January is one of those natural new beginnings. The start of a calendar year and a time to focus on priorities for the coming months. For me, it has been about getting my regular health checks. Thankfully visiting the doctor is a fairly rare occurrence, yet I am moving into an age bracket where more health issues are monitored. As I chatted with my doctor a quick consultation became more lengthy as she ordered routine tests and organised a few referrals. On my return visit, most of the checks proved normal with a few exceptions – a slightly high blood pressure and cholesterol level. The process of tests felt like a full systems check-up for my body.
I am one for taking the preventative life style route so when my doctor had a slightly shocked reaction to my blood pressure levels I knew that my inner motivation to make better choices for my well-being kicked in immediately. The last thing I wanted was to be on an ongoing medication, so making lifestyle changes became important to me. I’d also put on extra weight over the last year. Some slowly creeping on relatively unnoticed, except for the tightness of some of my clothes, and then boosted by a lovely, but indulgent Christmas period. As a result, exercise felt more difficult and the warm, humid heat of our Australian summer left me drained of energy. I knew this year’s personal focus would turn to my physical health and well-being.
Photo by Edward Howell on Unsplash
It is rare for us to be ‘humming along’ in life without eventually facing something that requires us to adjust to a new situation. Research has shown that this happens frequently for us. Changes such as moving from childhood to adulthood, then later adulthood are gradual and may take us by surprise as we suddenly realize we are into a new decade or life stage. As individuals we are on our own trajectory of life changes yet when there are large societal shifts we are impacted as individuals. The Covid pandemic is a prime example of a societal change we have collectively experienced.
Significant life changes include finishing school, starting or leaving a job or study, getting married, getting divorced, having children, losing a loved one, becoming ill, moving to a new home or city, becoming an empty nester, retirement and the list goes on. These changes require readjustment of our lives. Think about your own adult life since leaving school. If you are curious, how many life changes have you gone through. Write some of them down as a list and add to it as you remember more.
‘On average, people experience 36 disorder events in the course of their adulthood – or about one every eighteen months.’
Brad Stulberg – Master of Change
When I wrote my personal list of changes since adulthood I found I had gone passed the average already. I attribute that to a particular period of time in early adulthood when I left home to study at university and lost my mother to Cancer in my final year of my teaching degree. I also had met my life partner and was married eighteen months later. The twenty three year old bride was definitely a different person to the eighteen year old who left her family home.
The second ‘clump’ of significant change for me has occurred during my fifties and into my sixties. The year I turned the age my mother lived to was surreal. I constantly felt the impact of inhabiting the body age of the year of her death. She was too young to go. Yet the silver lining of this experience was the immense appreciation of outliving her lifespan and having the opportunity to experience all those things she didn’t – attending our children’s weddings and greeting the arrival of each of our grandchildren. It also gave me a sense of the privilege it is to be gifted the opportunity to retire, travel and also age into later life.
The years since I have turned sixty have been more of a major evolution in my personal identity. I moved back to my original hometown from late 2018 until early 2021 to spend more time building my personal and financial independence and sense of separate identity. Something that is difficult to do in earlier years as a wife and mother. It was a hard decision at the time but one that with hindsight was the best for me at the time.
Ironically as I lived closer to our children and grandchildren I was able to put my grandparent and teaching skills to work supporting each family during Covid lockdowns. Passionate about psychology, I delved deeper into online learning about motivation, emotional development and navigating change. It led to writing, first in journals, and then the evolution of this blog Healing the Matriarch.
During that time I travelled to India with a beautiful group of women. Previously I had only travelled with family or my husband, so this was definitely outside my comfort zone. I remember having a private and rather teary chat with our tour leader and yoga teacher toward the end of our trip. I shared with her that I had never felt so grounded in who I was and I thanked her for the experience. I knew I was returning home a more confident and authentic version of myself. My personal growth continued beyond this trip but I knew this was a significant moment of acknowledgement.
Brad Stulberg in his book Master of Change talks about the change process being one of order, disorder and then gradual reorder. The change happens both within us and around us in our life. As we begin the reorder process we are not the same person as when a significant change happens. We are gradually creating something new. A new beginning. As we change so does life around us. Our relationships with others, our priorities and identities adjust to a new normal.
My visit to the doctor was a prompt for change. A reminder for me that I needed to switch priorities. For the last five to ten years I had focused on mental and emotional health. Healing from the leftovers of previous change and stepping more confidently into my matriarchy identity. I see evidence of that in the changes I see in myself and my life. Now it’s time to focus on keeping fit and healthy as I age. There is so much more to do and the years of most personal power and choice, wisdom, self-acceptance and legacy are yet to come.
