My apologies… I realized it has been almost 2 months since I wrote a blog. Mea culpa. But I haven’t forgotten… I think about writing often but sometimes the words just don’t make it out of my head and onto the page!! I am thankful, though, that today they have…….

Recently I woke up in the morning, drenched in sweat. There is no masking it any longer. I am most definitely at that perimenopausal stage of life. And at 45, I am at the very beginning of the journey. But I do feel like I am being turned inside out … not only wearing my heart on my sleeve but all my other organs as well. As much as I feel the impulse to, there is no hiding from this. Everything in my life is being laid bare…..

I went to one of my favorite winter hiking spots today. I like this canyon in the winter as it has a wide path that snakes steeply upwards in a meandering way… actually, it is a one-way dirt road that is closed half of the year. Over the weekend, the canyon must have received well over a foot of snow that banked high along the sides of the path, shrouding all the boulders, rocks, logs, sticks and trees. It changed the entire landscape of the canyon. No longer were the distinct elements of the forest visible. The canyon was now a plethora of softly mounded shapes, each one molding into the next…. and into the next,…. and into the next... gentle sweeps of curves thick in the snow. Truly something to behold. And I noticed in walking the same path I have many, many times how familiar, and yet different the canyon felt immersed in snow.

As I walked along the packed powder of the trail, noticing the softness that has blanketed the land, I realized that my own body is just like this canyon today. It is transforming into softly mounded shapes… a softening that only I can notice. But it is there. Familiar… yet different. I began to feel that internal struggle most women feel… the struggle and efforting to hang onto a youthful body image that is beginning to fade. As my mind toyed with what I needed to do to keep from getting, too soft, too matronly, I heard, with each step I took, from deep inside myself the words, “let it go….. let it go…… let it go…”

I love the smooth softness of the snow… how it transforms the land and makes for a completely new experience of place. Why do I not love this transformation beginning in myself? Why do I keep myself tethered to an image of what I am supposed to be rather than welcoming the changes of life washing over me? I started to look for myself in the surrounding terrain… ah yes… that arc of snow hanging from the rock is just like that soft spot on the back of my hip… the lip of snow nestled on that branch… looks like my inner thigh…

And so I begin my journey of acceptance into my own shifting 'experience of place'. May I always remember the beauty of the sweeping softness of the rippling snow, and the patterns of light and shadow that dance across its surface … being reflected in my own changing shape, my own softening landscape.