Maturing

I’ve been reflecting on growing old this week. I took a photo and noticed the lines around my eyes in a way I haven’t before. My son even did a portrait of me and drew a line right in the middle of my eyebrows, where I have a very distinct line.

At the same time my daughter, my youngest, has grown over the past few months, more independent, more her own human being. I’ve really noticed it, she needs me less. She still needs me of course, but in a different way.

And then my husband and I made a very clear decision not to have any more children. We’d made an unsaid agreement before this week, but this week it was cemented.

It feels like I’ve shifted, something in me and around me has changed. As I move out of my child-bearing years, into the next phase of my life.

There’s something else that has been very present for me this year, something I haven’t said out loud. This year I turned 43. My Mum died when she was 53. In 10 short years I will be the age she was when she died.

I know that it is a privilege to grow. As the lines appear, my eyesight wanes, my children grow, I’m coming to a new place. I don’t know what might lie ahead, but I’m enjoying the place I’m in, this transition.

What’s also interesting is the realisation that we continue to mature. It’s not just our bodies that change, we do too. I used to think that we’d reach adulthood and that was it. I thought I’d have it all worked out when when I reached my thirties, that somehow I’d be wiser in my forties.

And I am. But what I know is that it doesn’t stop. There isn’t an end point. There are many, many phases to our lives and if we’re lucky it continues. Each day we get to grow, mature, shift and change.

I know this from my own experience and I know this from some of my wonderful clients who are in their sixties and seventies, it just continues.

We continue to grow, mature and age until the day we die.

And so I’m taking a moment to acknowledge the transition. The shift I’m feeling and very present to this week. Sometimes we can go from one phase to another without realising it, without noticing. But it’s important to take a moment, to see it, to be with it.

I’m welcoming in this new phase. It feels good, liberating even, in the understanding that this never stops.

And my last word, I often feel like I’m not only doing this work for me, but for my Mum too.

With love.