Hey Sixty
It’s been a while.
There are a few reasons. One parent and one sibling with incapacitating injuries. Both are mending. I’m getting lots of traveling nurse experience. Then there was the start of the calendar year and the reverberations that creates in the business world (“Yo. Hey. Wait. We need to hire a coach/facilitator rn!”). And still, some grief tied to a prior post. The grief dial is down. The certainty dial is inversely up. Some yucky things have occurred in the whole unraveling of a legal arrangement. Those things caused spikes in grief followed by corresponding and opposing vectors of clarity.
So all is well. Or “more well.”
And this weekend, by which I mean yesterday, starts the quinella that often is so great if you get to be me. It’s Valentine’s Day followed immediately by my birthday. What could be better than that? It is often such a burst of love. And this year’s burst feels even burstier because this year I also have the incredible privilege of turning sixty. But this year, things feel a little more fuzzy. Some moments are sad, for reasons wholly unrelated to age.
I wasn’t sure I should write about turning 60. Sometimes I imagine that my often younger clients just forget about my age. My wee inferior persona meekly murmurs: “Should I really point this out to them? So directly?”
Well heck, I’m committed to using this blog and newsletter authentically, and so it goes.
If you’re reading this, I’m already 60.
My central reaction to that: I’m so lucky. I get to be here at this age. There’s so much I can do. I have so many dear friends. I have you, gentle reader. I’ve built another career I love. I managed to accomplish the only thing that remained on my one-item bucket list in my sixtieth year. Hurrah.
And even with all of that, as I wrote this on Friday, February 13th, I was moping around, realizing how empty life can feel without a partner. How hard it seems I “have to” work to find people to take the second ticket I always buy to whatever cool arts thing I want to attend. Woe. Woe. Whoa.
I metaphorically slapped myself across the face.
First, I remember Valentine’s Day a year ago. I found a tiny slot of time to go to Target to get a Valentine’s Day card, and I was Facetiming my friend asking why on earth all Valentine’s Day cards were so damned earnest. “You are the love of my life.” “Every day with you is a new adventure.” “We are meant to be.” Where were the acerbic, ironic cards: “Things suck today, and the last thing I want to do is get you a card, but I still love you.” You know. Those cards were nowhere to be found. And things weren’t good in my relationship. I found a decent card or two, but honestly, the “holiday” went downhill from there. So what was I comparing this Valentine’s Day to? What dream? What fantasy? Believing in something that didn’t comport with day-to-day reality was how I got myself into that mess in the first place!
Second, I attended an “Evoso Live” speaking event created by my friend Erin Weed. She has a big book coming out this spring, and she ran this event to highlight her “Just One Word” concept, focusing on speakers with something meaningful to say. I don’t even know why I was invited to this small gathering. But I was. And I was overjoyed to be able to say yes.
I had the chance to listen to a talk by another friend, Beck Sydow. Beck’s short talk focused on the childhood game of hide and seek. They outlined the ways we hide, the ways we seek. And they reminded us of “home base,” where you return if you haven’t been found in the game. No need to be “it.”
Beck led us in a short meditation about our own home base. And as they did so, tears streamed down my face. I have spent years wondering how to have more access to my truth, my own reliable self love. And somehow, it all just came together in this moment with Beck.
My home base is incredibly safe. It’s warm, relaxed, clear, joyful, creative, wondrous, alive. And I can return to it anytime I want, anytime I choose to let go of projected judgments about, say, what I should be doing on a random date on a calendar ostensibly celebrating love. Love IS my home base. Every day.
As I left the Evoso event, I started looking forward to my little birthday gathering that will happen later today. I’ve asked a few friends to “bring” one wish they have for me for the next 10 years. Perhaps you have a wish for me? Perhaps you have a wish for you? I’d love to hear either.
For me, today, I realized my wish for myself. More than a decade ago, I did an Ignite talk on the idea of being a parent. In that talk, I reminded myself and the audience that I have bought a lot of younger people coffee over the years, and I’ve told them all that when I’m 60, they need to start buying. So, friends, over to you.
Also, I realized that lately I have more time and space to just say yes when someone, for reasons I don’t always know, invites me to be somewhere. Sometimes these are looser ties. Sometimes former clients, inviting me to be at a thing at which they are in the spotlight.
I want to tell you how unbelievably good it feels to show up in this way. I don’t even have to do anything. I just go and be there, and for some reason, that alone seems to mean something.
That’s my wish for myself for the next 10 years. That you invite me to places and events that matter. If you choose. That I say yes. And that somehow that small happening is a microburst of love.
Any thoughts, feelings, or blurts? Share them here.