Lauren Webber, telling about a moment in what I’d call a MidLife Reset Retreat, and I’m getting outa the way —
One evening, Emily Kagan, a poet and healthcare executive who was one of the facilitators, passed around markers and colored sheets of origami paper. She instructed us to write down things we were “done with”—objects and emotions we were ready to jettison from our lives.
We went around the long dinner table, illuminated by a fireplace, and read what we’d scribbled. Among the baggage we carried: Impostor syndrome. An ex-wife’s shoes. Old identities. Sunday scaries. Shame. Never having a sense of enoughness.
Later, Kagan asked us to write a letter, five years in the hypothetical future, telling someone we love about our lives. I chose my teenage son.
Suddenly, articulating what I saw—the creative writing projects I hoped to tackle, my pride at seeing my child launch into adulthood—I found myself stifling a sob. At the age of 55, my beginning is long over, and hopefully my end is decades away. But for perhaps the first time, I could feel a distinct, emotional embrace of the middle.
— Apply as needed. Don’t rinse too quickly.
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