On becoming weirder and wilder

Pro-aging as anti-patriarchal practice and other reflections and aspirations for 46

Apr 20, 2025

Dearly beloveds,

I write to you at the tail-end of our spring break, the tail of this vacation being magical peacock feathers. Quite literally, quite figuratively.

As you might recall - and I know was true for many if not most of you - January, February and March of this year were rough. Scraping the bottom of the barrel rough. Nothing left to give rough.

In the middle of that rough stretch, I started thinking about our spring break, and how badly I needed a real break. So often, as a solo parent, I return from “breaks” even more depleted than I started, which was very much the case from the winter “break,” which led into the long rough stretch. A depleting break led to depleting and overstretched life and it was utterly breaking.

Mid-February Steph knew how desperately she needed a real break, and might be broken by spring break if it meant feeling even more depleting than the past few months had been. She couldn’t have a repeat of Xmas break. She needed a legitimate break - but needed to figure out how to make that happen.

When Daphne suggested returning to Spanish school, it all clicked into place: she could go to Spanish classes, and I could not - I could get a coffee and walk in the forest and write, or just sit, while she went to classes. I could have a four-hour break, and then we could do things together. We could stay at the nice hotel near the school instead of the little apartments where I’d still have to cook (I do not want to cook ever, let alone on vacation). We could spend our mornings apart and our days together, doing things we both enjoy (enough).

Sometimes things don’t turn out as we planned, and the dream vacation might be disappointing and depleting. High expectations can be crushing. I knew all of this going into it.

But this was not that. This was darn near perfect. This vacation was a glorious peacock (and included peacocks, agoutis, vipers, tarantulas, pizotes, armadillos, and more!).

When I have a moment to myself, what I want is very simple: a good cup of coffee, a walk in the woods, time and space to write. That’s it. I spent my mornings hiking in the forest, being inspired, having nice coffees, and delighting in my own company and nature’s. Writing fed by the woods. Daphne had a blast in her Spanish classes, which were filled with art and creativity (and Spanish). We spent our afternoons swimming and going on little adventures - a night hike, a town festival, a tree tram, a ranario. In day-to-day parenting, so often it feels like no one is getting their needs met. This was a rare occasion where it felt like we both got our needs met really well.

I feel deeply content and satisfied1, spacious, rested, easeful. Most of all, grateful.

This is how I am approaching the last days of my 45th year on earth. As I approach 46, I can’t be more grateful for this particular moment in my life.

At 46, you know well enough that nothing lasts forever, and that every season of life is fleeting, even and especially the beautiful ones. That the first three months of this year were up there as some of the roughest - and knowing it wouldn’t last forever is part of what got me through it. Mid-March through April has been an abundant period of so much richness, beauty, joy, and learning. I am savoring the moments of this particular moment of life, knowing its fleeting nature, knowing this too shall pass.

But…I make space for the possibility: what if it just keeps getting better?

This feels like an absolutely ridiculous question to ask as we experience global collapse and political upheaval. Systems are literally crashing around us, and to think anything is getting “better” from here sound straight up delusional.

However. Hear me out.

The older I get, the more I feel like myself and the more powerful I feel. The older I get, the more sure I am about who I am and what I have to give. It also means I have less fucks to give about what other people think or what is “normal.” I have completely run out of patience for the patriarchal2 bullshit that these systems are built upon (regretting that patience ever was there), the systems that are collapsing that are not serving us or the earth.

The thing is, the systems that are collapsing would like us to be linear, straight, normal, fit into boxes. I think what we are being called into in this time is being the weirdest and wildest versions of ourselves. I don’t mean wild in the sense of intoxicated. I mean wild like the forest. Wild like the vines. Unruly - unable to be ruled. Ungovernable.

Wild like the mountain winds.

Not wild like incapacitated - although perhaps we do need to de-capacitate ourselves, unlearn the abilities that we have learned to survive within modernity that do not support a life-affirming society. If incapacitate means “prevent from functioning in a normal way3,” then yes, that is what I mean. We don’t want to keep functioning as normal. Part of what we are being called towards is developing new capacities that can get us through this time. Capacities for thinking-sensing-feeling-being differently. Capacities for listening deeply, to the heartbeat of the earth. Capacities of caring, loving, and living in a way that honors our interbeing with each step and breath.

As I walked through the forests this week, I felt like I was touching every version of my past selves who loved walking in the forests, which is to say, all of them. Walking through the woods is a throughline of my life, something I have always loved to do no matter who or where I am. As I meandered through the Monteverde cloud forest, I connected with my childhood and teenage self walking every day in Hartwood Acres, my young adult self traipsing through the Sawtooths, my thirty-something self traversing San Diego canyons, my 40-year old self sneaking in pandemic hikes during miniscule moments of childcare in the Colorado Rockies. And the many selves between. I have always loved the woods, and wow, do they ever love me back.

When you’re 46, you can see the threads of continuity that have run through your life, and how precious they are. Those threads that run through are few, but they run deep and thick. The people who’ve known you across those years, family, old friends, the places that have held you that you always return to, the things you have loved to do all that time.

Writing down my dreams is one such thread. Walking in the woods is another. A great love of my life, that always brings me back to my Self, in the greatest and truest sense of the word possible.

Every time I walk alone in the woods, I have a moment of confronting fear of predators. I have confronted my own mortality on many a hike - getting lost, a near-lightning strike, a close bear encounter. In the remote woods where I was this past week, it was a fear of pumas.

In the more urban woods, the fear is usually of a different kind of predator - men. As a woman walking alone in the world, you learn to fear men for your safety. As a teenager, every time I left the house for the park, my mom would warn me to watch out - I always thought she was being excessively cautious, but one day in those woods she would later confront a sexual predator. In the San Diego’s Balboa Park where I walked every day, I had a close call that left me shook for a long time afterwards. The peace of the woods teeters at the edge of that fear, and on nearly every walk, I cross that edge at least once. Yet I keep walking.

At 46, I yearn for the world that I know can exist where we can unlearn the fear we have had to learn in order to survive within patriarchy. The ways of being that keep us safe from patriarchal, misogynistic harm. A world where this harm no longer exists, so we don’t need to learn ways to survive it.

I check my phone to see how to signal SOS if I need to. I keep walking.

Lately, when doing rituals and setting intentions, the phrase that has been alive is “even more.” Slowing down, even more. Leaning into emergence, even more. Letting go, even more.

Each trip around the sun is a chance to celebrate the fact that we got to make another one. A gift, contrary to the messaging we (especially middle-aged women) are pummeled with about anti-aging. At 46, I am anti-anti-aging- very pro-aging, in fact. Pro-aging feels like a very anti-patriarchal practice.

Each birthday feels like a chance to become myself, even more. And I am deeply committed to that, in my weirdest and wildest and truest form.

Wishing that for me, and wishing that for you too, dear reader. May we become even weirder and wilder, even truer to ourselves, together. I celebrate our aging and shining.

Loving you,

Steph

Enchantable

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