When I turned forty-five last year, in late August, I had just arrived home from a week at The Strenuous Life Retreat. It had awoken something in me, and I wanted to move back to Colorado, working on the Zapata Ranch as a cowgirl. The next few months were spent submitting my application, taking horse lessons, and preparing myself to uproot my life. Yet, a large work project was signed, and I decided I couldn’t leave my current employer since I had responsibilities to finish there. I withdrew my ranch job application, focused on my schoolwork and job, and settled into life in western Massachusetts. And yet, the bear had already begun her rising (it’s okay, I’ll explain below).
I turn forty-six today, and the long line of my life is coming into focus. I’ve often thought of doing an annual review that many people do, but the thought of segmenting my life into different categories and then evaluating them, making plans and goals for the upcoming year, doesn’t suit my nature. I see how one thread of my life connects to another. To try to separate them seems a silly exercise1, especially since I am not naturally analytical or logical. Yet, I do think deeply about how to be a better human, marveling at the juxtapositions we each hold within us. The wandering soul I possess, the need to experience the world, the stagnancy that I currently feel…they all swirl inside me like a maelstrom. I don’t typically look back into the past, even if the writings on this site may speak otherwise, and I find doing so unhelpful and sentimental. I’m much more interested in what’s to come. I have frequently lived life in the future. I have learned much in this past year and turning forty-six is a good time to take stock of my life, recount and revisit the lessons I’ve learned, and look to what my years ahead may entail2.
¶My Forty-Fifth Year on This Rock
I’ve been told by a few people3 that one’s forties is when we come into our own. When the uncertainty is no longer so oppressive, when we have a keener sense of who we are, when the acceptance of our changing bodies becomes easier to hold. In my early forties, I was still questioning my worth, questioning my path, stuck in a routine that I no longer wanted. And so I moved to NYC to become CTO of a financial startup. My time in NYC was both affirming and hard, and moving through the pandemic and heartbreak was the prompt to go deeper, to challenge, to give up, to open up. It is now, in my mid-forties, that I understand what my friends have been telling me.
¶Harvard, Hospice & Horses
The semester at Harvard Extension School began not too long after returning from Colorado, and the class I took was Mindfulness, Meaning, and Resilience. This was followed up in the spring semester with Compassion, Science, and the Contemplative Arts. Both courses taught by the same professor and teaching assistant, both of whom I came to adore. I remember during one class, as we were meditating, I just started crying, huge sobs racking my frame, my chest heaving. Thankfully, both courses were taught virtually, so I was able to turn off my video. At the end of the class, the professor said he would stay on if people had questions. When it was my turn, I asked about the crying. He said that it happens, and not infrequently. My body was holding on to something, and it was released during the meditation. He said I may know what it was or not, but the body did. From that point, I started to understand what meditating and being mindful of my thoughts and emotions could do for me. I now have a consistent practice of sitting on the cushion, pretty much daily.
The second semester on compassion also created a schism in who I was and who I am becoming. I was always so hard on myself, so hateful toward myself, and looked to others to give me worth and quiet the spiteful voice in my head that I wasn’t worth shit. I am a born and bred New Englander, and I think the ancestral history of self-sufficiency, hardiness, and sincere kindness is deeply rooted in my bones; these traits are some of the things I love about myself. Yet, New Englanders can be critical and cold, and when they—er, well, I suppose we—think you’ve done something stupid, there is no hiding our disdain. It was only natural for me to turn this inward toward myself, having grown up in this culture. Learning to show some kindness and compassion toward myself made life a whole hell of a lot easier and a ton more fun to take part in. There are still occasions when I sense it’s all too frou-frou, woo-woo, new agey; now I just smile at the silly ridiculousness of the moment and enjoy my resistance, recognizing that it’s all a process.
A month after school started, I was able to start horse lessons at Blue Rider Stables. Originally, I intended to get back to being familiar with riding and film it for the horse wrangler application. But as I spent more and more Saturdays at the stables, the more and more I was taught. Not just about the horses, but how what I do affects them and other riders, the presence of mind that it takes to be present, how off my body felt, holding tension and stress in places I didn’t know. The women who run the stables are remarkable, don’t suffer any fools, and are generous with their time and knowledge. Our bodies keep a memory of what we’ve been through, even when we think we’ve dealt with the events that caused the stress and hardship. Horses make you confront what you’re hiding, even if you don’t know you’re hiding.
