Dear 36,
You entered my life without much fanfare and so, I supposed, shouldn't expect much from you than what your younger siblings had to offer. Art, family, a bit of dreaming but not really doing to much with the wild dream parts. And there were other things that were pretty present when 34 and 35 were attached to me. Jealousy was one. Fear, of course. Uncertainy, without question. And resentments...resentments leaked through a bit too and a whole lotta wondering what this whole creative life was for. Like, REALLY. "To bring beauty into people's lives" was an answer that no longer sufficed. I wanted to do something...to BE someone who changed things for the better.
And then, JUST before your arrival, 36, we experienced a pretty life + perspective altering experience. My sweet man injured his back and our whole job + income + future plans were all turned on their head. I'm kind of sure that this may be the last time I really need to revisit that occurance as an explanation for anything I'm navigating. It will remain a trailmarker, for sure, but not as something current.
When I was little and I'd hear someone speak of a job loss or house fire or car wreck as the best thing that ever happened to them, it didn't compute. Like, yeah. Whatever. There's no way you really mean that. When I wonder if I've grown up at all since those thoughts, I take comfort in knowing that I actually get what they meant now. I really, truly am so, so grateful for that terrifying experience. The intimacy of my relationship with myself came from the deep desire I had not to be so consumed with fear that I would totally blow any chance of learning anything from that time. I learned, more than ever, how to just be. How to lie next to someone I love who is suffering and pray for peace until it was over. I NEEDED to feel like a conduit for peace.
I can, with total honesty and clarity (and a list a mile long of the "why's") say that was one of the best things that ever happened to me. To us. Theman has his own relationship with that experience but I'd almost bet that it's true for him to. At least to some degree. There's nothing like being incapable of generating "more", of being forced to be in the slow moment of now, that invites you to be super grateful for the abundance of your life. For the abundance of love. For all the things that have magically gone right for the past 50 years that this thing, this one injury, is such strange and new territory.
Thanks for the compassionate wake up, 36. Thank you for bringing with you the deep desire for me to stay awake and to choose to engage more in what my heart is telling me is a more mature version of myself. I had spent so many years being fearful and juvenile and naive and inaccurately called it "creativity". I passed the buck, denied my superpowers, cultivated envy, and dropped balls and told myself it was all part of the sentimental artist persona that didn't waste creative energy on even learning practical things, let alone doing them with confidence.
When you, 36, took your turn in the line up of "Shouldn't I know more for being this old?", it's evident now that I was ripe for harvest. I was ready to be done with waiting for my life to take an acceptable, unmovable shape. I was ready to surrender the belief that being a creative being meant being too fluid to have much shape at all. I cast no shadow in which tender seedlings of expansion could be sheltered from the scortching sun until they were hardened off and ready to explode and bear fruit and nourish me. I see now how tender, life saving mercies often appear in the form of a hardship and if we miss the gift of that time, the Universe will hold them in trust for us until we are ready.
What a powerful year of awakening you were for me. I might forget some things you taught me but I will never be who I was before you came. I can't unsee the gloriousness which you showed me time and time again. Every day you sang to me the perfection of my life until I could harmonize with you.
Thank you for bringing with you the unrelenting invitation to grow up and stand in my power, in gratitude, and in my zone of genius.
Now, to you dear 37, we have a lot to do together. I have big plans for us. And I'm certain we are going to be blown away by how much our life will change for the better as we prepare the way for 38. One of the reasons I'm so certain is that I realized that fear has had way too much power in my life. Like it does for so many. But I'm not going to war against fear, I'm going to try to eliminate it from my life because, frankly, it's not realistic. Fear comes with having the short term vision that being a human brings with it and every time we reach a place of expansion, our ego responds with fear.
Instead, I have looked long and hard at what form fear has taken in my life because THAT is where my power is. Fear has kept me from speaking up when speaking up would have saved my world. Fear has kept me clinging to some friendships where the other parties don't easily accept ones who rise above. Fear has kept me making very small choices.
So, I'm going right to where the fear rubber has met the life road and I'm choosing to resculpt the form that fear takes. I'm speaking up when fear would have be keep quiet. I'm giving my whole heart and soul to relationships with people who understand that helping others expand is the meaning of life. I'm making bigger choices in my favor. In favor of a more consciously created life. I may not be able to eliminate fear, but i KNOW I can change the form that fear takes and use it as fuel to be driven by it less and less.
37, thank you for coming. Thank you for all that we will be together. Thank you for the bright hope and for the knowing of possibility - real, solid, unshakable possibility - that you hold in your outstretched hand.
I'm all in.
xo
