View from the peak

Was this what the menopause felt like?  I was still bleeding, though not with the regular precision I had known for a few decades before. Was this a midlife crisis?  I had heard about those, but I didn’t feel any desire akin to buying a red sports car of having an affair. I didn’t know what to do with this sadness because there was nothing I wanted to change. I just found myself overwhelmed with wistfulness and the sense that I couldn’t carry on living in the same way any more.

For the past 15 or so years, my life had been one of continuous growth and fruitfulness. There had been illness, disappointments and bereavements along the way, of course.  But the general trajectory of my life had been one of expansion in which more and more good things had come to me – my health, community, the publication of my second book, my home, my husband, my child. It had been a time of abundance, of fruitfulness, of coming-togetherness; more than a decade in which I had been blessed over and over again.

So there I was with a five-year-old boy, still enjoying my peak when suddenly (it was surprisingly sudden) I realised that the peak was indeed what it was.  I had been given what I desired. I was holding the maximum that could be held.   I was standing at the top of the mountain – and that meant that the only way forward was down.

If my recent years had been characterised by expansion, it seemed, from the perspective of midlife, that my coming years would surely be characterised by diminishment. When  I looked into the future, all I could see was loss – loss of my cuddly little boy when he grew up and left home, loss of my dear husband should he die before I do,  loss of my looks, loss of my health, loss of my mind…

Blimey! No wonder I was crying. Why wasn’t everyone?

Next step: Leaving the sacred forces