In 3 days I will be 60 years old. I have looked forward to this birthday for a very long time, with excitement, with elation, and now, after a couple of weeks of nearly turning myself inside out and upside down, trying almost desperately to figure out who I was so that I could honor who I am about to become, a woman entering her seventh decade, turning sixty not in her beloved cottage but in a tiny rental after a devastating fire, hurling myself hither and yon trying to throw together, at the last minute, under circumstances I could never have imagined when I planned this special day in my heart nearly a year ago, living my way toward sixty with a groundswell of emotion and the certain knowledge that such deep change had occurred that I was now, finally, stepping into the woman I was meant to become only to have everything I thought I knew explode into ash and ruin and terror on the night of February 5 when the cottage burned down. In the last couple of days I have cried so much I couldn’t imagine what would become of me. I reached for my 100 Ladies whom I dearly love and who will surely be part of my life now, but I was running from the woman who spent 15 years growing a life that was her deepest calling. All day long I have wept uncontrollably, and tonight I tore this website all to pieces and redesigned the website that I am meant to have as I turn 60. This is the Dragonfly Cottage I am meant to live in online, and the real cottage that is being rebuilt I am still fighting to reconnect with. Despite PTSD episodes that have taken me to my knees in the last days I will go back to the cottage, now still only a shell, and with my beloved son Aaron, who will be here tonight to be with me for my birthday, I will walk into the cottage for the first time since I left it in flames on February 5. We are meeting the builder there to go over a number of things. The days are moving so swiftly that I have to hang on tight so as not to be swept away, and I force myself to keep breathing because before I know it it will be be time to return. I am terrified, I’m not sure how I will do it, the next 4 months will go by quickly, and when that day comes I will have to be ready.

I don’t know why I thought it would be easy to turn 60. I’m not talking about age. I have never minded getting older, in fact I have looked forward to it, I embrace it fully, and each and every day, despite it all, I know that I am coming into the best time of my life. At the same time I know that reaching this age, having grown into and begun to sink roots deep into my wisdom years, I am also about to begin the work that has been calling to me for decades, that I will do for the rest of my life, and it is so important to me that I am afraid to make a misstep, to do it wrong, but then, if I have learned anything by 60 it is that there is no wrong, just another step along the path. I am ready, yes, I am ready.

It is almost 2:30 a.m. Last night I was up until 4 in the morning and I was nearly sick all day from lack of sleep, but the storm that tossed me here and there all day long has thrown me onto shore, I have landed. I have much work to do now but there is time for it all. I have given the ladies their place on the site, I love them dearly, drawing them has been saving me and The 100 Ladies Spontaneous Art Project is one of the great joys of my life. I am having a lot of fun with it and it is part of The 100 Ladies Project which is multi-dimensional, multi-faceted, and it will grow in many directions in the years head. But the ladies cannot have my Women’s Circle & Wisdom School. It was never meant to be theirs. I have reclaimed it as the Healing A Woman’s Heart Worldwide Women’s Circle & Wisdom School and I have pushed the launch date back until Monday the 12th of May to both give myself more time to properly develop the material and also to extend the Beta sale that is a celebration of my 60th birthday so that more women can get in at the low price that I want to offer them. I will be redesigning that page this week but all of the information is correct. For now I have the site redesigned and I have this mindfulness project back on track and I think I will slip into bed with the pugs and sleep well for the first time in weeks. One thing that I do know, and have known, even through the hardest times, is that it would all come right in the end, or, as I like to think about it as I sit here now, the beginning.

What is in my heart right now is this… I hope that in being transparent, in living fully in each moment, in being absolutely present to my own life wherever it takes me, with all the bumps and lumps and fault-lines and foibles that other women can see that yes, these times will come, but as long as we hold on, trust the process, and stay present even as we move forward we will always be okay. I never faltered for a second in my belief that this was so, even when I was in tears and trembling. I am making it, I will always make it, and if you are reading this you can too. Oh dear women I so hope that you will join me in this Circle and School that I am creating. I may be slip-sliding a bit as I get going but I promise you I won’t fall, and I am bringing everything that I have learned in 60 years and all of the golden moments that are so full of grace and love and learning each day and this will just be something really special for us all. This is my work, this is my promise, this is my life.

If you are reading this, I love you. I hope you will celebrate my birthday with me. I have a childlike innocence and joy about my birthday and I really am so excited. Think of me this Wednesday, the 30th. Blow me a kiss, say a prayer for me, wave to me from where you are, and reach out and take my hand. Let’s walk into this beautiful golden time together. Oh my I have survived the storm, I am overjoyed, I have made it once more. I am here.

I am simply elated!

Love,