Hello everyone (and our leader @Lindi Harmse )! I wish I had a community like this at mid-life! Going to hang with you and be inspired. Re-visiting perimenopausal decisions now that I am post-menopausal and setting myself up for a happy, blessed, and successful third act! I live in Princeton, NJ. I have a wonderful partner and a sweet little rescue from Puerto Rico. I’m sharing 2 mugs. One was a gift from my grandmother who moved first to Canada from the Ukraine (some weeks it was Poland because that’s what her world was like as a child). She met and married my granddad when he arrived to her little farm town in Manitoba as an eligible bachelor/pastoral intern. My dad was born there (so I have dual citizenship). She raised 3 rowdy boys so I was her bonus—the daughter she didn’t have, but got to influence. For someone who was VERY traditional (limited access to education and few opportunities outside the home), she encouraged me to live bigger and that’s what this mug is about. She never shamed me for wanting to work in what her eldest son called “a man’s job” and she always wanted to go to work with me to see what I did. That started after I had to go back to the newsroom after picking her up at the airport when I was working at the Charlotte Observer. I set her up in a comfy chair with a magazine and made her a coffee. I caught her peering around the magazine and asked her if she wanted to see what I was doing. She said she had never seen a computer before-—and this was back in the days of news terminals. We all shared a unit on a lazy Susan. Not kidding. That’s why it took me extra time to file—I was “the new girl.” Anyway, I showed her how we messaged (a glaring lime green string—no email or texting in the 80s), how I wrote and filed stories, and the news archive. My “magic” moment was saying: “let’s look up grandmother Nadia”. “Oh that’s silly!” She squealed. She lost her breath when a story came up that shared how she helped me learn the pronunciation of a Pushkin poem that I had sung at my senior voice recital. (BTW, she laughed and laughed at the absurdity of the poem and with 50 years of life experience since that moment, I now agree). “How did I get into this machine?!” And I shared that her wisdom would be there forever. Still miss her. She finished her journey at 93.

@Lindi Harmse after I finished, I thought I should shorten/edit, but these lovely ladies can skip my tome! I understand!

@Lindi Harmse that’s the cool part of fable: craft a solid prompt about what you want and let it go. I had it so the research, propose multiple pathways, and test and kill the misfit projects. That I can do this is …is…amazing.

@Lindi Harmse exactly. Garbage in, garbage out. And teaching it “its place” is critical.

For me, I regulate using Tapping. It literally hits the vagus nerve and is instantly calming.

@Charmaine Cassidy totally aligned with you!

@Lindi Harmse The big reveal! So not. It’s more like a Hollywood slow walk! ☺️

@Charmaine Cassidy beautiful.

I’m in this with space of parenting my parents. Deep in their 80s, failing and stubborn. I am so grateful to be able to return the care that they lavished on me. Taught me faith, independence and discernment. This is how I live and this is also how I give.