Sigh! What a month August has been. My oldest daughter turned twenty and started her sophomore year in college. My eighteen-year-old daughter is getting ready to start her freshman year and we are preparing for her big move to her on-campus dorm. And my seventeen-year-old daughter has just started her senior year, so her departure, in a not so distant future, is very much on my mind.
Having two (almost three) of my children “leave the nest” has triggered all sorts of deaths and rebirths within me. Emotionally I am grieving this transition, while at the same time recognizing that there is something beautiful about this new way of parenting that I am entering.
Going through all of this as a thirty-nine year old feels, in a lot of ways, like a blessing, as I recognize that I am entering a new phase of my life at a relatively young age. At the same time it can feel very lonely since so many of my peers are at a completely different point in their parenting. This of course, is not a new feeling. I’ve always seemed to be at a different stage than people my age. At twenty-one, when many of my college classmates where still figuring out their path, I was already a mother of three.
Still, the way my life has unfolded feels Divinely orchestrated. So that now as I prepare for my upcoming fortieth birthday, I feel like I am finally, truly entering the beginning of my Wise, Sage Woman years. Everything within me, my thoughts, my emotions and my physical body, is in transition.
Author and doctor Jesse Hanley writes of this important cycle in a woman’s life–when our children are becoming adults, when our sacred hormones are shifting to facilitate us becoming the powerful women we are meant to be– entering our “wisening” years. Hanley adds, “You have been birthed by another, you may have birthed others, and now you get to birth yourself.”
Hanley’s words feel so right. We’ve all been birthed by our own mother, and whether we have birthed our own children, or mothered those who have come into our lives needing nurturing, we’ve all in a sense birthed others. Until finally comes the time to fully birth ourselves. In a way, this is perhaps the most challenging and exciting of times, this stage of fully coming into our own.
There are times when it all feels very frightening to me. But then I feel the unlimited support of Spirit, and the longing our planet has for Beautiful, Wise Women to unapologetically shine their light, and I feel ready and very blessed.
Love and light!
Follow Up-
What stage are you entering in your life? Is there a phase in your life that is “dying” to make space for a new, and even more beautiful one? If this resonates, reflect on what people, experiences, and resources can help you midwife this new beginning.