circle back to seventeen

this is my mid life passage

Unintentionally, this may be a bit of a plug for the Costa Rica retreat. It cannot be helped. I am down here now and fully immersed in the vibes of it all, and it may be impossible to parse anything out from that. Just gathering up my thoughts enough to consider sitting down to tap something out feels incongruent enough. I will do my best.

At the opposite end of the spectrum from the surf and bliss and yoga and connection of this experience is the ongoing nightmare that is unfolding back home as the Administration continues to disregard and violate human rights at every level. There is so much to navigate inside of myself when it comes to relating to both. I want to be with what is, to the best of my ability, and it seems that means embracing the discordant and unequitable reality of the world while also tending to my own resources and reserves in a way that serves this small group with whom I have had the pleasure of spending the week.

Over the years, I have become so basic in terms of how I build the container. Less is more, I have found. When we do our intros at the start of the week, the only prompt I give is “What’s your name, where are you from, and what is something you are hoping to get out of this week?” And if “get out of” isn’t the right tone, then what is it that you are hoping to connect to or experience? I kicked it off with my twofold desire to help people have the week they wanted (or needed) to have, while also feeling very much like myself throughout. It is essential not get outside myself in my efforts to tend to the group. In fact, it very well may be that my ability to stay real and open and authentic is the biggest tool I have in terms of setting the appropriate vibes for the group. I try to model as much trust and honesty and earnestness as I can. It matters so much to me that we keep it real. That is the foundation for everything we may build together.

Anyhow, I have been thinking about vibes so much in general. I mean, forever, but also in an ever-growing and expanding way. Midlife seems to be gifting me with a real sense of looking back as well as forward and I have been circling back around to a version of my young self who, I am beginning to see now, really had a few things very right. Poor girl. For all of the ways that she grew to believe the metaphysical parts of herself needed to be secondary to reason and rationality. The more mystical I am, the more profoundly I sense my connection not only to myself, but to the cosmos, to the ALL that IS. This was true for me as a young woman and it is true for me now, but there were many years in between where I felt like I should tamp that down in favor of some version of myself that seemed more together. More responsible. More adult. What a funny joke that all is to me now.

In the years following our move to Vermont, I put down alcohol and picked up weed and it has been nothing short of healing for these severed parts of myself. It doesn’t take much for me to remember the bigger picture and the profound interconnection of everything. It is and has always been the ultimate source of power for me. I have been reclaiming it over these past several years. And as I do, restoring the bond I feel to seventeen-year-old meg, who it seems to me now, was right all along. But now, instead of feeling cast out and othered and isolated, I have invited her into the very center of the ceremony. It turns out, a little bit of cannabis is still so helpful in opening the windows of perception, made even better when paired with a mature cultivation and proficiency in steering my own internal experience. I have grown up, and thank goodness. I no longer have a shred of doubt that it is all about love. It always has been, and it always will be. I may flow in and out of my awareness of that central truth, but I remember and return with far greater regularity and fluency than when I was younger. Weed is helpful, but not necessary. Of course. I have gotten way better at carrying the thread of awareness through most of my days with variable, but I hope and believe, ever-increasing consistency.

Retreat is so helpful for this, too. Camp for grown folks. Over the past couple of cycles, my little fairy nymph friends from VT got in the habit of psilocybin microdosing the middle-aged housewives midweek in Nosara, and it has been such a gift. Even though those same friends couldn’t make it down this year, we carried the mantel forward and found our own way. I nibbled mushrooms this week for the first time since I was 18, when it was less micro and more macro- don’t recommend but you do you whatever, and it has been easy and revelatory. Chill and sound, brilliant with sparkles outlining my vision. The retreat week has become a week of high physical and social-emotional activity and exploration, with a little dash of psychedelic glimmer thrown in to support those who want it. We go pretty big into experience and sensation while we are down here. I believe it is working well.

So, maybe all of this is a too-long way of saying that my midlife passage is this: circling back around the very origin of my awareness, to the seventeen-year-old aspect of myself, and scooping her up and letting her know that she was always whole, always worthy, and always full of infinite wisdom. May she teach me now. Cast her expansive and wonder-filled spells over the older woman she never knew she might become, and light the way into a second half of life that is far more integrated and mystical than we ever dreamed possible. Maybe this is the gift. Love at every level. And forgiveness. So much forgiveness.