Nothing Personal, Just Enough

So I think I've got a handful of them down now, therapy tricks to feeling better.

What on earth did they do back in the day when life went seriously sideways?

I know, I know, rope, chair, barn. Rocks, pockets, sea. Shotgun, walk, woods.

This was never that. Just random attacks of nausea. Emotional dysregulation.

Anyway, recently, way back behind all the frantically firing synapses of my brain, Mother Mary came to me, whispered words of wisdom, "let it be".

Let it be.

One of the most helpful free therapy videos I watched was an unlikely woman who managed to hammer it home to me, finally, that almost all of life is out of my control - but I can still love.

Let it be. Love.

Then there was "give up your personal history" from Dr. Wayne Dyer. Also "there are no justified resentments". And "change how you look at life and life changes".

Let it be. Love. Let it go.

Still, my favourite, the man in a purple suit imploring me to take radical responsibility. It's all your fault. You made each and every choice along the way. Stop blaming others. Own your choices, your life.

Own it. Let it be. Love. Let it go.

I thought I wasn't ready to be older, and I wonder now if that's why the panic attacks, but it's not true. I am ready, just as I was ready to be a mother, ready to leave a marriage, ready to stop working - ready for it, now, to NOT be about me.

Because there's the rub. Growing up, hearing middle-aged people talk non-stop of living like irresponsible children with money to burn when they're old, we earned it, we'll burn it, and on and on and on it went and still so often goes.

Me, me, me.

And that's okay, to each their own. Those middle-aged adults then and many now didn't grow older with the privileges I did, but their older age is not for me. It was never going to be or I wouldn't have stayed home with children, left a marriage, stopped working for money when I did - two years ago now.

Imagine. And I think of myself as a money first person. Thought, I should say. I thought of myself as a money first person. Another story I told myself that turned out to be not true.

Own it. Let it be. Love. Let it go.

But live my life, not somebody else's, and certainly not the one and only advertised on television. We laugh at the Globe and Mail's advice to wealthy young couples on how to save for older age but we still fall for it. How can we have enough in a culture based on more?

Counter-culture, I guess. Find where all the old hippies are hanging out. Join the gang giving back to get what we need.

Own it. Let it be. Love. Let it go. Enough.

Thanks for reading.