¶…and a little traveling
Then, in late October, I spent ten days on a solo trip to Dublin, where I got another tattoo, went out on a date with a man that told me things he hadn’t told others (for some reason, people always open up to me about their secrets—this is probably due to me having no judgment and a genuine curiosity to what other people’s lived experiences are), wrote my ass off, drank plenty of Guinness, and made friends everywhere I went. I hadn’t done a solo trip since before the pandemic when I went to Berlin in 2019 for the 30th anniversary of the Wall falling, and the Dublin trip reaffirmed how much I love solo travel. The world opens up and I feel unbounded. I feel part of something bigger, greater than little ol’ me.
When I returned, I was set up with a new person in hospice care, and started my weekly visits with her. I can’t write much about my time with any of my hospice patients—their stories were theirs to tell. But what I can say is that being part of someone’s transition between life and death has taught me that we all have a choice in how we meet that death. And that a good death is ONLY preceded by a good life. I recently finished Alua Arthur’s Briefly, Perfectly Human: Making an Authentic Life by Getting Real about the End4 and the final sentences of the book ring vehemently true to me:
Because we live, we get to die. That is a gift.
As I write about below, there’s a shift happening in me, and one of the directions this shift is pointing me toward is end-of-life care. Whether that’s taking a more active role in hospice care, becoming a death doula, or working with the elderly, I am unsure of. When people find out I volunteer for hospice, the usual platitudes of You’re such a good person, or I could never do that are spoken. For me, I do it because I want to be prepared for my own death. I would rather not live a life that I regret in my final months of it. Being close to death by experiencing a sliver of other’s deaths awakens me to my life right now. I have also found I can handle and hold death easily and lightly, which in no way takes away from the honor, gravity, and responsibility I feel for doing this work.
In late April, my family and I took a trip to Disney World, a gift from my father to his family, one last epic hurrah together. As my parents get older, their ability to travel and partake in things will become limited, and I was glad we had the opportunity to spend so much time with each other. It didn’t end without some infighting, but this is expected from our Irish-Italian family. In our maturity, the one or two instances of frustration (because fights they were not) were quickly overcome by stepping away and letting things blow over. I did feel a little trapped at the outset, felt strange and like I was my fifteen-year-old self again, the need to bolt, to get away, rising like bile in my throat. This thankfully only lasted a day or so, and I eased into being present with my family and enjoying their presence. Of course, my nephew wanted nothing to do with me, his sweet, attentive, loving Auntie Nikki. No, he only wanted to hang out with Uncle Adam.
Upon returning, the spring and summer were–are–easy, and continue to be so. Long rides on Bella, dinners and drinks with friends, a meditation class, a Spanish class, a part-time job caring for three horses, meeting new friends, getting prepped for the fall semester at HES. Learning how to let the words of others roll off me like my skin is teflon, knowing that what they say is more about them and less to do about me. Realizing that I’m not truly myself if I’m not setting boundaries, not living life on my terms. Robert Birming wrote something similar: “How others perceive us is not our problem, it’s theirs (within reasonable limits, of course).” I’m glad this knowledge is now solidly rooted in me, that my self-worth isn’t wrapped up in what other people think of me. It’s a wonder it took so long but, as I’ve written about before, we all come to conclusions when we are meant to. We arrive when we arrive—and I still think we never truly arrive…everything is liminal.
¶Bear Rising
Hands down, this is one of the most favorite places I’ve lived. The people are kind up in The Hilltowns and, for the most part, ascribe to my political liberal leanings. It’s very rural here, with curvy, meandering roads that are exhilarating to take Bella out on. Bear cubs and farm tractors are common sightings. There are artists and famous media people here, salt-of-the-earth and salty people here. It is a little too white, if I’m being honest, and there have been a few instances of blatant racism I have seen. For the most part, the people are kind and friendly, though I have had strange looks from some of the residents here (usually elderly women who see my tattoos and scowl–I just smile wide) and I’ve heard a few crude remarks directed at me5. Mostly, this little town and the larger Pioneer Valley it is part of jibes with my personality, and it is the closest I’ve felt to feeling at home since living in Denver. I’ve created a little community here. The text messages and emails I’ve received from my friends already this morning are kind and lovely, and I am a little teary-eyed with their sentiments. How lovely to have such beautiful humans in my life.
