This morning, first thing, before I was even out of bed, I grabbed my phone to turn off an alarm, and then hit play on a voice message from a friend. She was reading Sharon Blackie’s If Women Rose Rooted with the book club she runs, and told me she had to read me an excerpt because it reminded her of me.

I was already feeling a bit of a birthday vibe, some weeks before my actual birthday, and these words, this seeing of me, was the very best of gifts.

I closed my eyes and I saw myself getting up from that hill and walking down through the brightly painted wooden front door of a simple stone cottage, sitting in an armchair by a glowing stove, reading a book or maybe even writing one. I saw myself waking up to the nascent promise of each new dawn, taking my morning tea outside, listening to the birdsong and the bark of a vixen in the wood. I saw my hands in the soil, my feet cold and bare in a fast-flowing river. The person I saw wasn't anxious, alienated, brittle. It wasn’t her job that defined her but her way of being in the world. She looked as if she belonged. Not just to a star, and a hill and a cottage, but to herself, and the calling owls, and the wider world she inhabited.

I’ve come back full circle, again, to the woman Blackie’s words describe. Most years, I get a few months in and then decide I have to do something else because I need a capital J Job. I need to know what exactly it is that I do. I need to earn a living.

That last one is true. But what does that ‘living’ become if I’m driven by doing, not being? This year, I want to stay in the being. And next year, and the next. And in the being, find what I’m doing.

(This is all sounding a bit Joey Tribbiani and “Giving and receiving…and receiving. And giving..” But I’m going to trust you to understand.)

As I step past my second Saturn Return today, and into my third act, I want more than ever to belong to myself.

 

"Work with your inner child" had never really resonated with or worked for me. Until this year.

As I switched to different, gentler kind of guided meditation, over months I noticed memories - and feelings around them - floating back to the surface asking for attention. So I sat with stages of myself that weren't, aren't, necessarily children, just younger than I am today.

I had already been visualising sitting in circle with a small number of as-yet-unknown women, so I decided to start populating that circle with these versions of me! I'm really not comfortable with seeing myself as some kind of leader, but I can hold space. Why not hold it for my selves?

So there we were. I'm about 8, 15, 19, 25, 32, 40, 50... We said what we needed to say. We were held and understood and appreciated. The "messiest' of us was particularly thanked for hanging on by her chewed fingernails and getting us back on track. She's not the failure, she's The Warrior and I'm beyond grateful for her continuing presence.

Before long I was dropping into that circle not for the conversation but purely for the company. The sense of wholeness.

I started to see us as rings of a tree. Together we make something strong, enduring and beautiful. A beautiful life.

Right now, 58 year old me is on the outside but that will change. I've set up places for older me but none of them have come through yet. Perhaps if I keep going - create and commit to this practice of sitting in the rings of myself and feeling the wholeness - it will carry forward and my 70 year old self will still be doing it. We'll hear her in the circle. I'll sense her there to my right, around the fire pit.

There are, incidentally (because you may try this and I'd love to know if the same happens for you), other versions of me who show up sometimes. Maybe from a distant future or a far past, when I am/was in a different form. Another story for another day perhaps.

For now, rings in a tree is what we are.

Be in your strength. You are eternal. Even in this life you are beautiful and enduring, and able to experience time in a different way to the 24/7/365. Believe it.

 

In a conversation about joy, I drifted off in a thought about how I associate being "serious" with

being "taken seriously". You have to be the former to achieve the latter. Discuss...

Women of a similar age to me grew up not being taken seriously in our endeavours. "Women's things" were defined by men, trivialised, and so we were too. Raised by parents who hadn't ever received the feminism memo, the only chance we stood of being taken seriously - and again, I mean by men because they were always the gatekeepers - was to be "serious".

What does that even mean? To me, being taken seriously meant being respected. Held in high (or even some) regard. Seen as having worth and standing. Making a good fist of trying to be more like one of the chaps.

Was that what I wanted? Is it still? Respect, regard, bestowed worth and a stab at a place in the patriarchy? No. A thousand times no. (And note how these words float to the surface: fist, stab... Interesting.)

This takes me to a phrase that sounded in my head while I was thinking about my Word of the Year back in December. I heard (and I really did hear it), "Let people love you." Not "Get people to love you because you neeeeeeed it", but "Let people love you." Unclench, breathe, relax, open.

That feels very uncomfortable which is why it's such a clear memory. It's like a red Final Notice lying unopened on the table; I can't not see it but I can not act on it. At least until there's a crisis. That's kind of my M.O.

But if I replace "be taken seriously" with "let people love you" I act differently. I am not serious. I am not behaving in a way that's acceptable to male gatekeepers while hiding my true (obviously trivial) nature. I am Me. Joyful, ridiculous, compassionate, vulnerable, loving, brave, clever, funny, intolerant and grumpy, naive, frequently 'absent' in a day dream. I am a whole person who experiences joy because who the hell wouldn't with all those experiences and feelings to dance in?

Another aspect of this exploration is less about the patriarchy and more about the parents. When it felt, as a young child, that love was suddenly withdrawn (because young parents are still finding themselves, and sometimes there is collateral damage, and collaterally damaged you doesn't understand) you believe that somehow you became unloveable. That there's no point asking or expecting love because even your own parents couldn't keep it up, so unworthy of love were you.

That's too painful to live with, so dismiss love. You don't get to have that. Choose being taken seriously. Be fucking serious when people are watching. Even though it's crippling you. The only things you ever do that will be acknowledged and valued will be serious things, because being a Silly Little Girl was clearly just annoying everyone.

Here I am, understanding that these beliefs - created by a supersmart but young child who was trying her darndest to solve a problem - were at best, some kind of coping strategy that should've got me through for a while. But it really didn't. Ever. Yet I've been trying it again and again for fifty bloody years.

So no more holding "serious" as my North Star. I am actively seeking joy and laughter and that little skip of a heartbeat when something lights a spark in you. I'm picking up where I got dropped off at about nine years old, so a lot of what I'm finding is playful and I am good with that.

It's all a little strange and uneasy but I'm a very grown woman now and afraid of no one's opinions. I get to be nine and fifty nine at the same time! That is a whole person. And I am letting myself love her.

(That's seven year old me up there, with a haircut by my mother. Thanks Mum.)