The Art of being who you are, where you are.

Women between 45-70 are powerful, dynamic, creative, and soulful.

We are the first generations to live past menopause together. This is the gift of living beyond the years of tending community gardens into the untilled territory of new goals, dreams, and desires.

Do we dare? Do we dare try to recreate ourselves for ourselves? We have another 20-30 years to become our most authentic selves in service to ourselves and others.

This sounds terrific in theory, but how does the living of this ideal manifest?

Women, who are in their Regency years, 45-70, are living in the middle of so much change and tension. We balance overflowing platters filled with our careers, income, relationships, families, empty nest, rebound kids, health issues (for ourselves and our loved ones), the pandemic, and shifting relationships, not necessarily in that order.

We stand, feet firmly planted, holding the ends of two ropes, one in each tightly clenched fist. We struggle to stay standing in a push-me-pull-you battle between the forces of change that pull on us from both sides. We face perimenopause, midlife, and menopause, which change our bodies, psyches, self-image, needs, and feelings. We face social pressure to remain young, skinny, and beautiful and discover pervasive cultural ageism. And, even if we resist, we must face the realities of our aging bodies, psyches, and the ever-present needs of everyone around us. Living in the middle of this tension, holding both ropes, stretched taught, is exhausting.

It is easy to be knocked off balance by life. Just when you think you have it dialed in, something shifts, and you get pulled to one side or the other in the tug of war. There is nothing more constant in a woman's life than change. So when you get pulled off balance, the first key to recovery is to be where you are, deal with what is happening now.

This is it; this is the key, the hard part, the answer—to continually discover more, understand more, develop more, reveal more, and transform more of ourselves—in the messy process of living.

There will never be the one answer that will finally solve all our issues and make life beautiful and perfect. Because, where ever you go, there you are. You bring you and all your issues with you wherever you go. You also bring your beauty, strength, soul, creativity, light, and love too.

The task is to discover—in each moment—where our authenticity lies and nurture that. If you can't nurture it at that moment, you can acknowledge it. Each moment, each event, or decision is one more opportunity to transform our self-understanding to become fully who we are.

When our life experience and wisdom fuses with the changes of midlife and menopause, we can develop a new perspective, a new way of seeing, understanding, processing, and responding to what is happening. We can choose to embrace an expansive, mythic perspective that guides us through the highs and the lows, the beauty and the sadness, the gains and the losses. They are all part of the great adventure of our lives.

At a time when we face so my critical problems in the world, the universe has extended the creative power of women another 30 years. May you discover the power in your next chapter.

Namasté,

Dr. A.