Post #3307: Crossroads

I had a very busy weekend, and somehow managed to take no photos of any of it – so I’m leading this morning with a photo taken down the road from our cabin in October. Between the yellows of autumn and the first frosts which visited when we are there – it suggests to me exactly the transition between fall and winter we are in on the coast right now.

Transitions are much on my mind these days as I travel through (what I hope are) the last months of perimenopause, watch my parents become truly elderly, witness an old friend in what I think might be end-stage liver disease, think about my own transition between work and whatever comes afterwards. The last couple years I have been fully living my life, but with an eye to the seismic shifts I know are on the horizon – what will my life look like after I have experienced certain losses, or am not required to work for the first time since I was 15 years old?

I’m suspended in a kind of liminal space with all of it right now…. the aspect of change I’ve always found the hardest. It feels like standing at a crossroads, waiting to see which direction life will ask me to go. Some paths I’ll choose for myself; others will simply arrive, and I’ll have no choice but to meet them without stumbling around too much.

William Bridges writes ““We resist transition not because we can’t accept the change, but because we can’t accept letting go of that piece of ourselves that we have to give up when … the situation has changed.” And not only a piece of ourselves, but a way we’ve lived our lives or the people we’ve with in those lives.

In the meantime, what can we do? I work, I exercise, I attend to my community responsibilities, and I make art – hoping these things will provide a compass when it becomes time to take the next step forward. I will be curious to see where these journeys take me.