On Waking Up, Apr 2022

Springtime is a difficult season for me. More than any other time of year it feels like a liminal period, not quite here nor there. It's a slow transition here in the Northeast from the stillness of winter to the vibrancy of summer. Heavy, wet, muddy, windy--I feel the weight of the Earth residing in my bones, the dampness in my cavities.

And then through layers of muck, color begins to emerge. Bits of green and Forsythia gold fiercely defy the grayscale images outside my window. The promise of something else. More life, despite everything winter left behind.

My birthday falls on the first day of Spring and I'm reminded each year of the dissonance between the sunny memories of the birthdays that filled the first half of my life and my current, more contemplative and moody environment. This year--turning 42, or making 42 as I grew up saying in New Orleans--is only a mildly significant number in it's doubling of 21 years--a somewhat arbitrary and legal marker of full adulthood.

Am I twice the adult now? What does 21 years old x 2 feel like exactly? More what? Wise? Qualified? Discerning? Less what? Ignorant? Volatile? Irresponsible? What about my being needed subtracting? Which layers needed to be shed? What part was precious but wouldn't last?

Perhaps 42 is my new half-way point. What does the middle of my life feel like? It's not a crisis, exactly. I've lovingly referred to these current curiosities as my mid-life awakening. Somehow destabilized, I'm waking up to who I am not. Waking up to what and how I wish to live while bearing witness to the crises of war, pandemic-weary and stunned. Reckoning with the violent burden and miracle of being human. Asking, what are we here for?

The questioning feels important as does stillness. I am questioning the urge when I feel I should be producing. Questioning how to be more honest in my life, more present and resilient to pain. Resting when I am tired. Waiting. Wanting to be a part of the world in service of the love and beauty of life without falling into darkness.

But the darkness is an ingredient for waking up.

I AM in-between, neither here nor there. And isn't it in this liminality where new ideas are born? Where spring has sprung, where we get to start again?

How are you right now? I'd love to hear from you and hear your questions (and answers.) What are you contemplating in your life?