One of my favourite comedies of all time is “Some Like It Hot”. I just love all the zaniness. During the drinking scene while Sugar chips away at ice lamenting her life she says, “Quarter of a century – makes a girl think.” Well last week I turned fifty. That really does make a girl think. I have been quite reflective about this particular birthday. It was not as difficult as thirty or forty, so perhaps I am growing up after all. I have thought long and hard about what the next part of my life will look like and what steps I can take for better health and longer life. For a few years now, I have been making small, but significant changes to my life for the sake of better health. I have lost a substantial amount of weight. I have a Fitbit, and while it is not perfect, it does help me monitor my activity. I need measurable data to look at and see what is going on. I seemed to have stalled in this particular aspect of my journey, and so on my birthday I joined a gym. Friday I go to make a plan that fits me so that I can make more changes for my better health.
Physical health is not my only concern. I am also concerned about spiritual health and things bring me into a fuller life and more in tuned with my spiritual perspective. I want to let go of things and patters that do not work for me and embrace what I know will bring me closer to what I know will bring me joy and those around me. Sure, when I was single and had no children, I could set more time aside for my spiritual life. Now at fifty, and in the thick of raising children and taking care of my mother, my spiritual life needs strengthening, and that takes effort and creativity. Spirituality also carries with it those things that bring me more alive, that connect me more to who I am. This is not some deep or airy-fairy thing. What I mean is that I need to continue to align my life and make good use of my gifts and talents and nurture that which I have been given.
One of my great joys in life is creating. I love to create all kinds of things. At forty, I realized I was an artist. I knew that as a mom with wee ones I could not continue to work in clay. Clay takes too much time and requires a lot of equipment. I started to photograph. It was portable and in the beginning of the twenty-first century, easy to come by. Throughout that decade I added writer to that list. I had to first allow myself to embrace this aspect of who I am. As a person living with dyslexia, who all throughout my education struggled with academic writing and spelling, who was told over and over again that I could not write – had to finally allow myself to write from the heart. I will continue to write through this decade. I hope to finish this death book and figure out what kind of format this will take. For me, I know this is just another wild adventure. As my dad always told me life is an adventure, not a problem to be solved. I look forward to embracing what comes my way in the future. I hope that living well – with truth and joy – I will leave my part of the world a better place.
Physical health is not my only concern. I am also concerned about spiritual health and things bring me into a fuller life and more in tuned with my spiritual perspective. I want to let go of things and patters that do not work for me and embrace what I know will bring me closer to what I know will bring me joy and those around me. Sure, when I was single and had no children, I could set more time aside for my spiritual life. Now at fifty, and in the thick of raising children and taking care of my mother, my spiritual life needs strengthening, and that takes effort and creativity. Spirituality also carries with it those things that bring me more alive, that connect me more to who I am. This is not some deep or airy-fairy thing. What I mean is that I need to continue to align my life and make good use of my gifts and talents and nurture that which I have been given.
One of my great joys in life is creating. I love to create all kinds of things. At forty, I realized I was an artist. I knew that as a mom with wee ones I could not continue to work in clay. Clay takes too much time and requires a lot of equipment. I started to photograph. It was portable and in the beginning of the twenty-first century, easy to come by. Throughout that decade I added writer to that list. I had to first allow myself to embrace this aspect of who I am. As a person living with dyslexia, who all throughout my education struggled with academic writing and spelling, who was told over and over again that I could not write – had to finally allow myself to write from the heart. I will continue to write through this decade. I hope to finish this death book and figure out what kind of format this will take. For me, I know this is just another wild adventure. As my dad always told me life is an adventure, not a problem to be solved. I look forward to embracing what comes my way in the future. I hope that living well – with truth and joy – I will leave my part of the world a better place.
RSS Feed