Aging: A Sacred Life Passage

After almost six and a half decades of experiencing birthdays, the last few have been of little concern to me. What’s one more year? Or so I thought until two weeks before my 65th birthday when suddenly, turning sixty-five seemed hugely significant. From the viewpoint of our culture, I will officially be a senior (old), retired and living my remaining years with a gradual loss of independence and health ‘til death. Thomas Moore’s words in his book Ageless Soul spoke to me: We are called to re-imagine, re-envision our aging and our retirement. *

With my 65th birthday looming, I sought a higher vision for my aging self.

For starters, I needed to rethink my view of retirement. Having been a contract instructor at Okanagan College (OC) for almost 30 years I will receive no official retirement date. Instead, no new contract will be offered to me, and my work will be over (unless as in previous years another contract appears). With no official retirement date, I cannot purge decades of instructional manuals filling our storage…what if a new contract appears? Since I do not know if I am retired, I have not sought a new vision for my future. When asked if I am retiring at 65, I ambiguously reply maybe I am retired. A friend wisely said, maybe you’ll have to make the retirement decision for yourself. Now was the time to claim my retirement.

I am retired.

As I own - I am retired - a fresh space, flowing with freedom and possibility opens before me. A new vision of aging and retiring - beyond retirement limbo, white hair, wrinkled skin, and body aches – begins bubbling within. According to Thomas Moore in Ageless Soul, we are being called to further mature and deepen our mind, heart, wisdom, and soul during this last leg of life. This work infuses meaning and purpose into this sacred, transformative passage of aging.

This journey of growing old, is not a time to shrivel up but a call to deepen our courage, compassion, and kindness. Can we bolster these traits to help ourselves and others face the stark realities of growing old and the inescapable end of our life? In a world with demoralizing agism we are tempted to hide our age or deflect the truth of it with humour. Part of our soul work now is to speak our age with pride, not shame. We can embolden and honor ourselves by owning the wisdom and heart we have grown over decades of living fully. We can risk sharing our knowing with the world.

This is our time to pursue what we love. For me it is writing. My love of writing has been known to me all my life. I was a columnist, owner/writer of a website and have written daily in my journals. As part of my new retirement vision, I declare this is my time to write. I reassure myself that I have enough experience and wisdom to write words of value (despite insecurities haunting me). This pivotal passage of life is beckoning me to view my lifelong insecurities (that would disown my worth and abilities) with more lightness and less angst.

Inspired by my vision of a writing retirement I strive to write with more clarity and style in my daily journal writing. I reread my journal from the day prior (a morning ritual of mine), and I see I have written a prayer… Beloved, I send my longing to write into the world and fully open myself to Thy Unfoldment and Possibilities. That night I ask for a guiding dream. (Both prayer and dream guidance are part of my life-long soul work and integral to my new vision of aging with depth.)

 I dream of a snake flying at me. I am armed with a scimitar.

According to the book Medicine Cards, by Jamie Sans and David Carson, Snake symbolizes transmutation: the ability to change any state of being into another form with the proper state of mind. * Armed with the scimitar which symbolizes bravery and strength, we can transmute the societal view of old age as a depressive demise. We can choose to view our aging as a sacred passage offering a deeper, wider vision for ourselves and our future. Retirement’s lack of meaning can be transformed into our soul’s calling. My Snake dream guidance affirms my new vision of aging.

To further my goal of writing I created a poster to form a local writer’s group that read:

I AM A WRITER…

For some of us, these can be difficult words to claim or say aloud… even when we know we must write.

Would you like to form an Armstrong Writers’ Group to give/receive writing support and feedback? If so, contact me at teresaproudlove@telus.net.

Our local library loved the idea of a writer’s group. Rather than use my poster idea they created a professional poster for marketing. Seemingly, my writer’s group poster was not used…ah, but it was. At the time I’d handed my poster into the librarian, I saw it looked like a public declaration of I Am a Writer signed by me. I felt the hand of Providence, my Daemon, my Soul at work. My writer’s group poster had been transformed into a soul contract, pushing me to publicly declare I Am a Writer (which I had been unable to fully claim…until now.) An early birthday gift!

On the day of my 65th birthday I open a birthday card from my life-long friend. Two young girls pose as Wonder Woman; sparkles adorn their tutus, runners, capes, and wrist bands. One girl, with a gap-tooth grin, fist raised to the sky, legs wide in a power pose – vividly reminds me of my 7-year-old self claiming her superpower. Inside, the card’s caption reads:

I bask in the awesome glow of your FIERCENESS.

How delightfully fitting! The memory of my audacious, young girl has added another dimension to my fresh vision of aging. Not only am called to write my truth from the old, wise woman within…but also, I am called to shine youth’s fierce, awesome glow still sparking within. 

*Thomas Moore, Ageless Soul (New York: St Martin’s Press, 2017)

*Jamie Sans and David Carson, Medicine Cards, (Santa Fe, New Mexico: Bear & Co., 1988)