“Be in a great mood about this season and the next,” Chalene Johnson.  Johnson said this in regards to our age and accepting ourselves where we are at.  She encouraged letting go of the habit of trying to stop/reverse where we are at and learn to embrace the point of life where we are at, how we are there now.  It got me thinking about my own level of self-acceptance and honesty about myself up to and including the issue I’ve had with relating to my stale writing lately.  I know full well I didn’t entirely accept who I was/am because I didn’t even feel like I was where I was at.  I lived in a sort of delusion around time, that I was still young and had time.  But Johnson is right as is the path to healing and that means we accept ourselves for who we are, where we are.  In accepting who I am, I have to admit I’m in midlife now.  I’m embarrassed to admit this but I’ve behaved like a child far longer than I ever wanted to, afraid to face the reality of adulthood (even though I’ve been adulting for over a quarter century now).  I felt young in my body, I related to things younger people were doing, I thought I was keeping up with the times when in reality I was keeping myself behind trying to be like that version of me again and again.  I was ashamed for a long time that I hadn’t decided on what to do with my life, that I couldn’t see beyond a certain point and wasn’t sure what I could make of it.  I hated how quickly time passed so I was absolutely rebelling against the season I’m in.  The funny thing is, as a kid, I fought like hell to be perceived as older, I wanted to be taken seriously and I just spent the last decade reverting to old habits around shame, fear, judgement, and even patterns that I should have outgrown decades ago—in essence, still acting like that teenage/early college version of myself. 

I’ll give myself some grace and acknowledge that part of that behavior came from very specific trauma around specific people.  I will also acknowledge that I wasn’t like this all the time—I maintained all my responsibility and I had very real moments of awareness where the 40+ age hit me.  In those moments, I’d go into panic attacks, unbelievably terrified of how much time I wasted talking about doing things and doing nothing, how much time had really passed and how much time I had left.  See, with all the shame we talked about yesterday, I think I wanted to go back and do it again to help myself regain some of that confidence sooner and it made me vastly unaware of what was going on around me.  I preached about not going back, about accepting ourselves but, for the millionth time, I didn’t fully practice what I preached.  I believe in what I said, it’s all true but to feel it is something different.  To do it is different still.   So, if I am to be in a great mood about where I am, I need to stop acting like a child.  That means no longer repeating the patterns of the younger version of myself.  That doesn’t mean act like what I think a 40+ year old person acts like today, it means behaving according to the life I built and the life I’m trying to build.  It means action and follow through and accepting responsibility for EVERYTHING that is as it is now.  It means working with the pieces that actually fit rather than trying to fit the pieces meant for someone else.  Let go of the old to welcome the new—well, to welcome the me I’ve always been.  I’ve learned that it truthfully is never too late to make a change and it’s time to  move forward with a different type of grace.  Bear with me while I go through some of the basics over again.  Hopefully this helps others recognize the pieces of themselves that need to grow up as well.  No, it isn’t a good look to be an adult reveling and reliving youth by doing the same dumb shit over and over again.  But it is a good look to be honest with ourselves.  It’s a great look to have courage and confidence, and that’s exactly what it takes to turn things around and enjoy the season we are in.