Earlier this year i turned 56. The photo on the left is when i was 16. The photo on the right is 40 years later is on my 56th birthday - in one of my favourite places in the world; Kauri Mountain Beach.

56 sounds old. I can remember hearing those kind of numbers as a child and being kind of horrified at that many years stacked up inside, and as it turns out, outside me. When i was 16 i couldn't comprehend what 56 year old me would be like - i was too busy trying to be good and pretty and biddable. i was Vassalisa before she went into the forest.

I know... Some people never make it here at all.  Some lovely and deserving and wonderful people won't make it here. And so the imperative to make some use of life, to tend to a sense of purpose gets sharper each turn around the sun. 

But one of the things that sticks out in my memory from those times when i listened to adults reflecting on age was the idea of letting go.

No, not the diaphanous spiritual idea of just letting it go. Or even the more hard won and solid recovery idea of letting go and letting God. Nope. This letting go was, by the tone of the voices, something shameful and an act of letting the side down. "Oh she (rarely he btw) let herself go."

What was this letting go?

Was it the kind of letting go that brought relief to my little childhood heart - "Yes I'll let you go to the shop with the neighbours?" No it wasn't an allowing .

Was it that she finally let herself go on holiday or somewhere she always wanted to be? No, didn't seem to be a destination.

Was it the letting go of the reins and letting the horse go where it wanted. Well that was closer.

But what was the shameful part of that? Was it about controlling the direction or destination and if so what was the thing they were trying to control or avoid?

It seemed that the letting go was the kind that happened to houses if they were filthy and gardens if you didn't use lots of weedkiller and petrol.

It seemed the letting go was about rack and ruin. About disintegration. About failure.

And what was this failure? it seemed it was the failure to be young. The failure to pursue youth and youthfulness. To put effort into appearing younger than you were or slimmer than you were or richer than you were. The way this thinking keeps us on a hamster wheel of buying things to stave off age is clear. The way this thinking keeps you ashamed of yourself is also pretty clear - living into your own body as a source of shame never fails to distress me.

But as i aged It seemed to me that letting yourself go meant being who you actually were.

The crime of being your age, of being your weight, of living to your means seemed to be one that special vitriol was levelled at. I know little jane tucked that in her psyche for future reference. And now, i think i am living that future.

I have let myself go. Into my own weight, into my own skin; as saggy and wrinkly as it is. Into my own changing shape and hair colour and capacity.

i have had to wrestle with my thoughts and prejudices as i did so. I have a pang each time people who haven't seen me for years don't recognise me because of the changes time has created but do i regret it?

No. I don't.

I feel like, by letting go of the battle with ageing, i am freed up to pay attention to other things; to sleep on my front as i love to do (a woman i know who did end up in her elder years with impeccable skin refused to sleep anywhere other than her back for fear of wrinkles. - the pay off just doesn't make sense and i often think of her when i am snuggled in with my face all squashed into a pillow, luxuriating in the softness.)

Do big trees regret changing into their adult form? Do wolves mind getting grizzled grey muzzles? I don't think so. 

Maybe the letting go is about letting ourselves go towards the realms that modern culture is so damn scared of; ageing and dying? Maybe that's why we are encouraged to spend so much to stay young; to convince the tribe not to leave us behind on the next migration?

I don't know. I have had too much tenderness around age and dying to discount it as something to fear. And besides I can go where i want to now that i am a grown woman with means. I get to let myself go on adventures if i want. And the adventure of age seems important.

So l let myself go. Into my Baba Yaga self. Into wildness, into freedom, into self compassion, into the relief of being able to put down my weapons in that particular war against myself and just be real.
 

One of the best things i have ever done is Randi Buckley's Healthy Boundaries for Kind People course. Stellar, Life Changing stuff. I even trained as a facilitator (and would be happy to share her wisdom with you if you like - just shoot me a message)

But sales pitch and Randi fangirling aside, part of what i learned was about inner boundaries.  The boundaries i have with myself that support me to live a life that feels better to inhabit. The boundaries that support the change i am aiming for. The boundaries that remind me "not that way anymore, this way now."

These are some of the hardest boundaries to hold because they turn me towards the coping strategies that have saved me. Ok, so some of those coping strategies come with their own shit-ton of problems but they were the best i could do at the time. They were the patterns i learned to try and keep myself safe, win connection, figure shit out in this wonky world.

One of those patterns is people pleasing. I was an a grade, well trained footsoldier in the army of nice. I tried my best to ensure that everyone thought i was nice, that everything i did was nice and that the nicest thing about me was that i was nice. 

Notice a theme?

This pattern had me swallow my truth, behave very inauthentically and subsequently very unnice things happened. My anger leaked out in passive aggressive ways. I couldn't trust myself so i self sabotaged, i didn't back myself and i felt, as a direct result, lonely, confused, hurt and disgusted with myself.

I also felt ripped off. I mean, here i was trying, as if my life depended on it, to be nice and people walked all over me. i was a screen for projection (unsurprisingly because i was absent from the picture and was just a facade of niceness). I was able to be an object of scorn because i wasn't treating myself with any respect. I was failing to turn up in ways that mattered to the outside world so i wasn't considered valuable. I was sacrificing myself left and right because that's the deal right? If i sacrifice, you will like me - isn't that the deal? 

I would spend hours re-running interactions, imagining triumphant speeches, people seeing the error of their ways when they were mean. To no avail. It was familiar - i knew how to do it, it was a well worn deep groove of a pathway i didn't even have to think about. If i was doing it, at least i was doing something, and that somehow had to count as nice, even though it hurt and it was fruitless. Right??

I can see, through the Somatic Experiencing lense, that this was me trying to build connection, the very necessary-to-human-mammals part of the sense of safety. "If you like me, i belong, if i belong i am safe with you" is the best way to sum it up. It was my attempt at building that safety, that connection. 

Trouble is it wasn't working and in undoing the pattern of trying to make people like me, i had to suspend myself outside the old ways until something new was strong enough for me to rely on.

I don't remember a particular time when i realised i couldn't keep being nice, perhaps a watershed moment was when i decided to stop doing things that made me resentful. Seemed innocuous, but man, did it turn things on their arse...

I won't lie, it wasn't always pretty. I made a lot of mistakes - clumsy and not deliberately mean, i didn't always get the new way of turning up right. I had to, as i changed shape, step out of situations i could no longer fit. It was tough.

But one of the hardest patterns to break has been the midnight ruminations. The running 200 different how to fix this scenarios while in the shower. Losing 20 minutes of walking the dog to, well as my photo says, fondling the shit. Some of the shit was mine but very often the shit was the stuff i was facing was the way i had been treated.

The more i cleaned up my end of the relationship, the more vehement the projection, the snideness and judgement, the more rapid the triangulation. I spent hours running through it like a crime scene detective combing for clues about how i could do it better. 

And the truth is i was often just fondling their shit.

My hands got covered in kaka. No one but me and the people i loved could smell the stink. I ended up sitting in it and alas not in a "it all becomes compost" kind of a way. 

So my instruction, my boundary with myself is "stop fondling their shit." and you know, it's coming up roses.