Embracing Wholeness
“Welcome to the brink of everything. It takes a lifetime to get here, but the stunning view of past, present, and future—and the bracing breeze in your face—make it worth the trip.” ”
I am feeling content this early Sunday morning. I’ve already taken my first few sips of coffee and it is just past 5 am. My husband is away. I am snuggled in bed all by my lonesome, and as you may have read in one of my previous blog posts, I love having the bed to myself! I am up early so I can post this before heading off to go wedding dress shopping with my oldest daughter. Our first appointment is at 9 am. She has asked her sister to be her maid of honour and has chosen not to have bridesmaids, so it will be just the 3 of us visiting bridal shops. I love spending time with my girls! They have grown into independent, empowered, and compassionate women who bring me such incredible joy. They make me feel young.
Now, if you had peeked into my life a few days ago, you would have seen quite a different picture. You would have seen me blubbering in my Volkswagen Beetle, in the parking lot at the veterinarian. Over the last two months, the dog love of my life, Tucker, has become old. I had been worried a recurrence of his cancer might be the cause; instead, it seems that in the last 5 months, arthritis in his one back leg had progressed significantly and spread to his other back leg. Now I know why our walks are shorter and slower.
The news overwhelmed me. I should have been happy it was not cancer. After all, arthritis in a large, old dog is to be expected, and thankfully we can keep him comfortable. At first, I attributed my tears to COVID; many of us are walking around with frayed emotions. There are days that I feel like I am carrying the anguish of the whole world on my shoulders. And then I realized I was not only crying about Tucker’s aging body but also mine. I am walking around with aches and pains these days that are as yet undiagnosed. I’m suspecting arthritis, but there is always that niggling worry that it is something worse. Tucker does not seem like an old dog to me, and I don’t feel very old either – except on certain days when my body reminds me that I am getting older.
If you had asked me a few years ago about this aging journey I would have told you that I had bought into the stereotypes and was worried about a future that would include loneliness, pain, memory loss, and boredom. But now I see the rich lives my older women friends are living and I recognize the reality of aging is much more positive.
I’ve been reading about aging, mulling over ideas and concepts, and exploring their validity through academic research, popular culture, and lived experience. Here are some things I’ve learned:
We are past mid-life but not yet into old age
Carl Jung believed that during this stage of life we are “betwixt and between” - past mid-life but not yet into extreme old age. Erik Erikson pioneered the concept of life stage development and he identified maturity (65 – 80+) as the final stage. But after his death, his widow Joan Erikson added another stage, gerotranscendence, the stage where resolution is the acceptance of death.
We begin to embrace the wholeness of our lives
I have followed the teachings of Parker Palmer for many years. He articulates so well what I believe to be true about life. His book, On the Brink of Everything, was published as he was reaching his 80th birthday and I highly recommend it as a must-read. As he stands on the brink of everything he shares,
Looking back, I see why I needed the tedium and the inspiration, the anger and the love, the anguish and the joy. I see how it all belongs, even those days of despair when the darkness overwhelmed me. Calamities I once lamented now appear as strong threads of a larger weave, without which the fabric of my life would be less resilient. Moments of fulfillment I failed to relish in my impatience to get on to the next thing now appear as times to be recalled and savored. And I’ve doubled down on my gratitude for those who’ve helped me along with love, affirmation, hard questions, daunting challenges, compassion, and forgiveness.
Now that is embracing the wholeness of our lives!
We begin to approach life with a new sense of freedom and individuality
As we get older, the ego becomes less important. We become more open and bolder in affirming our uniqueness. Jung noted we no longer feel the need to honour the past or dysfunctional family patterns. We begin to adopt a persona that feels right, rather than conform to what society expects. One of my blog readers shared, “There is a freedom that I wasn’t expecting – to throw off judgment (mine included) and be more open to myself and interesting ideas.”
We are better at listening to ourselves
Mary Pipher, in her book, Women Rowing North: Navigating Life’s Currents and Flourishing As We Age, writes that as women, we have been constrained by the way we were taught to think, feel, and behave and by our culture’s definitions of our roles. We are now listening to ourselves. Pipher adds, “the more we understand ourselves, the more skilled we will be at distinguishing between acting on impulse and listening to the nurturing voice deep inside us. The more self-knowledge we have the more likely it is that we will be able to act in accordance with our truest selves.”
Life becomes easier and more joyful
Research shows that people are happiest at the beginning and ending of life – and that upward curve climbs to its highest point at 98 (Brookings Institute)! Aging brings us a greater acceptance of our lives and ourselves. We begin to live more fully.
And so, although I may have the odd day where aging overwhelms me, I stand on the brink of everything with open arms – ready to embrace the wholeness of this life that is unfolding in front of me.