Happy Friday!
Today is the last day of school for us and I’m so ready for summer. I love having the kids home and moving at a slower pace. We built our family bucket list and our kids clearly think we are Jay-Z and Beyonce because the list is out of control: Disneyland, Universal Mario World, Hurricane Harbor. They better pray the Lord provides discount tickets or two for ones cause what in the world, fam.
As we all transition into summer, I wish you good books, long meals with loved ones, rest, and a freaking good time. Before I get into today’s video and writing, let me share my good books for summer. Costco has a BookTok box and I bought that thing so fast - fiction is 85% of what I read, so I’m pumped to get into it. And here’s what I’m listening to on audible: Night Came Many Stars, which is an achingly beautiful read - I have laughed and cried multiple times. If you liked Demon Copperhead, you’ll love this.
My only three non-fiction reads for summer: Screaming on the Inside: The Unsustainability of American Motherhood; My Body and Other Crumbling Empires: lessons for healing a world that is sick; and Everybody Come Alive: A Memoir in Essays by Marcie Alvis Walker, creator of Black Coffee with White Friends on Instagram.
Alright, peacemaking.
When I built this flow for the midlife series, I strategically placed peacemaking here.
Changing: our bodies, hearts, minds, location, career, friendships, beliefs
Distancing: ourselves from things that are hurtful, harmful, or no longer beneficial
Learning: for midlife, a heck of a lot of medical and mental things
Accepting: the grief that comes from the first three and the truth of what life is
Peacemaking: freeing yourself from judgment and making peace with yourself, God, and others
While I'm centering this rhythm around midlife so that I can share for the first time what it’s like living in my body and experiencing these changes, this is the process I followed twenty years ago to sobriety.
We need a process to follow in between what was and what will be, particularly if you don’t have a guide to journey with you through the challenges and joys of change.
I won’t recap the whole video but one nugget:
Free yourself from judgment. Free yourself from judging others by your standards that you want them to meet so that they can meet your needs. Free yourself from unrealistic standards about who you used to be or who you should be. Be where you are and allow others to be where they are and respond to that reality. That’s how you become a boundaried, autonomous person, who can be with others without enmeshing or entangling with them. It also keeps you from living perpetually disappointed in yourself and in others.
Making peace with yourself, God, and others is revolutionary. My spiritual director asked me how all of these changes feel in my body. My answer surprised me.
“I feel grief because I am putting to rest the many women I’ve been and I feel joy because I am awakening the woman I will be.”
Friend, my hope for you is that you embrace the change, that you love yourself endlessly, and that as you make peace with the past, you awaken your imagination for what will be.
Love who you are and love who you are becoming. So glad to be your neighbor.
Ashley
Peacemaking: The Midlife Awakening #5