Stretching Ourselves in the Second Half of Life

I came back from a crisp Thanksgiving Day walk with my Golden Retriever, Tucker, grateful that my stiff knee had finally loosened up. It took some toe touching and calf stretching and at least a mile of walking before it relaxed and stopped twinging.

When we stepped through the front door, my daughter, still in her pajamas, was making the stuffing - her favorite part of this annual dinner. I smelled the turkey roasting. My chores were done until gravy time. I felt grateful that both she and my husband love to help make our favorite dinner of the year.  

Since all the meal prep seemed under control, I rolled out my yoga mat in the front hallway to soften and stretch my warm muscles, especially my right knee that needs a little extra TLC.

Stretching is key these days.

I’m kind of feeling the same way about my life as I stretch myself to take more time to write, paint, read and simply be rather than feeling like I’m pushing myself (or not pushing myself enough) to feel productive.

In the first half of our lives, Richard Rohr, a Franciscan Priest, says we are busy building our “container” which keeps us busy gathering titles, beliefs, roles, and stories - but that they are only scaffolding, not our whole story. It’s good and necessary work. It helps us answer the question, “What makes me significant?” It requires a lot of pushing, proving and productivity.

The second half of life, he says, calls us to look inside the container. It’s a chance to look inward and tend to what we’ve ignored about ourselves while we were busy being busy. The walls are meant to crack eventually, he says…

“We must start by building our life container, but it must and will fall apart,
and only then we do find the real contents and depths of our own lives.” (Falling Upward)

My container is cracking, and I’m taking a deeper look inside. Doing a life review.

I’m weaving my way through my own rite of passage to honor the construction of my life so far, where EGO was the chief engineer, and creating more space and more grace as I explore and prepare for my next and final chapters.

People say as we get older, we get more stuck in our ways. But I’m feeling just the opposite. I am stretching myself and finding something more soulful, more spiritual and giving being more tender toward myself.

 

My “shake shit up tour” to France and Spain allowed me the solitude I was craving to explore inside the container I so carefully and painstakingly built over these past six decades.

I’m learning a new language that helps me understand ALL of me better.

Maria Shriver asked in her Sunday Paper last week, “how do we want to push humanity forward?” That’s a good question, which I think we all need to ask ourselves in this second half of life so when we look back on our lives on our last day, we don’t have any regrets.  We gave it all we had.

I’m contemplating how I want to serve, listening to my dreams. It’s amazing what they can reveal. My work is expanding me and helping me unfold all the layers of my life.

Writing is one of the ways I’m stretching myself.  

So, no answers here. No advice. Just my two cents.

Just an invitation to look for the fractures in your container and to not see it as a weakness, but as a summons. A challenge to confront your beliefs. Sit with the stories you’ve created about yourself, and others, but to not let them dictate your future.

Do some gentle stretching to give yourself some extra space to see things in a different way and get clear on what you want this next chapter of your life to look like. Aging is not a weakness, it’s another new adventure.

I’ll end with the Epilogue from a wonderful book by I just finished by Elena Brower that is helping me see between the cracks: Hold Nothing: An Invitation to Let Go and Come Home to Yourself.

Infusing your life with respect.

Joining with your life,

With what’s being asked of you, with

how you can serve.

Attuning to your world, with full

acceptance.

Practice,

Instructive silence,

more creativity, less judgement,

feeling into something bigger and

more giving.

Would love to hear what’s on your mind about awakening to aging below? Is a part of you waking up? Does this feel like a new threshold?

I invite you to join me on this journey, this rite of passage to awaken as we age. Click here to subscribe to my mailing list and I’ll bring you along on my adventures inside and out.