A Midlife Quest for Lost Parts of Me

Finding hope and joy sprinkled in the most unexpected places.

The bright blue sky on a rocky outcrop is the perfect place to fold up the map of the five-year exploration for the final time. The playful chipmunks scampering around the thick brush echo the joy in my heart. Leaning against the cool rocky chair savoring the rays of the sun and the gentle breeze, my body completely relaxes as I breathe in the contentment of this long-sought moment.

It did not begin as a quest. This journey began on a completely mundane summer evening five years ago. Sitting in a room full of women filled with hope to find common ground and friendship, a stupid ice breaker launched this deep soul work. The questions should have been simple enough to answer, “What made you laugh in the last week? What always makes you smile? What do you love most about yourself?” Nothing particularly intrusive or deep, but all I had were made-up answers that reflected nothing authentic.

I had no idea when I really laughed the last time — no clue what made me happy enough to really smile and there really wasn’t much I liked about myself. As the evening progressed, my heart once again found itself in the all too familiar place of being completely alone among a group of people.

On the drive home, a single thought captured me. “Where was the joy? Where had the exuberance gone? Why had the hope that had once defined me been lost so completely? When did the realness and the passion leave?” It was terrifying. In those moments, it was clear that my life was just a shell. Each day was just going through the motions and trying to get to the next day. The saddest part of this realization was that my beautiful daughter did not have the opportunity to know who I was before the hard moments of this life broke me.

How could I be the mother I wanted to be when so much of me felt lost and unfamiliar? My mind wandered back to the laughter of friends, the joy and fulfillment of passion, the creative endeavors that allowed me to hang my heart on a line, and an existence defined by hope that the world was all going to work out the way it was supposed to. How had all of this been lost? Was it even possible to regain any part of these things back? I determined on that short drive home that something had to change. It was time to find what had been lost along the way.

Creating beauty was completely absent from my life. Later that year, the opportunity to design and build sets for a local musical production answered something in me. It had been too long since my artistic side found a voice. The countless hours with music and a paintbrush trying to express the picture in my head brought the first light into that part of my heart in decades. The peace and joy were healing and allowed a place to start this exploration.

Critics abounded about my use of time and priorities, but for the first time — maybe ever — it was clear that this was an expression I needed, whether anyone else valued it or approved of it. The ability to use my artistic gifts brought my first flicker of joy back to my soul.

Another thing that became clear was that love was where my heart found its best expression. As I examined where my joy had been earlier in my life, it was always in the context of loving others well. Looking around my life, I was not sure where to take this so I just decided to do what I could where I was. Little did I know that in just a matter of months, my whole world would be turned on its head.

In late summer, my community began supporting a local baseball team. It was a decision fraught with tension and it brought much angst across our quiet community. I met a few of the guys and the coach, and all I could think was that it was a hot mess waiting to implode under its own poor design. A few months later, the coach thought the guys could use some life coaching and asked if I would work with his guys. I agreed and unknowingly changed everything in my world after that decision.

In spring, my usually quiet sessions were filled with knuckle-headed, arrogant, unprepared jocks. It was as if the universe had heard me claim I wanted to love well and said, “Here. Try this on. Let’s see if you really mean that.”

My own arrogance was put on public display one afternoon as a brave soul among them publicly challenged me to really see them as individuals and the real struggles they were facing on their journeys. Careful consideration of the challenge before me found these guys had been judged and ostracized by the people and systems that appear to look good in the local press. I apologized and vowed that if they would be brave and work with me that I would do everything in my power to make sure others did not face the same challenges that made it so hard for them to find a place in our community.

Something amazing happened that afternoon. They started writing in their journals — not just filling a paper with words, but really writing their hearts and letting me see behind the iron curtain of their public personas. They started showing up in my office and bravely telling their truth. The weeks and months that followed were transformative not just for them, but for me. Love is hard and I was reminded almost daily of the power of choice in loving others well.

Later that year, a new job opportunity showed up that would require much of me. My life was happier and more fulfilling than it had been in many years. I was truly not interested in the disruption that this opportunity represented. A variety of circumstances made it clear that an application was needed. Even on the day of the interview, the position still had limited appeal to me.

During the interview, it became clear that this wasn’t so much about filling a position but rather an opportunity to create something amazing for those who need the most help in our communities across the state. I thought of the sincere promise I made on a tense afternoon with some baseball boys. There are a few moments in my life that I have ever been more sure of, but this path was clearly the next step in my journey. It was finally time to practice what I had preached so frequently to my guys and be brave.

The months that followed led me to what felt like the great reckoning with my own soul. It is an interesting intersection when the personal journey collides with a professional one. Complicated, messy, painful, and completely overwhelming best describe even the best moments. In the last two years, I have wrestled with my faith, my sense of self-worth, my purpose, my relationships, my roles in others' lives as well as the roles others have in mine. The complexity uncovered as I began to sort the choices and traumas that created my path were both daunting and freeing. The excavation of my heart has been the hardest work I have untaken. It required courage that I didn’t even know was possible.

