First, I have to say that I’m grateful to be as far in life as I am. In eighteen days I’ll be fifty-four years old and I’m not afraid to say my age. 

While I love being in my fifties, there have been challenges in accepting that my mind has tons of ideas and things I wish to accomplish, but my energy level is not what it used to be. It’s funny because just yesterday I said to someone that next year I’ll be fifty-five. I equated it to being able to go the “speed limit” but how interesting it is that I no longer want that faster pace of life.

I don’t like to buy into what we’ve been conditioned to believe, while at the same time trying to honor what is truly happening with my hormones as I’m three years post menopause.

So much of life, I believe, is about acceptance and letting go…and finding a soft place to land for any given period in ones life.

And so I welcome the challenge of understanding it all. Though it does exhaust me at times, too!  😉  And I know not everything I’ll understand and must be open to the mystery of life, too.

I’ve read and heard so much about how when one reaches the age of sixty a new energy emerges. A part of me really yearns for that and this is when I struggle with what is right now. So often I find I’m always wishing I had more energy to do all the things I yet want to do before my time ends here on this beautiful planet.

Just yesterday I came across a website called Moonsong and a description of this time in life that many women are in and it made so much more sense to me. And I actually found much of it quite comforting. You may have heard of Maiden, Mother and Crone which are different stages of a woman’s life. But what about those “in-between” times?

And there it was on this website, defined as Maga or also called the autumn season of a woman’s life. I’ve always loved autumn – it’s my favorite season. Now this, this I could wrap myself up in and feel comforted by.

Here are some points from Moonsong blog post that resonated for me:

• For those of us in our late 40’s and 50’s who’s mothers are alive, the difference between the autumn and winter life season is obvious. At 52, I know I am not yet a crone, my mother is.
• As she moves through autumn, a woman feels a passionate connection with all life. Yet, wise in the seasons of living, she can be unsentimental, even pitiless. She does not try to nurture everything and everyone, for she knows not all can – should – survive. She becomes selective. There is enough of everything – strength, love, passion, lust – everything but time.
• Time she knows grows short. Nothing seems endless anymore. 
• She finds she has limits. Her energy falters, her mind drifts, her patience snaps. She begins to husband herself, to save herself for what really matters. 
• The autumn woman moves towards dreamtime. Though she knows her limits,
  She has also felt limitless. She has known the ineffable. She wakes at night from dreams of high windy places where small blue flowers bloom, and she knows in her bones that such places exist.  Luminous beings appear in her dreams and pull her towards them. She recognises the dust of infinity in a windstorm, the fragrance of timelessness in a fire.There is a transcendent energy about her, but she remains rooted in life’s imminent realities. In her eyes you see the fire of primal knowledge: the knowledge of life and death. She knows that she will not escape this life alive. And so she embraces it, moment by moment.

And so I share my thoughts and those I found on Moonsong website about this in-between stage many of my friends find themselves in as so many others do too in hopes that it will bring you some comfort. To know this mix of emotions and challenges we can feel are “normal” have helped me to open more to the acceptance of it all, while knowing, as my mom often says, “this too shall pass.” 

Because accepting what is and learning to navigate within it is what living fully is all about. We don’t always know what is ahead, and so many dreams lie within yet, and we must trust that following the seasons of our lives will continue to strengthen us and provide just what we need.

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