Dear Reader -

Turning fifty smacked me in the face.

Up until the half-century mark, I couldn't understand people's reluctance to age. For me, every birthday felt like the beginning of something - every candle represented all of the better versions of myself that I'd become. But fifty left me bruised and battered and in that oh-so-typical crisis mode of mid-life. All of a sudden, it became a near certainty that my future is shorter than my past, and my life was not what I wanted it to be. I didn't go out and get myself a new sports car and a trophy wife, but I did start cataloging all of the ways that I didn't measure up to my expectations. And I slipped into a pretty deep funk.

While I'm far from through the "crisis", I have made some great strides while working to sort myself out  On the cursed birthday, I restarted my regular yoga practice and have stuck with it ever since - even earning an instructors certification. Later that year, I finally started a daily journaling ritual that I have managed to hang on to for nearly four years. And during COVID, I began an every-morning meditation practice which has nearly smothered that little fucker in my brain who always told me what a stupid, worthless piece of trash I am.

But despite all of this growth, I still often find myself wallowing in guilt and regret over my past missteps. For some time now, I've been wanting to apologize to all of the people that I've wronged, but I wasn't sure how to go about it. Many of the transgressions are decades old, and while some people may feel a sense of closure from my apology, I'm guessing that most would be at the best confused and at the worst see the apology as some sort of begging for absolution or reopening of a long scarred wound. Basically,I feel like sending a former childhood boyfriend an apology letter would appear, and perhaps actually be, a selfish, attention grabbing act of narcissism. 

But I haven't been able to shake the desire to apologize. And since I'm not asking for forgiveness, or rather, since I am only seeking to understand and forgive myself, I finally landed here where I can kind of hash out what it is I'm trying to do without forcing my self-actualization journey onto unsuspecting, long-lost friends and relatives. 

Thanks for joining me on this ride. Let's see where it goes.

Take care - 

Penny