Spiral

There are times in our lives where we feel the fullness of ourselves and life and others where the empty places, the hollows, literally howl inside of us. The personal storm peeling the fine veil of  illusions we create so masterfully. In order to hide the emptiness we fill it with busy, with distractions or with simple straight out denial. Sometimes the unveiling of those places are gentle and slow, at other times they come in like a great storm that leave things uprooted. This chaos provides opportunity and the uprooted soil of our being, fertile ground for us to see. In the wreckage of change and loss is the found treasure of coming home to ourselves anew.


There is a model in therapy that discusses some of the fundamental needs of all people. Following is a little insight into my understanding of how they can play out in this intersection of midlife for women.

First is a need for certainty and comfort. This is the things and people, the little ways that we find security and a sense of stability. When things get rough these are the things we reach for or do that help us to feel certain. Being the bundle of contradictions that we are, the second human need is for uncertainty. We demand or create variety so that we are challenged. In  this way we exercise our emotional and physical range of motion. This can be our pursuit of achievements, diversions  or a challenging project. This can be uncomfortable, digging into those places inside of us that create fear, crisis and can become the myriad emotional catalyst that throws us into change. The third is the human need we have to feel significant. The very fragile and real need to be seen. This need is  primal and goes back to infancy where we all required, for our survival to feel that we were number one. If we had siblings we competed with them for love and attention. We developed our niche in life. We were the smart one, the black sheep, we became the scrappy one, or the obedient and loving one. That need is still with us. We find our significance by building things in our lives, by achieving goals or we can feel significance by tearing something or someone down. In ALL cases significance is created by comparison to others and in this, it separates us from one another as well. Comparison is weaved in the construct of our culture and our human lives with it's inescapable hierarchal pecking orders. In it's most positive form it pushes us to strive and create but when we over focus on our significance or our sense self and our significance is threatened, we have trouble connecting with people. Our differences become magnified. We feel disconnected, on the sideline. All our deep issues of  worth, of being "good enough" come bubbling to the surface.
We  are like snakes, shedding skins as we enter new phases of personal evolution. The crone years, the years we experience empty nest, the falling away of youth, the death of our parents, the realization of our own mortality, the end of relationships, the realization we will never marry or have children or perhaps have the life we dreamed, is a revolutionary time in which many, many of the ways we had of experiencing a sense of significance is lost. As these things come to pass, the constructs in which we found our significance pass with them. Often this loss is not something we are consciously aware of.
Until we develop new ways of being and create fresh platforms in which to we find meaning and significance the sense of loss in us without a name (we only know a parent has died, children have moved away, we have a health change the indicates our youth is gone, a friend dies) is the perfect storm for a personal crisis.  Each area of change or loss is it's own complex cosmos providing us with  status, a place where we experience a sense of belonging, a feeding ground for our need of significance.

Without conscious awareness and a name for the secondary loss of significance that comes with  change and losses; grief can be overwhelming. Imagine what we might project onto those closest to us when we are without understanding yet reeling from the feeling of invisibility and lack of meaning in certain daily endeavors. The same endeavors that fed that first human need of certainty and significance. When we don't realize these losses, when we are unable to give them a name and to grieve them fully, they come out side ways in our shadow. We become martyrs, we keep our children dependent in some way so we do not lose them to their own lives, we put unbearable pressure on them to achieve in order to derive a sense of significance via their lives, we send out passive aggressive messages that say, " you owe me" We project onto your significant other the feelings of emptiness inside of us, our inexhaustible need,  the search for meaning and our need to recreate ourselves all of which may contribute to some marriages crumbling beneath the pressures of this time period.

Better to take that crone's year away. Better to lick our wounds and marvel in our solitude at the right and growing distance of our children as they fully realize themselves. Better to recognize that with the fading of our youth we have the opportunity to go inward and harness a new kind of beauty that includes a knowing, a compassion for our shared experience. Better to have the wisdom to realize we create each day the life of next year and that there are still dreams to be spun.
 The opportunity to realize that there is no separation. Our true significance lies in our shared connection, in our sameness, in the parts of a life that not a single one of us will ever avoid. We come to others not looking for how we might compare but with wiser eyes and hearts seeing reflected inside them the same struggles and hopes. The same beautiful human truth, that we must let go again and again of what we have had that was certain for a moment only to be stripped bare and tender into life's uncertainty where the spiral can begin again.

Grace, give yourself some

I find a calling in my life right now for deep rest. Often the world beyond my window feels full of sharp edges, loud noises and irritating demands. People are moving very quickly, their attention spans short, skimming the surface and then off to chase the next pretty shiny thing that has caught their eye.

I feel out of the loop, out of sync, off the beat, and very much on the outside of this fast paced, carefully put together cultural mainstream. I am overwhelmed by the frenetic energy within moments of being in it and most certainly am not up to the task of keeping up or fitting in.
I cannot find myself nor the value within it and it does not value where I am at currently, either. I'm not trying hard enough, not working long enough hours, I don't have the right wardrobe and I wear my very tender heart on my sleeve.
There is no place for my "feelings" they are far too messy and get in the way of being above such things in order to find my place in the status line. It's about other people's feelings, and then not too much... because let's face it, we might risk scratching the facade and then face the nasty fact that familiarity breeds contempt and who has time to clean up that kind of awkward mess?

