In my late thirties I experienced an early mid-life crisis. It's fairly well documented on this blog, especially in the Project Home & Healing collection of posts.
During and after that crisis in our family life, marriage, and faith I went through what I've called The Reckoning. The Reckoning started during the crisis but was more the aftermath, the fallout from the crisis. It was a sense of regret, loss, and failure.
At the same time our kids were going through their teens years and yikes, what parent of teenager doesn't experience these emotions?
My Reckoning is a coming to terms, as much as is possible, with the decisions made earlier in my adult life. How those formed me, and inform my life now. And how so much of my life is out of my control and that my decisions will not yield what I expect.
This is a hard lesson to learn.
This series of posts, written and published over a couple years time span, explore this experience.
But I need to tell you upfront that I went into this writing with a bias. A bias I carry from my faith tradition, personal experience, and the perennial wisdom of humanity.
Experiences of loss, regret and failure are the very soil, the compost, the rich earth of dead and dying matter that makes all things new again. A resurrecting soil, out of which new life and abundance grows, once again.
I already know the conclusion and I'm working to make it a reality in my living and my writing.
December 17, 2022
The year I come into my power and purpose through unexpected means.
February 17, 2020
It seems I've lost my confidence in my myself as my kids have grown older. A confidence I need to re-discover as I leave the nest, post-homeschooling.
December 3, 2019
Let's call her Aunty Anxiety. And I've come to see that her intentions are good, even if I have to squint real hard to see it.
November 12, 2019
One of the hardest parts of growing up has been realizing we don't achieve our desires. At least not the way we think we will. The joy comes not in attaining what we desire, but in giving ourselves to the cause, the aim, the goal. Circling the desire, but never reaching it.
November 8, 2019
Acting on desire is how we make decisions in our life. It's how we choose, to the extent we can, the path we want to take. But how do we know we can trust our desires?
October 29, 2019
If I had known, in my early twenties that I was a mountain girl I would have never moved east. I would have gone west.
October 9, 2019
I associated the mountains with summer vacation. It wasn't a place you lived, despite the obvious evidence of locals, it was a place you visited.