Hi, my name is Brenda and I am fifty years old.
Midlife.
Five freaking decades old.
The thing about turning fifty in pandemic is you have a lot
of time to think. Maybe too much time. Fifty is a turning point. A reckoning.
Not only was this the year I turned fifty, but it was supposed to be the stepping
off point for our youngest—the third of three—and the year my husband and I
rediscovered our relationship. After twenty-four years of marriage, far too
many moves, and a whole lot of chaos and sacrifice, this was going to be the
year the roller coaster levelled out. A return to stability. A year of
rediscovery and growth.
Ha.
Hahahaha.
Hahahahahaha!
HA!
Yes, the universe had other plans.
What happened instead was a blessing in very questionable
clothing.
Not only did we get to spend a bonus year with our youngest,
but we got to see our middlest grow into his own skin while studying and
working under our roof. We watched our oldest live up to the challenge of
living apart from us as an adult. We had family suppers again. We talked on the
phone. We Zoomed. Like so many others we stayed home, looked inward and relearned some
family boundaries.
But while we were re-exploring our family we, something else was happening.
Fifty year old me was flailing.
If you follow me on any of my social media pages you’ll have
figured out that I spent a big chunk of the past year with my daughter(s) looking
out over the edge of the earth from our cottage on Prince Edward Island. Before
I go any further, I want to say that I
know
how lucky I am to have had this refuge, and even more lucky to have the ability
and the cross-border approval to get there. I truly, truly wish others could
have the same option.
Anyway, in March when the world was going to crap, my
daughter and I drove the eighteen hours to our cottage, stopping only for gas
on the way, and got across the Confederation Bridge just hours before they shut
it down for weeks.
March at our little beach cottage on the Island is about as
isolated as it gets. It was just me, my youngest, the foxes and the crows, with
a quiet (but lovely) neighbor who kept to herself. There was snow, wind, rain
and worry. Worry that I’d made the wrong choice to come there. Worry about my
husband and son who were far, far away in a different country in a pandemic.
Worry for my other daughter and my parents and family and friends. Worry that
someone would judge our American license plates and, in their very real fear,
act violently against myself or worse—my daughter.
So much worry.
As a Canadian who has given almost two thirds of my life to
my country both in my own uniform and in support of my husband and others in
uniform, living there on the edge of the world, as I approached the end of my
forties brought on huge crisis of identity.
If I’m not from here…where
am I from? What do I want to do with
my life? Where is home?
Who am I?
Then one of those days, after a long week of working
virtually and dealing with the worry, I started reading Brené Brown’s 10th
Anniversary Edition of The Gifts of Imperfection. In her Preface, she
talks about her own reckoning with mid-life. She says:
People may call what
happens at midlife “a crisis”, but it’s not. It’s an unraveling—a time when you
feel a desperate pull to live the life you want to live, not the one you’re “supposed”
to live. The unraveling is a time when you are challenged by the universe to
let go of who you think you are supposed to be and to embrace who you are.
I read that sentence and burst into tears.
Really. I’m not kidding. Full on meltdown.
In the silent, hidden way that a mother cries knowing her seventeen-year-old
daughter is upstairs doing virtual schoolwork in a pandemic, I sat there and
bawled. Ugly-cried. I wanted to yell out loud like Charlie Brown—“That’s IT!” I
wanted to call Brené Brown and tell her thank you for putting it so clearly,
and for reading my emotional temperature better than I can myself.
I was unraveling. I AM unraveling.
Oh my god, I’ve been living how I’m supposed to be for sooooo
long. My hats are my own but I’ve been wearing them because that was what I thought
I was supposed to do. No one forced me to wear them. At any time I could have
said, no thank you…I don’t think that’s me. But I’ve been wearing them anyway
and they are freaking heavy. My shoulders are weary.
And I’m just…tired.
Sitting there in that quiet cottage overlooking the ocean I
realized it’s up to me to examine each and every hat I wear. Some of them will
stay on my head. Some of them will be put aside, in case I need them again.
And some of them I will unravel, and build something different.
The hat that I am showing you now is one I’ve dusted off now
and again, but I realize, after a year of thinking and reading and doing, that
I need this hat.
I am a writer. And I need to write.
I am a creator. And I
need to create.
Sometimes my military spouse hat has meant that I have not
been true to that need. For some reason in the past, I thought my opinions would
be harmful—for my husband’s career, for my family, for me. I was afraid to show
my true self because it might be construed the wrong way.
But the thing is, after more than thirty years of serving my
beautiful country in the best way I think I can, there are very few people that
have that foundation—that reality. And if I’m going to be true to myself,
sometimes my opinions will be different. That’s okay.
As long as I’m authentic, and honest and true, I know now
that writing—even difficult, controversial writing—is what I need to do.
Unraveling isn’t easy. I’m a knitter and I hate ‘frogging’
something I worked on. It’s painful. And the past few months have been hard for
me, and for everyone. They’re still hard.
But the good thing is now I have a ball of yarn to create something beautiful with.
I’m starting with this blog. It’s been forgotten. As I lost
myself under the weight of my hats and life in general, I’ve found that writing
is super hard. Finishing my latest manuscript has been a long slog.
So I’m starting here. Just a few words when I can. A few
thoughts as I journey forward.
I hope you'll continue to join me here as I do.
Brenda
