It is the new perspective coming into view in every woman’s major life passage: a mid-life agitation, literal and poignant.
First, the gushing, like the reddening of a dying tree as it blazes out in the funeral autumn with a flowing canopy, and now reduced to basics, forced to lie fallow — in an emptiness watered by tears over the surrender of the magical powers of birthing and reliable breeder.
It’s like some powerful switch had been thrown. The little bouts of blues in a fog of indeterminate sadness, then little crashes of fatigue.
Having counted on abundant energy, it is profound to find one’s self crawling home from a day of writing and falling into the nearest sofa for a nap, only to wake up, dancing around an unexplained depression.
The normal preamble to this malaise is sometimes treated with a casualness — bordering on the criminal, in a despond that doesn’t lift or dissipate for days.
It seems like a mood. Will it be permanent mellowing? A permanent anything, or simply an erratic activity — playing mischief with a woman’s equilibrium in anyone’s dozen ways, at the mercy of errant? Is it all in our minds?
Or perhaps is it mostly because of a looseness of termination of subjective flaws? Do deal with this “pause” with a hundred variations.
There are periods of magnificent energy and acute mental functioning, even brilliance, when one is not tired, always very up and producing like crazy, going through the temporary phenomenon.
After spending five decades of filling this life with the interstices of the children and husbands lives with a sense of unease or disequilibrium, it is something women feel (though at times incomprehensible) — enduring hormonal mischief cycles with the spiritual energy of fully evolved women, who are beyond being objects defined by the male gaze.
They find distinctive charm and bearly, disciplined intellect. Cultivated and manifold gifts celebrate within themselves. Doers, who demand excellence themselves, have they gone through holistic history?
The transition in their lives change, had become, for most of them, physically, emotionally and spiritually the best she ever was.
In my own odyssey (oh, years ago), I was so sure I would just sail right through it.
Instead, I veered (like most of us) off course, lost some of the wind in my sails, and almost capsized, throwing in widowhood.
But I realized women, who no longer belong to somebody, now can belong to everybody — the community, a chosen circle of friends, a worship group or even the world, as a source of experience and wisdom.
I started by giving up the futile gallantry of trying to keep my younger self, and reached a new plateau of contentment and self-acceptance. I found a potent, new burst of energy.
Take the “pause” as a liberation — believe and relish.
After my liberation from keeping this four long-legged daughters filed up, the empty nest did not leave me feeling useless and lacking in self concept. Instead, it left me with relief or relish!
One of the girls asked: “Mother, what are you going to do with yourself, now that we’re all gone?”
I said: “Baby, I don’t know, but count on it…I am going to have fun!”
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E-mail Mylah at [email protected]
