As I sit here tonight on the eve of my sixtieth birthday, I have to say, my life does not look like I thought it would be when I was young. I remember thinking in the year 2000 I will be forty - it was such an abstract place in my mind. I couldn't even picture it, but here now I am on the threshold of sixty tonight, and can see clearly where my life went off the rails and perhaps why.
As a child, I pictured myself at this age happily married with a few grandchildren to spoil, a cozy home, and a lovely summer home down the shore....now you know I am a Jersey girl. Instead, while I do own the cozy home, I have been divorced three times, and there is no summer home in sight. I could look at this as a giant failure, but then I would not be seeing the whole picture.
Sure my life didn't go as I planned, but who can have planned on three divorces. I was much to young and in a state of total emotional chaos when I married the first time. I had run away from home at seventeen and right into the arms of my first ex, an emotionally unavailable thief. My second husband nice as he was, was an alcoholic, and emotionally damaged like I was. And we all know that my third husband was a world class covert narcissist who never loved me, but just used me for a free place to stay and cash to fund his life.
But here is where I can see that life has happened just as it should have. I needed to suffer all three of those losses, and needed to be raised by an abusive mother to make me who I am today. Yes, I am single at sixty, but I am not alone. I have a gaggle of wonderful friends who bring love and laughter into my life everyday. Because of how I was raised, I built a very successful career that allows me to support myself nicely, own my own home, drive a nice car and when my body allows, sleep peacefully at night.
And most important, if all of this had not happened, I would not be working on my Life Coach Certification so that I can take all that has happened, and use it to help others find their way through the labyrinth of healing from childhood and narcissistic abuse. That is my calling, that is my mission given to me by my soul tribe. The only way for me to fulfill that mission was to have gone through all of this hell to get the experience and empathy I would need to do this work; this wonderfully healing passion work.
So were my childhood expectations met? No, they were exceeded in ways I could have never imagined. We don't often get the life we dreamed of as children, but if we look for it, we can get an even better one, and that is all the reflection I will do tonight. Tomorrow is a big day for me.....It's "Sixty" day!!! Happy Birthday to me.