Last fall, my journey took me back to the “scene of the crime” in the Pacific Northwest. It is a sacred place where I found myself a long time ago. The places and spaces there are haunted with life-defining moments of self-discovery and decisions. It also is a place of tremendous grief as my heart was ripped from my chest when the dearest friend I’ve ever known was snatched away without a moment of notice. I had spent no time in these spaces since her funeral almost two decades ago in part because of the fear that the grief would leave me unrecoverable. Driving away from the Seattle airport, my heart pounded as moments and memories flooded every sense. I wondered if this was a huge mistake. Was the grief going to take me under?

A while later, a short walk in the damp Northwest air at Mount St. Helens was a reminder that all things that are destroyed even by something as violent as volcanic eruption can be restored. It had been years since I had been there and the scars from the violence of the eruption were almost invisible if you had not known what the landscape looked like before. It was beautiful. A place that had been completely wrecked and unrecognizable was filled with life and beauty once again. The personal lesson was glaringly obvious.

Later that afternoon watching the sunset on the side of the highway, the sound of her laughter — our laughter — flooded my memory. For the first time since I said goodbye, there was joy in the memory of our friendship. Tears of happiness rolled down my cheek as I could hear her voice, “Oh, darling. It’s all okay. Just enjoy these moments. Breathe them in. They are a gift — a reminder of God’s goodness and love.”

The next two days I spent with a colleague. We worked, we talked, we laughed, and for the first time in a very long time, I decided to take the risk and be completely authentic with her. Something amazing happened. Friendship was born from a genuine connection.

Though I had sought to love others well, I had not been real with other people so it did not allow others to love me well. In fact, I really didn’t even let others get close enough to know me. My self-protective stance was not just keeping the pain of grief away but also blocking the joy of love and genuine connection. I decided to be authentic with those in my life that had demonstrated they were trustworthy.

This trip wasn’t finished with me though. The day I left Oregon to travel to eastern Washington, I took a fantastic drive through the Columbia River Gorge. It was a trip I had done twice before. Long life-changing talks had happened along this path and instead of facing the day with the dread of overwhelming grief, there was joy.

Standing in places of such tremendous beauty, the broken places in my heart were no longer shards with sharp painful edges, but rather a mosaic of incredible moments that had been shared with a beautiful soul that had helped me define myself once before. Moments flooded my memory but rather than grief that has so often wrecked me, it was pure joy and gratefulness to have shared even a portion of this life in this amazing friendship.

A sign to Larch Mountain caught my eye and a winding road meandering through an ancient forest became a much-needed detour. Reaching the end of the road, there was a parking lot and a trailhead. Immediately I recognized this place. It was the trailhead to a hike that leads to the most spectacular view in the entire Northwest. The summit offers the only viewpoint of all four volcanoes in a single view. Images from my previous visit with a friend almost 20 years ago adorn my bedroom wall as my most treasured photographs.

I changed shoes and thought about trying to make the top. The walk through the parking lot to the trailhead winded me. As I stood at the bottom of that trail longing to get to the top, the reality of my body hit me. I had gained so much weight and was so out of shape that this was an impossible task to even consider. At that moment, a decision was made that I had to change my relationship with my body. I had no idea what needed to change or how I was going to do it, but something had to give.

In the weeks that followed, the challenges facing me in my relationship with my body were complicated. It was not just a diet and exercise solution that was needed. Those are all well-worn paths with failure at the eventual end that only added to the all too familiar self-loathing. Learning how trauma impacts the body helped me to see my own journey more clearly. Somewhere along the way, I had lost the connection to my own body — or perhaps more accurately, it had been taken from me.

The journey to reclaim that power has led to places completely unexpected. It has required the examination of self-talk in my own head. Understanding what I say and believe about my body, where I learned to believe those things, and how that impacts my entire view of self have led to really hard places. Revisiting personal traumas, deconstructing my understanding of my own sexuality, and taking deep dives into relationships both past and current became necessary to move forward. Learning to love and accept my body along with actively practicing self-compassion have been critical components. Healing is a process and not instantaneous. It is a part of the journey that is still underway and likely will continue perhaps for the rest of my life, but thankfully I am in a place of health and healing and no longer on a path of destruction.

Starting the hike to the first summit was an incredible place to find myself five years after this journey began in my heart and almost a year to the day that I walked away from a Northwest trailhead in tears. The hike up that mountain was a bit of an internal battle of the will as the doubts and fears made a final attempt to regain the ground that had been taken from them. Quieting the noise and just taking a step at a time was a reminder that this entire journey as well as the way forward from here is just that. It’s the next step — the next choice — each having the opportunity to move me forward in the things that are valuable to me, to my purpose.

It started as a journey to find the me that was lost, but what I found was I was never lost at all. I had just been buried trying to protect my heart from the overwhelming grief, deeply held trauma, and agonizing pain that had been left in the wake. Healing has come as those things have been addressed. I recognize the person in the mirror as she reflects my heart — my true self — more today than ever before.

There are people in my world who love me well and who have given me the tremendous gift of space to explore my heart safely and have been witness to the deeper crevices of this path. My relationships are healthier and stronger. I no longer feel lost and my life is no longer a hollow shell. There is still work to be done, but joy, love, and hope have all been restored. Sitting in the warmth of the sun on that cool rocky chair able to see forever in the blue sky, this chapter is complete and the page is turning to the next adventure.

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