Welcome to: I’m too old for this!
My name is Laura, and that’s about the only thing I’m really sure of these days. After living my whole life in Chicago, I’m venturing forth to parts unknown. For the time being, I have a safe haven with my daughter and her wife in Northern California.
I’ve been married and divorced and married yet again. My husband and I are now separated and by so much more than just distance. He’s significant to my story and probably the impetus in getting me on this road to discovery. (insert: Robert passed away in January 2018)
Thirty-six years ago I founded my interior design firm on half my dining room table. I had just divorced my first husband and moved with my three-year old daughter to a tiny apartment in a new part of town. I have been designing ever since.
My career hardly set me up to write anything other than business documents. I have ignored that other part of me. Fear of disapproval keeps many of us silent and unaware. Afraid to speak up, afraid to be judged…”I’m too old for this!” addressed me as a battle cry to move forward in exploration. It brought me back to something old and familiar…stories.
They were essential to my survival. I buried my nose in a book or made them up in my head to escape from my real life. I watched them on television, at the movies, and listened to them at bedtime.
Consequently, I’ve always explained things by telling a story. A picture formed in your head brings clarity and illustrates the point. Journaling was too private, felt like I was keeping secrets-and I was. Imagine my shock when I realized the secrets I was keeping, I was keeping from myself.
Incidents from your past inform your present, but not always in the way you may think. Seemingly unimportant events may have a huge impact –or just the reverse. They can explain so much about how you inhabit your life. It’s scary to think about what you might have to change in order to live the life of your authentic self. It’s why it took me so long. I couldn’t say it aloud. Maybe you can’t either.
Connecting the dots between past and present realities is enlightening. Relating my stories was the road to discovery, following the path wherever it led. I couldn’t go alone, either. I had to invite you to join me on my journey. Perhaps my discoveries will unearth some of your own.
Everyone wants the best life possible. It looks different to each of us, but deep down, it’s somewhat the same. Hopes and fears, needs and wants, victories and defeats…the importance of each changes throughout our lives depending on our conditions. Hopefully, we learn what to keep and of what to let go; to break through the chains of the person we think we are supposed to be and accept who we are.
The question is — Who are you? Are you a Mother, wife, friend, philanthropist, executive, doctor, artist, sister, daughter, aunt…? The list goes on and reads like the cast of characters scrolling at the end of a movie. The roles seem endless and somewhat surreal. Do you feel like you’re playing one? Afraid of being discovered as a fraud? I know I was.
Life is too short to settle for less that your own happiness. It’s not about giving that up to make someone else happy or to conform to society’s rules about what you’re supposed to do. It takes courage to admit that you are living by someone else’s standards and then DO something about it.
Adapting to the new you is strange, but very liberating. Letting go of people, things, and experiences in favor of new ones is scary and exciting all at the same time. It was for me. Through relating these experiences, I want to help you see that there is life on the other side of letting go. There’s something waiting for you on the other side of all that, but you “gotta wanna” do it above all else, put all your effort into it. I see friends who think they have grown just because they read about something, but are really still living the life they had.
You can’t bargain with the universe like some people do when they’re on a diet…”Oh, a little bit of ice cream won’t hurt…I can have one cookie…I think I’ll skip exercise this week…” It all adds up and before you know it you’ve gained a few pounds or at the very least are stuck at the same weight professing that you “just can’t lose weight no matter what I do!” Such is life…
If you do the work, all the work, you will see the results you are after.
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Get Your Free Guide — Letting Go — The Manifesto
Do you feel like you’re just going through the motions?
Feeling stuck without knowing why or the next step?
Join me and others on our path to discovering our true selves.