Crossing the Threshold:

There comes a point in life when we become aware of a threshold approaching.

For me, it happened on my 56th birthday.

It was as though I woke up that morning and something had shifted. Nothing had actually changed overnight, of course. I was only a day older than I'd been the day before. But something in me had changed.

Until then, I think I'd been blissfully ignorant. I was living my life, having a good time, getting on with things. I wasn't particularly preoccupied with ageing. It wasn't something I was consciously denying. It simply hadn't demanded my attention.

And then, suddenly, there it was.

It was as though a door had opened and I found myself standing at a threshold. I couldn't see what was on the other side, but I knew that, at some point, I was going to have to walk through it.

And I really, really didn't want to.

I didn't want to acknowledge that I was ageing. That I was becoming an older woman. That I was entering what we sometimes call the third act of our lives.

I wanted to stay where I was. I wanted to stay who I was.

And so, for a while, that's what I tried to do.

But there's something about standing still when life is asking us to move forward. We don't actually get to stay where we are. Time continues, whether we participate in it or not.

And I began to notice that my resistance was keeping me stuck.

I was stagnating.

The very thing I was trying to avoid was beginning to happen, not because I was ageing, but because I was refusing to move forward.

I wonder how many of us find ourselves standing at a similar threshold?

Perhaps it happens with a milestone birthday. Menopause. Retirement.

Something happens that makes the passage of time impossible to ignore.

And suddenly, we're confronted with questions we may never have had to ask ourselves before.

Who am I becoming?

What am I leaving behind?

What does it mean to be an older woman in a world that places so much value on youth?

And perhaps most frightening of all, how much time do I have left?

There can be real grief in this transition.

Grief for our younger selves. For the things we thought we'd do but haven't. For possibilities that may no longer be available. For the identities we've built and the versions of ourselves we're being asked to leave behind.

And I don't think we should rush past that grief.

Because crossing a threshold isn't simply a matter of deciding to think positively about aging. Sometimes it involves letting go of something we desperately wanted to hold on to.

For me, accepting that I was moving into my third act was painful.

It meant acknowledging that I couldn't go backwards. That I wasn't going to be the woman I'd been at 35 or 45 again. And that no amount of resistance was going to change that.

But eventually, I made the decision to walk through.

Not because I suddenly resolved all my fears about ageing.

But because I began to understand that staying where I was had become more painful than moving forward.

And something changed.

I'm still aging, of course. There are still things about it that frighten me, and things I wish were different.

But I'm no longer standing in the doorway, trying to stop time.

And that has created space for the possibility of choosing what comes next.

I may not get to decide how long this third act will last, or everything that happens within it.
But I do get to have a say in how I live it.