No, I stopped asking myself what is wrong with me that I prefer solitude and began to celebrate the deep peace and joy of being in the moment of my own thoughts. Again and again of late I hear women asking themselves what happened to the social creatures they once were and express guilt for no longer saying yes to every social invitation rather choosing to stay in the comfort of their homes or spend a solitary day.

Preserving and guarding our energy, using discernment in how we spend ourselves, without guilt, is not just something we need to give ourselves permission to do, it's a gift we can give those who have real needs and requirements from us.  If you are feeling conservative with your time and not wanting to see people or fill your life with commitments, experiment with accepting where you are and how you are feeling rather than asking yourself what might be wrong? Explore what might unfold if you gave yourself permission to enjoy and relish  in your solitude and more pastoral undertakings.

We have a great many demands on our time and on our person. Reminding ourselves that we are all that we can be in each day and that it is enough creates a place in our own being that can be a powerful starting point to honoring our needs and recognizing what those needs are when we have lost our inner voice.
Allowing and permission give us room to breathe. They distance us from the pressures and the pressures, perceived or otherwise, are a key component in depleting our vitality. When we do not recognize the pressures we put on ourselves we are already well on the road to being frazzled.

We get to chose to participate in cultural distorted values of what we ought to be or we can define for ourselves what we value and want in this moment and have that be our guide to whether we are succeeding. Being authentic to our body and spirit, cherishing  our values means that others also receive the gift of our genuineness.

When we honor ourselves in this way, our asking for what we need does not include anger or defensiveness as there is no longer the need to feel guilty or resentful. There is only the personal accountability to ourselves and our needs so that we can bring all that we are to each moment, to what we endeavor and to each person we love.

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.

starting point

What is a crone's year away? Susan Weed coined the phrase and speaks of it in this way "Crone's Time  or Year Away is time when a woman is freed from all social responsibility and encouraged to tend solely to herself during her menopausal years . An extended vacation, sabbatical or Crone's Year Away is ideal, but you can stay home and still take Crone's Time Away."

A part of me believes that I must be crazy to take a "crone's year away.  Our current cultural value of monetary and professional success does not support such a self indulgent endeavor, especially one that includes leaving a job with benefits and taking a leap of faith into the unknown. Amongst all the uncertainty I feel, my heart and soul have spoken out about the rightness of moving on from an incredibly demanding job and allowing space for something new to unfold. The changes taking place in my body and person are demanding audience.  There is a great sense that the girl from my past and the old crone in my future are rushing towards one another to meet.

This time has been fraught with loss. The empty nest and the great unravelling of my mother self from my children. That year or two was every bit as painful as labor as everything in me resisted, struggled, and then realized their birth into adulthood. How vast and foreign was the void left in the absence of those beings who had taken up such a tremendous amount of my heart space, attention and my time. They are still around physically but it's very different. We are still close, the relationships between us developing in new ways that I appreciate, but rightly and naturally it is their father whom they seek out now more often for the insights and quests they have as men.

The other great loss is the slow fading of my mother to Alzheimers. For many years she has been my best friend. There too, in the newly altered state of our relationship, as the dynamic between us shifts, the road through my mother to the girl I once was has changed. That pathway no longer follows a familiar road for either of us. A road we were comfortable with and comforted by.  These pieces, though natural, are a painful part of finding myself at deep crossroad.

There is the loss of fertility and youth as I enter the gates of menopause and my half century birthday. There is the secret sense that while we woman are entering a time in our lives in which we are most invisible to the world around us, we are more keenly and deeply visible to ourselves. It is like the unveiling of Salome,  a great unveiling of layers, a deconstruction of our own personal myths. The stories we have been telling ourselves for years about who we are or who we are not and questioning their viability and truth against an emerging new self.

A wise and dear friend shared that the Chinese see this phase in a woman's life as a "second spring" and I can see that threaded in the shadows of yet unformed ideas and feelings of enormous potential available to us in this era. I have another  woman friend who did not have children, her mother still quite young, her and her "second spring" is unexpectedly finding the love of her life in her 50's after many years of being solitary.  As I move through the changes and shed the many skins of my most fertile years I can see that there is opportunity to prepare the soil of my life with new seeds.  Perhaps the dying of so many of life's little deaths and the tilling and preparing of ground in our life is what is at the heart of the "crones year away".

An inward journey? An outward adventure?  Finally finding a balance of the two? What shall I take with me? Do we venture forward on such a journey, naked as we came, with only the trust that the years we leave behind will have prepared us? That we will intuitively know what is needed at each critical point. That feels right, certainly it's something I tended to ignore as a young woman and learned to listen to as mother,  often paying a costly price when I second guessed myself.

Embarking on a journey in which I am feeling around in a dark lit up by intuition and hope for my own second spring feels like a great way to wrap up the starting point for this blog.

I leave you with this quote that can be applied to the autumn of our own lives:

Autumn is the second spring, where every leaf is a flower~

Albert Camus