Turning around the grim truth of getting old

The air of a not-too-distant spring has brought me outside.

I’ve strategically positioned myself to place the sun on back and the glare off this laptop screen (that is revealing the residue of the wet paper towel I used to clean it, much to my husband’s disapproval). I am in the same ‘slounge’ pants I’ve been wearing every second day of lockdown, and I am sad they are wearing thin enough for me to feel a breeze coming through the underside of this chair.

But it’s a beautiful day.

Maybe too beautiful for what I wanted to write about, or maybe just what I need.

I’ve been thinking so much about getting older and contrasting my 20-something self to the person I am today. Fundamentally, I feel the same, as we all do with age. But there is something that can happen (something I feel perilously close to at times) when we get older.

Instead of becoming more confident, more trusting and more aware of all the experience we bring to our world, we can feel the weight and the overwhelm of life nagging at us, erring us to the side of caution, keeping us small and sometimes making us feel foolish.

In my 20s everything felt possible and infinite all the time. I had experienced my fair share of adventures, heart-ache and heroic pull-through moments. And here’s where I struggle to articulate. I hadn’t yet experienced profound failure, slow-but-sure loss, the grim culmination of decisions of my friends, family and self, and too many stories & feelings that I don’t know whether should be buried or pitched as a TV drama.

And then getting older there is also the gruelling comparison culture to which we are all exposed. Sometimes I want to run from that world, and often do. When anything and everything is possible, the little voice might say, ‘so why isn’t it working out for me?’.

Throw in an existential crisis in a climate where there is suffering and an absence of human contact, and strange body-aches that remind you of your mortality and seem to want to thwart the good plans that you never actually made. Oh my.

As we get older there are often more funerals than weddings.

Things that we thought would last forever like a washing machine or marriage begin to unhinge or just stop.

People we love let us down. This is to be expected, and not resented. I was taught it is not a matter of who will betray you, but when.

There will be a fall from grace.

And there is enough time passed on the balance of probabilities for things to go horribly wrong.

The sun has slipped behind a cloud.

And I know that my thoughts never have to stay put. The cloud will pass.

Here’s how I choose a new thought, and maybe you can say this with me.

Everything I have been through…

Every feeling, the grief, the pain, the shame

the hope, the joy

is creating something for the good of the whole world, not just me, but including me.

I can choose to live everyday, to begin where I am, without wishing to take back the past or forge my way into a future that is already changing in ways I can’t even imagine.

I can see the chinks in my armour as lessons that have not yet manifested into their highest purpose.

I see mistakes, not as mistakes, but the highest form of guidance.

I forgive and thank those who have hurt me and I am willing to let go.

I let death me my guide and I feel the angels of my own mind walking alongside me, telling me it will all be fine.

And yet, I accept that maybe it won’t always be.

I am willing to pay the price of pain because that only comes will profound love.

I am willing for pain to teach me more about love.

Even my physical pain guides me to love my body even more.

I am willing to let my story be my story.

I don’t have to compare myself to anybody.

Everyday I will do the best I can, guided by love and the dreams I didn’t know I have.

I have faith.

The sun hasn’t come back yet, but I am warm on the inside.

I love you friends.

Our stories have rebirthed us, and that is why our story isn’t over.

xx

PS. If you want to consciously create your story, for healing, empowerment and transformation, see my beautiful writing course tailored to exactly that. It’s a lovely time for introspection and to fall in love with writing.