parents and certainly our school system is set up for us to learn this way of "appropriately being in the world if we wish to be successful citizens.

As well, it is the outward focus of our younger years. Youth is a time of self exploration, trying on of hats and connecting the developing vision of who we are and aspire to be with our newly discovered entrance into the adult world. 

 Later there is the sad fact that we often step forward in our interactions and relationships with others by leading with our broken pieces; the fragments that say I am not enough (and will make more room for you and your desires than for mine), or those parts of us fraught with the fear that if we say too much or ask for too much that we will be abandoned, found out, or seen as inadequate. 

 There are all the cultural ideas, unspoken and overt creating an inordinate amount of pressure to be many things to many people and to display only the most ideal version of our perfect self.

I have seen women cry when asked sincerely and given the space, to reflect on their deeper unrealized and unmet needs. What do you want? What do you need? What would you ask for, even more, what would you demand for yourself if you were not afraid?  Some women have never been asked that question and certainly have not had time nor space in their lives to truly ask that of themselves. 

At some point in a woman’s life that silenced voice begins to call on us to turn the eye inward. If we are open to its invitation it becomes an unveiling for us. This is not necessarily a comfortable process but one that calls on us to muster all the courage it takes to open our own Pandora's box, to step out of what is familiar to us and into our own deep crossroad.

That road is often far beyond our comfort zone. A place where the ego wrestles with not knowing what will come next, and shed the many veils (roles) it has hid inside for these long years. It is the end and the beginning. 

The crone's year away is a euphemism a time set aside to give birth to ourselves unfettered by the ownership of others and the names we have worn; daughter, wife, sister, mother, partner, friend. We meet ourselves new and unveiled by those roles that have defined our women's lives. A figurative pilgrimage in which we are willing to risk getting lost in the wilderness of our own lives.

 Let's meet there.