Lovely friends,
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the versions of ourselves we outgrow, and I realized something this week that I don’t think I’ve ever really put into words before. Sometimes the hardest version of yourself to move beyond isn’t one you didn’t like. Sometimes it’s a version you were actually really good at being, one that served you well and became so much a part of your identity that you don’t even realize how much of your life has been built around it until life begins to change.
I’m good at being a mom. I’m good at taking care of people, working, organizing, figuring things out, keeping track of what needs to happen next, and generally being the one who knows what’s going on. For a very long time, a huge part of my life has been being the one in charge of life for the family. There were kids to raise, appointments to remember, school things, work things, bills, paperwork, problems, schedules, decisions and all the regular stuff that comes with having a family. If something needed to be handled, there was a pretty good chance I was already thinking about how we were going to handle it, and usually three steps beyond that because apparently that’s just how my brain works.
The funny thing is that I liked being that person. Of course there were times when I was exhausted and would have happily handed somebody else the clipboard, but being a mom and taking care of my family has been one of the biggest parts of my life. I was good at it because I cared about it, and when you’ve spent decades being responsible for other human beings, you get used to having a lot of your attention pointed outward. Somebody needs something. Somebody has a problem. Somebody needs help figuring out school or work or money or life. There is always something that needs doing, and I became very comfortable being the person who did it.
But my kids are grown now, and being a mom to adults is very different from being a mom to children. You’re never finished being their mom, of course. I don’t think there is some magical birthday when you look at your child and think, Well, my work here is complete. Best of luck to you. You still worry about them, you still help, and sometimes you still have to stop yourself from jumping in because you can see exactly what they should do and somehow they haven’t asked for your excellent opinion yet. But they have their own lives now. They make their own decisions, solve their own problems, make their own mistakes and learn things in the same way we all had to learn them.
And really, that’s what we wanted. We raise our children hoping they’ll become adults who can manage their own lives, make decisions, work, love people, mess things up occasionally, figure things out and create lives that actually belong to them. I wouldn’t want my grown kids to need me to make every decision for them. I’m proud that they don’t. But I don’t think we talk very much about what happens inside the person who spent all those years being needed when suddenly everyone doesn’t need quite so much from you anymore.
I’ve realized that there is a little bit of an identity shift in that. I am still the organizer. I am still the worker. I am still the person who can make a phone call, fill out a form, research something, clean up a mess, solve a problem and figure out what needs to happen next. Those are parts of me that I actually like, and they have gotten my family and me through a lot over the years. I don’t want to stop being that woman. I’m just realizing that maybe she doesn’t need to be on duty quite as much as she used to be, and I’m starting to wonder what happens when some of that energy gets to come back to me.
I think that’s part of why this week’s meditation with Archangel Raziel became what it did. When I started creating The Library of Your Soul, I knew I wanted it to be about wisdom, change and the person we are becoming, but somewhere in the process it became much more personal for me. In the meditation, you find a book that represents the life you’ve already lived, and instead of going back and judging everything in it, you’re invited to recognize what you know now because you lived those pages. There are chapters that shaped you, chapters you once thought would last forever, and things you understand now that you couldn’t possibly have understood when you were standing at the beginning of them.
I’ve lived enough life at this point to appreciate that. There are things I know at 55 that I couldn’t possibly have known at 20 or 30, and some of those lessons came beautifully while others apparently required the deluxe learning package with all of the optional extras. But either way, the wisdom is mine now. I don’t have to keep living in the chapter that taught me something in order to keep what I learned from it, and I don’t have to dislike who I was back then to recognize that I’m not exactly that person anymore.
I’ve been seeing this in my work too because I’ve spent so much time lately going through years and years of things I’ve created online. I’ve been going through old blogs, teachings, meditations, website pages and ideas I had years ago, deciding what still feels like me, what needs updating, what I still love and what I am perfectly happy to leave where it belongs. Some of it makes me smile because I can see exactly who I was when I wrote it. Some of it still feels completely true. Some of it makes me realize how much my understanding has changed, and every once in a while I’m sure there is something that makes me wonder what on earth I was doing, but that’s part of having your life and work sitting on the Internet for almost twenty years.
What I’ve realized through all of this is that honoring something doesn’t mean I have to keep doing it forever. Something can have been right for me then and not be right for me now. A piece of work can have helped people and still be finished. A role can have been incredibly important without needing to take up the same amount of space for the rest of my life. I can appreciate the woman who built all of this, raised a family, kept everybody organized and figured things out as she went along without requiring her to keep recreating the same life simply because she got good at it.
I think there is a strange freedom in that, especially at this point in my life. I don’t feel like I’m starting over because I’m definitely not starting from scratch. I’ve put far too much work into getting here for that. I feel more like I’m standing in the middle of everything I’ve learned and deciding what I actually want to carry forward with me, and that is a very different feeling.
There are plenty of things coming with me. My work ethic isn’t going anywhere. My ability to organize things is clearly staying because somebody has to keep the spreadsheets under control. I love being a mom, and I love my family. I love my spiritual work more than ever, and my connection with Reiki, intuition, angels, meditation and teaching feels deeper now because I’ve had so many years to live with it rather than simply learn about it. I don’t feel like I’m leaving myself behind at all. If anything, I think I’m becoming more myself because I’m beginning to notice which parts are genuinely me and which parts became habits because life required them for a long time.
Maybe that’s one of the gifts of getting older that nobody really explains to you. There comes a point when you have actually proven quite a few things to yourself. I know I can take care of people. I know I can work hard. I know I can get through difficult seasons and figure things out when the plan falls apart. I know I can carry a lot because I’ve carried a lot, and I don’t need another test from the universe to confirm that particular skill. What I’m more interested in now is deciding what is worth carrying, what belongs to me, and what I might want to do with the room that’s opening up.
