What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up?

It’s my birthday today. The best thing about turning 45 is the vantage point of years bringing keen awareness of, appreciation for, even delight in how I am and who I’ve been; which is to say, the protective/defensive “self” structure of intra-psychic parts guarding the wound, obscuring essence.

What a gift, waking to find that I’m not who I believed myself to be. That I can embrace my multivalence. That I can laugh at myself! That confusion, stuckness, powerlessness, fear, and shame aren’t permanent states of being. That I’ll be damned… the center really does hold.

…

Them: “What do you want to be when you grow up?” (As if everyone will get to live. To grow. To grow up, and not sideways or upside down.)

Me: “I want to be okay. I just want to be okay.

…

I think if you’re fortunate, all of your scrambling to fix yourself and solve your life will fail. You’ll come to right there in your everyday mundane amidst the wreckage of your grand plans, just cracked wide open and hollowed out by every choice you’ve made up until now to live a life not yours, to be a you-not-you. You’ll remember that you’re lucky to be still standing, and to be still your whole, true Self after all.

Happy birthday, Sara LeeAnn. Happy birthday to all parts (Prudence, Honey, Lola, Dollface Killah, Neptune, Soren, Virginia, Selene) of us. We’re okay.