And yet…
My bear is rising. My sweet, tortuous, raw bear, an allusion to my wandering heart, my restless soul, a reference to Tristan’s own demons in Legends of the Fall6, which came out the year I was in eleventh grade (oh how I loved that movie, how I felt a kinship–and attraction–to Tristan…I could understand why Susannah broke herself against him). The stories we tell ourselves, or come across, when we are young often stick with us for our entire lives. They shape and mold who and how we become. My bear is no different. She stirs now, and I can feel the itch to shake this town and this space from me, the dust from her fur, let her wildness run free again. This stirring was part of my pull to go back west this past year, and instead I pushed her back, chose responsibility to something else over responsibility to myself. I don’t regret that decision. I don’t know what I would have learned had I moved west, but I know part of the reasoning behind that desire was running away from the heartache. It is good that I stayed here, moved through the pain, sat with the hard bits. Moving would have masked what I was feeling. Moving may have prevented me from finding myself. I have tried to be more deliberate with my bear, reason with her, as I’ve gotten older. The choices I make now have larger consequences than the choices of my youth, though I say that with a history of hard decisions and harder results. Still, letting my sweet bear out is, I think, the key to my good death.
¶Searching for a Good Death
There is a shift in me that’s been happening for some time. I’m trying to draw that shift out into a length and time that feels uncomfortable to me, way past the point where I would make a change, choose a direction, and move on, in whatever form that takes. I don’t know the shape of the thing, of the next year of my life, which I prefer. Death is monotony to me, a living hell. Friends and family have cautioned me in the past to know where I was headed before I made a hasty decision. Though, I will say when my folks picked me up from the airport after my trip to Colorado and I told them about my plans to apply as a horse wrangler, my mother said, “Do it. Do it!” Regret is a sad shawl to hang over anyone’s shoulders.
Alua Arthur, again, when knowing that something needed to change:
So yes, I was running away from something as I waited for my flight to Cuba. But I was also running toward something. I didn’t know why or who it was yet, but I knew she was somewhere. […] I found her by imagining myself on my deathbed for the first time. And with my death as my guide, I will find her over and over again, continuing to follow my curiosities, my truth, and my bliss until–at last–I die too.
I don’t know what my good death looks like if I’m being honest. Not yet. It is easier to point to what it is not. And what it is not is sitting behind this screen for eight to twelve hours a day, writing code. What it isn’t is my body feeling stiff from too many days strung together sitting in a supposed ergonomic chair. It isn’t being shut indoors with my only human interaction over video meetings and online classes. I enjoy my job and the people I work with but know now that it isn’t enough. When I am on my deathbed, I don’t want these days that run into one another to be what I remember.
What I do know is that I need more variety. I need to be among people. I love people. I love being around them, being part of a group and community, have found that I can bring people together. I’ve been toying around with a sabbatical and traveling, but this requires money. While I have a little saved up, it is my emergency fund and, while this may be considered an emergency7, I prefer the safety of keeping that fund (that and I have come too far in my financial education to make bad money decisions). I’ve been more seriously considering getting a job as a bartender-slash-waitress or try my hand as a bread-maker or see if some ranch will take on an aging, excitable, interesting lady that works hard and is up for anything. To find a way to fulfill my need to be among humans, to interact with strangers, to move my body in ways that have been forsaken but not forgotten.
The difference between last birthday and this one is that I am more sure of who I am. When I look in the mirror, I see the woman I’ve always seen in my mind. I know that I am kind and fierce. I am loving and hard. I am steady and tumultuous. I am accepting and demanding. I am elegant and rough. I am all the multitudes that I contain. And this birthday, I will heed the shift, move toward a good death, full of a life lived in experiences, stories birthed from hardship and connection, days fecund with possibility. I will search for my good death, look forward to the day when I can rest in repose, finally lay my head down, surrounded by those that I love.
A good death reflects a good life. It’s time I move in the direction of a good death.