I felt this heaviness and a wave of panic, almost immediately, as the clock ticked over to the first day of 2022. It was the new year and of course, like any new year, I felt a sense of hope for what this one will bring. But then a new thought quickly buried any excitement. “I’m 40 this year”.
Initially, I slumped into this thought. More than ever before, I felt… old. And then I felt a sense of pressure and responsibility like I have never felt before. All my imperfections started making themselves visible. It was like I was hosting an exclusive party and they were all invited.
It’s just a number, right? You’re only as young as you feel. Blah blah blah.
Let’s be honest. There is a difference between those numbers that creep up each year. I’ve come to realise it’s not negative, but there’s certainly a difference. And it’s not necessarily all just because I’m coming into a new age group, but it’s marked a milestone for me regardless.
I have noticed it in my physiology, my spirituality, my sexuality, and who I am as a mother, a wife, daughter and friend. Who I am as a business owner, mentor and healer. I have noticed that time even passes differently. In one way it feels so fast and I feel like there’s so little of it. In another way, I feel like I am time and I am understanding more than ever before that it is an illusion. Just as 40 is.
But what’s not an illusion is that I have more life experience than when I was 20 and 30. So something has evolved and changed whether I like it or not. And what I realised more than ever before is that those imperfections are also an illusion.
I’ve been seeking so much support on this journey this year to make sense and unravel what it is I’m really seeking to understand. I have had the most profound experiences and rapid self growth in the past few months than I feel like I have actually ever had. I believe that it’s never one person or one thing that necessarily cements change but rather it’s a sequence of events and experiences. But fundamentally you have to be ready and willing.
Over the past year, I have moved into this new way of living, I guess you could call it, where I have made much more time in my life to observe and witness and really experience my life. And I know that there was so much of my life where I numbed out, afraid to experience what it meant to live. But as I reach 40, I know now more than anything that I want to live through it all. Even if it hurts.
And recently I had a beautiful coaching session with my friend Erin Kyna (who is also turning 40 and felt so much of what I was saying). She invited me to explore working with the Mature Feminine. It was a concept that made me realise I had been somewhat avoiding the idea that I may be ageing.
Ageing has quite the reputation in our culture. You don’t have to go far to be smashed in the face with images to remind you that young is beautiful. Mainstream culture has a little way to go before we feel more comfortable celebrating maturity. But at 40, I don’t feel like I am young, but I also don’t feel like I’m old. I guess 40 is a whole new era I had never explored and I’m not sure I was ready for.
So this concept of working with the Mature Feminine was so new to me. I love exploring the feminine and masculine energies and do so much work with understanding the divine expressions of these. But how often do we think of them as having their own stages in life? The Divine Feminine in her maturity is not the same as the Maiden.
“The thing that I am most frustrated with is that I feel like I have the same limiting beliefs as when I was 20 and 30.” I whined to Erin in my complete immaturity. And as I said it, I realised how untrue that was – believing I was in the exact same place as I had been for 20 years. I shared an example fo a recent event that had validated why I was feeling like I haven’t grown at all. It was an incident with my husband where I was triggered. When we are triggered, there is an emotional charge that makes it so difficult to respond in our highest expression, instead we respond with a familiar behaviour/thought pattern etc.
Erin held me through this moment, exactly as I needed her. She then simply responded with, “What would the Mature Feminine have done?”
I received each of her words and let them be felt, literally as if she had just injected me with her light. I had not been in my Mature Feminine and turning 40 is just my welcome party to meet her! That was the code I needed.
Turning 40 isn’t about getting old. But, for me it is about getting older. And that doesn’t mean I have to dress differently or start using anti-wrinkle creams. But for me, it’s about getting to know this part of me who in this lifetime, I have never met before.
After the call with Erin, I sat with everything we’d talked about. I felt the integration and I felt a new timeline begin. Throughout the days following, I noticed I was thinking differently towards things that would often trigger me with limiting beliefs. When I tapped into my Mature Feminine, I knew she wasn’t a fan of this old stuff. She very clearly and lovingly said to me, “We don’t believe those things anymore, we just don’t”.
I am also inviting in the Mature Masculine energy when I need that too. Of course, we need both. We are both. That is what makes us whole. When we do this inner work, you can see how it plays out and helps us in our day to day. But it also has an incredible impact on our spiritual growth – it makes space for us to feel safer. We must feel grounded, secure, stable and fully supported, nourished and loved. When we feel safe in who we are and our place in the human world, we are ready to explore more of who we are in the spiritual world.
And now, I can’t wait to turn 40. I can’t wait to celebrate all that I have been, all that I am and all that I will be. But ultimately, I know that whoever and whatever energy I want to work with, no matter what age, isn’t limited to my age at all. The Mature Feminine has always been within me, just as the Maiden will always be too. But as I unearth more parts of who I am, the more and more I fall in love with every one of them.
Love
Loretta xo