STORYTIME TAPESTRY

The Newsletter devoted to spreading love and cultural awareness throughout the world

Special Treat ??“ Submitted by Carol Roach

July 23, 2005

Midlife Magic

On Turning 50

Jodi Flesberg Lilly

Just a week before my 50^th birthday I am in a reflective mood. For the past few months, especially, I have been thinking more about where I??™ve been and what I??™ve done with these past 50 years. In some respects it feels like I have lived several different lifetimes already. My life has been divided up into segments that seem completely unrelated to the one before and yet I have been through all of these phases, all the cycles of growth that brought yet another surprise that helped determine what the next chapter would hold.

I have known since I was young that I would not live a conventional kind of life. I was raised in the Midwest in a middle class family with extended family within about a hundred miles. I was bored and restless and felt smothered by all the family members who had such definite ideas about who I should be and how I should behave so by the time I was 14 I knew I would live in California when I was an adult. Although I??™d never been there, it seemed me a place more suited to my creative, sun loving, freedom-craving personality. I couldn??™t wait to grow up and ???not have any relatives??? as I told my mother when I was forced to attend was yet another, to me, dull extended family function.

Although I married young, I had determined at an early age that I wouldn??™t be a mother and was careful to avoid pregnancy. I was so firm in my desire to be childless that I had no close friends who had children until recently and once I left my parents home was never around a child who was growing up, save for annual visits with my nephew who lived in the Midwest. As I entered my 30??™s I began to reconsider my choice not to have a child, but the mere consideration of having a baby set my shaky second marriage up for a level of scrutiny that it couldn??™t possibly withstand. Instead of having a baby I got a divorce.

I spent my 30??™s in a period of deep introspection, healing and psychotherapy. I??™d been meditating and studying metaphysics since my mid-twenties and the more aware I became the more I realized I had a need to heal and grow personally that other people didn??™t seem to have. Much of what happened during that time is a blur as I was so deeply involved in healing the emotional issues that had plagued me for decades. I felt lost and hopeless and I didn??™t have a clue who I was or what mattered to me through much of that time. I only knew that if I couldn??™t get down to what mattered to me my life wouldn??™t ever hold any meaning for me. I spent years peeling away layer after layer of old beliefs and coping mechanisms that enabled me to feel ???safe??? but, in fact, they just protected me from knowing how I really felt about anything and made me feel empty and lost.

During that time I healed many of my addictive patterns and walked away from many of the things and people I??™d hoped would give my life meaning and promise. It took years of just living my truth, once I began to discover more of it within me, to actually start to know myself and create a life that felt meaningful and rich to me. I shoveled out copious amounts of ???not me??? stuff to get down to my heart where the truth had always been.

Over the past few months I have been stepping out in new ways in my life; ways that are a reflection of who and what I know myself to be and act on some of the things that are rewarding and make my life a pleasure. I have met countless new people who are on a similar path and who value growth and awareness as I do.

For many, many years I questioned whether I would ever get to this clearing, this place where I feel comfortable in my skin and know what is true for me and what matters to me. I questioned whether I would ever feel okay, hoping against hope that I would feel so much more than okay. My strong desire was to feel passionate and clear about what I was doing and secure in my sense of self and my place in the world.

Standing here on the verge of 50 I can honestly say that my strong desire is being fulfilled. I feel passionate about my life in a way that I never did when I was younger. I have a sense of self that is palpable to me today. I find meaning in virtually everything. That is something I have always done but I was living in a place where my insights weren??™t welcome and I felt wrong for knowing what I knew because those around me made it crystal clear that they were extremely uncomfortable and unhappy with me knowing what I knew. So I learned that it wasn??™t okay to be who I am or do what I do naturally. It became dangerous to say what I felt or saw and I was punished or chastised for it. So I learned to dumb myself down. I learned to forget what I knew. I learned to hide my truth, eventually, from even myself, because it made them withhold their love. If a person isn??™t lovable as who they are they will find a way to become whatever they need to in order to be loved. At least I did.

Today I stand in my center and know what I know. No longer do the voices or the anger or disapproval shut me up or shut me down. Today, on the verge of 50 and I am beginning my life. As I look forward I see so much that invites my attention, so many things to do, so many things to experience, so much to say, to write, to explore, so many ideas to share and bounce off other people, so much to learn.

Today I look at how I want to fill in the blank places in my life and how much room I want to leave open for the midlife magic to happen. What I am experiencing today does indeed feel like magic. I feel as if I have finally awakened from a long complicated nightmare and I am actually just fine. I shake my head at the craziness of the dream, wipe the sleep from my eyes, stretch my body like a cat after a nap and look out the window thanking God for the growing light of a brand new day.

lightinmotion@yahoo.com

Jodi Flesberg Lilly is a writer and intuitive astrologer living in San Ramon, CA. She founded and leads the Creative Writers Network at www.Ryze.com (an online business networking site), as well as offering intuitive astrology readings, leading workshops, and teaching classes in spiritual and personal awareness. To subscribe to her monthly Light In Motion, intuitive astrology newsletter please send an email to info@lightinmotion.net and write "subscribe" in the subject line.