Walking a different route with the dog this morning, I came across a field with several trees in, and was stopped in my tracks at the sight. Each tree stood with a perfect, wide circle of leaves around its feet. A yellow-leafed tree with a circular carpet of yellow, a russety red tree with its own perfect russety red carpet...
I found myself reflecting on the unique impact each of us has on the world and those around us, even if we don't realise it. And wondering if perhaps we can allow our impact to be one that is beautiful and nourishes ourselves and the wider world. And perhaps it can even be effortless like the trees letting go of its leaves.
It got me to thinking about how a soulful approach to menopause can connect us with our life purpose.
A few years ago I put my life purpose into words. I don't often share it but here it is:
I am here to celebrate the beauty in the world; and to help other people open their eyes to the beauty in the world and in themselves, and to celebrate that beauty in their own way.
For me this 'celebrating of beauty' includes honouring the pain, honouring all the difficulties, making space for all of that. (There's a saying that "healing isn't pretty but it can be beautiful".) Much of my work is akin to being an 'emotional doula', holding people in their darkness, pain and not knowing, but for me it is all in service to 'beauty'.
My life purpose is my mission statement, my guiding light.
And sometimes I forget about it and life loses some of its meaning and lustre. And then I remember it, put it front and centre again, allow it to guide me. And life is still as it is, with all its difficulties and mundanity and disappointments. But when I remember my purpose it's like there is a golden thread running through everything.
Because, once we have a sense of our life purpose, it doesn't necessarily show up in big dramatic ways. A lot of the time for me celebrating the beauty in the world happens in the small, everyday things. In tending to what is right in front of me; be that cleaning the house, listening to my stepdaughter, lighting the fire and preparing the space before a client session, writing this email. All those tasks can be an expression of my greater purpose.
My life purpose is like a little pilot light, a north star. When there's a decision to make, big or small, it helps me stay aligned to something bigger than me.
Your life purpose may mean creating a body of work, writing a book, creating artworks, starting a campaign, protesting an injustice. Or it might be in the way you interact with the person at the supermarket checkout as you do the weekly shop, or in your daily prayer or meditation.But living from your life purpose doesn't mean going through life as a kind of Mother Teresa or Mary Poppins figure either! I find it works best when I let all of parts of me come along for the journey, my imperfections, the wounded parts of me as well as the inspired, expansive parts.
It really pisses me off when people in the arena of spirituality, personal growth and healing give the impression that, if you just find your life purpose everything will be perfect. Or that your life purpose has to look a certain way, be big and grand and shiny. Or that if you're floundering in the dark, if you haven't 'found your purpose' yet, you're doing something wrong.
Ebbs and flows, and imperfection are all a part of life. And in fact 'floundering in the dark' at times is a vital part of the process, of life's continual cycle of death and rebirth. Finding yourself floundering may mean that you are just on the edge of discovering your life purpose for the first time. Or a new purpose that may have never occurred to you. Or a new version, a deeper layer of your purpose.
Can we trust the process?
We see the trees doing this beautifully at this time of year (here in the Northern hemisphere); the period of letting go, decline and stillness, the waiting in the darkness. Only for new life to burst forth as and when it is ready.
And this is exactly the process we go through in menopause. A letting go, a time in the dark, before the rebirth. We can use this time to really examine where we are still in service to old limiting patterns, where we are the puppets of outdated survival patterns, where we are still loyal to internal voices that no longer deserve our loyalty. And we can choose to shake off those patterns, leaf by leaf, and compost them, so we can nourish the roots of new growth, in the direction of our own unique 'True North'.