“What type of question is this?” you might be asking yourself. How could you map a personal transformation, with its meandering ups and downs, starting and derailing, going backwards and forward?
Yeah, I know, it’s complicated.
When I hit a wall in my thinking process or I face any challenging life experience, I usually go into nature. I do that because nature mirrors growth from its reverential stillness, and thinking and experiencing are signs that I’m growing in consciousness. Nature creates the container to contemplate my transition with a greater clarity. Aware of the powerful wisdom of the wilderness, I take advantage of the healing power of the land, as a backdrop and womb that allows for questions to be answered and the gestation of new ways of looking at life to be revealed.
Imagine looking at your own midlife transformation from the lens of nature. What would you see? There is so much wisdom and harmony in the unfoldment of life! Look at a bud as it becomes a blossom, a seed as it grows to its maturity as a plant, the orderly succession of the four seasons…
There is indeed a way of mapping growth in nature.
So the same should be true about our own evolution.
Take the four seasons for example. Is it not a metaphor of life cycles? Is it not common to talk about the “winter of our lives” or the “autumnal quality” of the beginning of elderhood?
And would that seasons’ metaphor also be appropriate to represent the shorter cycles of growth that adults go through, that continuum of transitions that many times escape our rational understanding? For example, a “Fall disenchantment” when we outgrow the “intensity of Summer”? And could the Winter season, with its barren darkness transmit a similar tone to the one described by the ancient mystics as the “dark night of the soul”? Could Spring evoke the renewal of our psyche after a protracted winter of self-discovery and contemplation?
Each season is a different moment in the expression of Life and has a particular feeling tone. Would the seasons then not be a perfect metaphor to map out our own midlife transformation?
Let me know if you’re able to identify what season you’re in.
Dr. Sirena, your Midlife Midwife
Sirena Pellarolo, Ph.D
Consultant at UpShift Ask Patty
P.S. 1. If you’d like to go deeper in this metaphor and personalize it with the your own midlife transition, join us in our next round of the Midlife Reinvention Sisterhood: 6 Weeks to Launch Your Rebirth. Reconnecting our own life cycles to those of nature is one of the most satisfying and healing experiences I have witnessed.
PS 2. And if you’d like to take this connection to a deeper level of commitment and literally immerse yourself in the wilderness of one of the most pristine lands in the world, please consider signing up for our women’s wellness retreat in Umbria, Italy, “An Inward Journey Through Mysticism.” We’d love to walk with you in the forest and catch the vision of your midlife rebirth!
If you find the information useful, please forward to a friend. And if you’d like to know more about my work as a Midlife Midwife, make sure to visit my website.