The year I turned 50
I am finally owning my own voice, my choices, my life, my joy.
I am learning to dance, uninhibited, around that table full of bounty.
I am practicing what it means to stand in who I am, to own that authority, to never allow someone else to dictate that to me.
And I am finding other women who are either already dancing or are ready for it.
Earlier this year, I turned 50.
I had just returned from 7 months living overseas, so I decided to invite a small group of friends—I call them my “yard” because they are the people who surround me and infuse my home with love whenever they visit—to celebrate.
Together, our ages spanned four decades, and as we sat around the table, laughed, ate and drank, it occurred to me that the experience felt similar to a vision I had over two years ago.
I’ve come to call it “My Extraordinary.”
It’s an exercise in which I regularly imagine the most beautiful life possible for myself. I go to a favorite peaceful place where I can be alone and I imagine and feel it all with my five senses.
I then write down in vivid detail, using all these five senses, so I can remember and return to it. It changes a bit each time I do it, but the process helps me to stay in touch with the things my soul desires most, and it’s become an important exercise for me. I use this in my travel coaching process as well to help clients imagine their extraordinary trip.
The particular vision has continued to stand out and feels different in that it’s so very specific—and it’s served as what I believe is divine inspiration to start my Brave Journey travel coaching for women program. Two years later, this vision has not left me and I’ve talked about it frequently with friends. Obviously, some details between the vision and this night gathered around my table on my birthday are different, but the energy, the love, the feeling is the same. That vision, as I recorded it in my journal back then, reads:
I see myself at a table.
It’s bountiful. Full of hard cheeses and grapes. Fresh cucumber and peppers and tomatoes and dried meats. Local wine and honey.
Mountains in the distance. Laughter around the table. Deep, beautiful, holy laughter.
Interesting conversations full of a variety of opinions, peppered with respect and bits of intensity.
Love. Love like we’ve all dreamed of between friends. Friends who’ve weathered storms and have even developed a shorthand of sorts. Multiple languages.
Beauty. Beauty in the surroundings and beauty in what is happening in and among us. We are all richer, deeper for it.
The air is sweet. And thick. You want it to go on forever.
The table is welcoming, too. Some of us have long friendships. Others are new to the table, but they are invited in as friends. Because we know they bring richness, sweetness we may not have witnessed before. It’s a table of the curious, who leave room for, who welcome, new perspectives.
THIS is the picture of beauty.
The purpose of this table is to offer connection to those who need it, love to those starved for it or who have extra to give. It is a table of healing. But nothing is ever forced. It’s only allowed. It’s always just allowed to be what it needs to be, for who needs it at the time.
I cannot overemphasize the beauty of this scene. Give and take. Acceptance and challenge. And sweet, sweet air. Balm to a weary soul. For the ears and the eyes and the stomach.
It also gets a little rowdy at times. The drinks flow and the music wafts through the air. We dance. Some separate to their own beat, letting the music move their body and their souls as they need to. Uninhibited. Permission to be as you are, move as you feel, as a means to go further and connect your mind with your soul and body. To solidify the moment and this feeling. So not only your mind remembers, so does your body and your soul.
Others dance in sync, almost as a promise to each other to stay soft, open, sensitive to one another and to the times. They observe one another, move together in a beautiful show of vulnerability. Of what is true. Now.
And then sometimes it gets raucous and the beat moves faster, louder. Some find freedom in new ways. Relaxing in ways their body has long forgotten. It can be frenzied, but it’s beautiful. A coordinated, choreographed without words experience. Like you've never experienced it before, yet maybe you have experienced it before.
My extraordinary life is full and rich. It’s not planned. It’s a daily exercise of following curiosity and intuition. Opportunity and deep knowing.
It cannot be bottled.
It cannot be prescriptive.
It can only be allowed.
As a woman in midlife, I am learning to recognize and dismantle some of the conditioning of the systems and culture I grew up in. I’m guessing you are too.
These patterns did not develop overnight and they will not change overnight. But I am finally owning my own voice, my choices, my life, my joy. I am learning to dance, uninhibited, around that table full of bounty. I am practicing what it means to stand in who I am, to own that authority, to never again allow someone else to dictate that to me. And I am finding other women who are either already dancing or are ready for it.
This group around my table on my 50th birthday reminded me of what’s waiting, that I’m not alone, that I have so much ahead of me on this next leg of my journey.
This is my story. But it’s also the story of so many other women who’ve decided to—or hope to take—their own Brave Journey, whatever that may look like, into the unknown in order to find true freedom.
It’s time to stop living for others and allowing their voices to speak for us or to hold more weight than our own.
It’s time to write our own stories, in our own voices.
Let’s own our choices and our paths and stand in our truth.
Let’s give our voices the weight they deserve.
And in doing so, let’s learn to live. Really live.
There is nothing more extraordinary than that.