10 years on...

I am 50 now.  It's been nearly 10 years since I wrote here.  And I deeply wish I'd never stopped writing.  I feel like I have lost a huge part of myself and I am actively searching for her.  I think coming back to this practice might help.  Certainly reading some of these old posts has helped, or at least loosened the floodgates which is close to the same thing...
My eldest child is 18 now, my youngest 11.5.  Ten years on, I am a different person again, and not entirely comfortable with the changes.  It is the depths of winter and as always, I adore this time of year.  It is quiet and still and peaceful and calm.  Outside the colour palette is at most, 4 or 5 colours strong.  The eyes rest easily and the breath slows to feast on the peace of it all.  The trees are heavy laden with beautiful white snow, and the ground sings as we walk upon it.  I love to walk in it -- hiking at any time of year but the hottest is my favourite activity.  My girls come with me and Ernest the dandelion dog.
I feel a heaviness in my heart at this stage in my life and my children feel it too.  I want to unearth it, whatever it is, and understand it a little better -- whether to embrace it more fully or to release it if it is not mine to hold onto.  I remember my mum at 50.  We were in Anchorage together that year, and I remember encouraging her to apply for a job at Nordstrom.  We were both pretty sure she wouldn't get it -- she had no retail experience, and even more than that, she didn't dye her hair or wear a spot of make-up, and somehow that felt, to both of us, like it would be a deal breaker.  It wasn't -- they saw her glow shining through her sparkling, black eyes and snapped her up on sight.  And what an amazing shift happened for her through that experience -- a deep confidence that I hadn't seen before.  It was so fun!  We'd lived half way across the world from each other for four years prior, and so we spent most of our free time those next two years together.  I'm so glad we did because I KNEW my mum at 50, and somehow I feel like that should help me know ME at 50.  Perhaps if I let myself remember, it will...