21 Comments
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Susan Graves's avatar

Love this.

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Abeja C.'s avatar

identity crisis? *sighs* i hope in the process of taking stock, you find renewed confidence with pleasant shifts in course, and not despair ❤️ i think, when people rush from one responsibility to the next for a very long time, their sympathetic nervous system ends up chronically overstimulated. and, this effects the way people think, making people cut down on options, looking for the most direct paths between points. being chronically responsible comes with the consequence of making a person's world small. maybe you don't relate to this at all. if you do, even a bit, here's to release, embracing new calm, finding contentedness in this new "space", exploring your power to choose and your right to expand, and your world feeling full. not rushed. not responsible. but, full in a way that you've perhaps not known unto your own.

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Daniel Roberto Ortega's avatar

Beautiful garden you have and love the no makeup choice. Keep the dream alive!

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MH's avatar

As we wind down Lakeview Organic Grain, I have actually gotten a job! With real paychecks, on a payroll, as a culinary educational assistant at NY Kitchen, a highly-funded premium demonstration/educational farm-to-table wine and culinary center in Canandaigua. I stared at the W-2 form last week and had no idea how to fill out deductions for me.

I agree, this is not going to be retirement. I too love my grandkids, and of course I will spend time with them, but they are not my next career. The women around me understand. The men do not. Finally I am freed to do those things I have been putting off for, well, for my entire adult working life.

I will be doing a job I will love, not for the money, not for the family but for me. I will be traveling to places I want to see, not for work, not for conferences but for me. I will be writing the things I want to write, absolutely nothing about organic farming or soil health.

I have spent my past 45 work years investing in and supporting others, tending others, being faithfully there for others, paying bills and being diligent. Now is the time to use my minutes, my hours to do some of those things I have deferred.

Who am I? Oh, I think I know. I am ME. I have known ME for a long time, I have spent years promising ME that someday will be her turn.

I hope that now it is.

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Maria Rodale's avatar

“Absolutely nothing about organic farming and soil health!” Makes me laugh. I totally get it. Sacrilegious! 😂

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Maria Rodale's avatar

Oh I am SO HAPPY for you! Yay!

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MH's avatar

Come to Croatia and Italy with me in September - I'm going on a solo foodie-walking tour to eat my way down the Dalmatian coast and across the Adriatic on a ferry to Puglia. And, next year, probably Portugal and the Azores. Hopefully the Hebrides. No cruises for me, these are 'active' tours, pushing physical, spiritual and emotional limits of courage and resilience. At 66, I am just beginning to be young!

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Maria Rodale's avatar

Thanks for the invite! Not this September. But I’m interested in the Azores. Would like to see some sperm whales!

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Laura Scalzo's avatar

Enough. As is. ❤️

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Jennifer Vanderslice's avatar

I feel this post. I had my daughter at 19 and my youngest at 29. I'll be 60 this year and have never really had a career. Always felt like I was just trying to keep up with life itself. I like to believe Neale Donald Walsch when he says, "There is nothing you HAVE to do!" I hope he's right because I don't want to come back and have to do it all over again! LOL

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Andrea Mathieson's avatar

Such a great question, at an important threshold in your/our lives: Who am I Now? Then, taking the time to live into the question, to let it root and shoot and blossom in us. To not project past traumas or victories, accomplishments or ambitions, onto what is genuinely arising. ALL the gardening metaphors apply when we tend our soul seeds! Thank you for your deeply honest, and inspiring reflections!

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Stuart Nessbach's avatar

Thoughts as beautiful as the flowers in your garden and your no-filter you. Truly touching and - even though our lives may have taken an entirely different course - your words resonate in me, too. Maybe it’s a matter of age and the laid-blackness that comes with it. Thank you for sharing. I‘m sure you’ve got a million exciting answers to who you are.

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Maria Rodale's avatar

😊 I miss you!

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RobertaL's avatar

Well this certainly hits home. And your garden is spectacular! I need to have a deeper conversation with the grasses in my garden clearly. 🌻❤️

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Misti Little's avatar

Your garden is beautiful! And I completely feel you on the store/CVS situation. I look at how many products there are and wonder why we need even half of them!

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Judith Newcomb Stiles's avatar

Beautiful flowers! Whoa. Would be great to sit in the garden amongst your flowers and do nothing but hang out with the flowers. They don't last long, but on to the next blooms. . .

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Lisa Weikel's avatar

Mmmm, such a delicious place to be. And knowing, as you do, that the only guarantee in life is *change*, I trust you are savoring this interlude.

Who knows what (or WHO) you’re going to discover in the momentary silence and solitude.

Nature abhors a vacuum; therefore, I’m confident your query to the Universe will absolutely be answered. Perhaps even more quickly than you expect!

❤️😘

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Dairiel's avatar

Aging, when not being scary or depressing, provides such an interesting perspective at times (those calm moments of reflection). Thank you for sharing that.

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Tracy Herz's avatar

Damn, that's good. Who am I now? I love that question.

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Tracy Herz's avatar

I wanted to send a picture of myself, as is no filter, as I was reading this, in solidarity to this!!

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Jun 5, 2024Edited
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Maria Rodale's avatar

😍

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