Reimagining

If Part 1( find it here)was about not knowing how to exist here, perhaps Part 2 is about realising that 'here' isn't necessarily a problem to solve. Maybe we don't need to find our way back to the person we were. Maybe we need to work outhow to navigate as the person we are becoming. Being in places where we don't know how to exist is a rich space of possibility. We are often uncomfortable in these spaces because wekeep trying to identify ourselves using an old map. We search for Who we are What we want And then struggle with feeling 'like ourselves.' But perhaps we struggle because we compare ourselves to old identities. We think of ourselves as problems to solve rather than a relationship to develop. Uncertaintyis the space between identities. We move through these spaces our whole lives. There are rituals and celebrations to mark some of these occasions - many in our childhood and as we shift from adolescence to young adulthood. But as we age we don't always pay as much attention to the significance of these times. Yet, it seems to be all in the 'becoming' where we actually do our living. Becoming a partner, and the roles expected or assumed Becoming the empty nester Becoming a retiree post career The woman who survived becoming the woman who gets to choose. It's a familiar pattern — one that I know from my own life, and one I hear echoed in the stories of other women. We are bombarded regularly by the adversities and absurdities in life. All of these are times of turbulence. They are part of the story of us, but are not who we are. Wherever we are, we are never quite the same person who arrived. And wherever we go, we will take everything we have accrued along the way. The loves. The losses. The wisdom. The mistakes The scars The ridiculous stories. The adventures The things we thought would matter but didn't The things we thought wouldn't matter that changed everything. We don't leave anything behind. Everything has an imprint. And we assemble the pieces of ourselves together, weaving new threads. We don't need to know where we are going, or how it ends. Only that there is new territory to explore with whatever version of us is here now. Instead of going into problem solving mode,we can re-organise our relationshipwith the new landscape. We don't need the whole route mapped out. We don't need the destination pinned, the arrival time calculated, the satellite view of everywhere we might go wrong. We just need to know the next turn. That's all a GPS ever gives us anyway. Not the whole journey. Just: 'in 400 metres.' Stop demanding certainty. Separate the feeling from the story. 'I feel anxious' is a fact; 'Everything is going wrong' is a story. One needs attention. The other scrutiny. Asking Is it true? What else could be true? … helps us decipher each from the other. Make room for the person we are stepping into. Not a new you. Not a better you. A more known you. 10 years ago did I think I would be where I am now? No. Not even remotely. It's okay to mourn the places we thought we might have been. But also remember to celebrate the places we are actually in. Knowing what to do with uncertainty and actually living through it are two very different things. Because sometimes the problem isn't that we don't know the steps - … it's that we are tired. Tired of trying to get everything right. Tired of trying to make sense of the mess. Tired of trying to master a life that was never entirely ours to control.