That also connects so much with the energy I was talking about in this week’s reading. I’ve been thinking about how easy it is to absorb what everyone else is feeling, expecting or worrying about and then accidentally carry it around as though it belongs to us. When you’ve spent years paying attention to everybody else’s needs, it can become automatic. You don’t even realize you’re doing it. But maybe part of this next chapter is learning that I don’t have to manage every feeling, every outcome or every person I love. I can care deeply about people without taking responsibility for living their lives for them.
And I’m still learning that one, by the way. I don’t think I’m going to wake up one morning and suddenly become a person who doesn’t want to help when one of my kids calls with a problem. That’s probably not happening. But I can listen without immediately taking over. I can offer what I know and then let them decide what to do with it. I can trust that the adults I spent all those years raising are capable of becoming who they’re supposed to become, even when their way of getting there isn’t exactly the way I would have chosen.
Maybe that also means I get to turn some of my attention toward my own next chapter without feeling like I need to justify it. I can put more energy into the work that feels meaningful now. I can change my mind about things. I can decide that something I’ve done for years has run its course, even if I was good at it. I can be curious about ideas that keep coming back to me without immediately needing to know where they’re going or whether they’ll become anything.
That’s probably my favorite part of the Raziel meditation. Toward the end, there is another book in the library, except this one is blank. At first you might expect it to contain all the answers about what happens next, but there aren’t any answers written there because those pages haven’t been lived yet. Your past can give you wisdom, Spirit can guide you, your intuition can get your attention, and life will certainly bring things you couldn’t have planned for, but there are still pages that belong to you.
I find that incredibly comforting now. When I was younger, a blank page probably would have made me feel like I needed to figure out the whole book. Where am I going? What am I supposed to do? How is this going to turn out? At this age, I’ve lived enough life to know that half the things I worried about never happened, some of the things I planned didn’t work out anyway, and some of the most important parts of my life could never have been put on a five-year plan because I didn’t know they were coming.
So maybe I don’t need a five-year plan for Lisa 2.0. Maybe I don’t even need Lisa 2.0. I’m still me, just a version of me with more pages behind her, a little more wisdom, fewer people who need me to pack their lunch, and hopefully a better understanding of what deserves my energy. I can still be the mom, the wife, the organizer, the worker, the Reiki Master, the intuitive, the meditation teacher and the person who likes knowing what the plan is. I just don’t have to perform those roles exactly the way I did ten or twenty years ago.
And I think this is where the spiritual part of all of this has become really important to me. I’m not looking at spiritual growth now as becoming more spiritual, collecting more information or trying to reach some magical level where I finally have everything figured out. After more than twenty years of doing this work, I actually think I’m moving in the opposite direction. I want to get quieter. I want to listen better. I want to notice what my body and intuition are telling me before my brain has organized everything into a plan. I want to deepen the relationship I already have with Spirit instead of constantly looking for the next thing I’m supposed to learn.
I’ve also been asking different questions. Instead of always asking Spirit what is going to happen next, I’m much more interested in asking what I’m being shown right now. What keeps getting my attention? What feels finished even though I haven’t officially declared it finished? What gives me energy when I think about it, and what am I continuing simply because I’ve always done it? Where am I feeling peaceful, and where am I feeling that little internal resistance that usually means there is something I need to look at? I don’t expect one meditation or one conversation with my angels to hand me a complete map. I’m paying attention to what repeats, what feels steady, and what continues to make sense after the emotion of the moment has passed.
I’m giving myself more quiet too, which doesn’t always come naturally to someone whose first instinct is to do something. Meditation helps me with that. Reiki helps me with that. Journaling helps because sometimes I don’t know what I think until I start writing and suddenly there it is on the page. I talk to my angels and Spirit in the same normal way I always have, and then I try to remember to stop talking long enough to listen. I’m also trying to leave a little room for answers to show up through ordinary life because I’ve learned over the years that guidance doesn’t always arrive during meditation with heavenly music playing in the background. Sometimes it shows up three days later when something suddenly makes sense while you’re doing the dishes.
I’m paying more attention to my nervous system too. I’ve learned that there is a difference between something stretching me because I’m growing and something draining me because it simply isn’t right for me anymore. Fear can certainly show up when we’re moving into something new, so I don’t automatically take discomfort as a stop sign. But I also don’t believe spiritual growth requires me to constantly override myself. Part of growing spiritually, at least for me now, is learning to recognize when I’m acting from old conditioning, old responsibility, guilt or the belief that I should keep doing something simply because I’ve always been the person who does it.
And maybe most importantly, I’m practicing letting the answer be incomplete. That’s a big one for the organizer in me. I would love for Spirit to provide the complete plan, preferably alphabetized, with deadlines and a nice little box I can check when each stage is finished. Apparently that’s not how this particular chapter is going to work. I’m learning to trust one clear step, live it for a while, and then see what becomes clearer from there.
That’s what I’m sitting with this week. I’m appreciating the woman I’ve been because she has worked very hard and gotten me here, and I’m also giving her permission to put the clipboard down once in a while. She doesn’t have to stop being capable. She doesn’t have to stop loving everybody or helping when she’s needed. She just gets to have a little more room to listen, explore, grow spiritually and ask what she wants to do with her own energy now.
I don’t have to keep being exactly who I was simply because I was good at being her. I can take everything she learned with me, keep listening to Spirit, and leave some blank pages for the woman I’m becoming.
I don’t know everything she’s going to do yet.
And for once, I think I’m okay with that.
Much love,
Lisa
