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Driving from Boulder to Denver the other day, I started thinking about how much of life depends on staying in the lines.
Literally.
Denver has multiple lanes of traffic, cars flying along beside each other, and I thought, sh*t, if one person looked at their phone right now, zoned out, got too tired, drifted just a few feet outside their lane—there could be disaster.
So we stay in the lines.
We obey the lights. The signals. The order.
And for good reason.
But somewhere along the way, I think I learned that the rest of life was supposed to work that way too.
Stay in your lane.
Get the job. Find the partner. Buy the house. Save for retirement. Know where you’re going. And perhaps most importantly, by a certain age, for God’s sake, stop wandering around trying to figure it out.
I’m 48.
And lately, I seem to be doing the exact opposite.
A few days earlier, I’d been notified that I wasn’t chosen for a practicum placement I really thought I would get. Honestly, I thought I was overqualified for it.
I had the most fascinating response.
Of course there was disappointment and shock, but that felt more like an ego blow than anything else.
What?! How could you turn me down?
But as I let it sink in, instead of taking it personally—which I’m sure I would have five years ago—I started seeing it as a signpost.
As the lion trackers say, it was the path of “not here.”
I have stepped outside many of the culture’s driving lanes, and it has been both terrifying and lonely. But it also feels like a calling. Like if I don’t listen to my body, my soul, my heart, then what was all of this for?
Most days, I can say with some confidence that I am learning to live by flow instead of force.
And I love force.
I love control. I love knowing. I love planning. I love feeling safe.
This flow way of living asks something completely different of me.
First, I’ve had to let go.
Let go of what, you may ask?
Everything.
The Everything Must Go Sale.
The old me went out of business. The identities, the timelines, the ways of doing things that felt familiar and comfortable. Gone. Burnt in the fire.
I still don’t entirely know why I was called to this, but I do know that if I don’t follow the soul call, I slowly start to shrink. My life force dims. I self-destruct. I probably hurt other people too.
I go back in the cage.
Although the cage feels safe, I don’t belong there.
It’s really scary out here in the wild.
But it is also exhilaratingly free.
Like…whoa. I get to do this? I get to live like this?
Don’t get me wrong, the voices still try to put me back in my lane.
You can’t live like this.
You are breaking the rules.
This is not what a middle-aged woman is supposed to be doing.
But something in me no longer completely believes them.
In the traffic-lane way of living, that practicum rejection might have felt like a full stop.
Turn around. You can’t go this way. You failed. Find the correct lane.
But in the river way of living, as I’m learning to embody flow, it was just a rock.
And water doesn’t take a rock personally.
It doesn’t stop and question its worthiness. It doesn’t turn around and head back to where it started.
It simply flows around the rock.
It allows the rock to become part of the way.
Right now, I’m in Boulder, taking a month to see how it feels. I have the privilege of being able to work remotely and not travel this month, so this is where I am.
Listening.
Watching.
Paying attention to the subtle signs. The path of “not here,” but also, perhaps, the path of maybe here.
There have been some interesting signs.
Two moose on a hike, one walking directly toward my dog and me.
Thank God I had read the sign at the trailhead about moose safety. I hadn’t encountered many moose on the streets of D.C. or the coastal cliffs of Northern California.
The sign said that if a moose approached, slowly back away. Turn around and go another way, or wait for the moose to pass.
We couldn’t really go another way. It was an out-and-back trail, and we were headed back.
So I backed up with Mocha until we were out of sight and sat on a tree stump.
No cell service. No people.
Just us and two moose.
And strangely, it felt okay.
That was the flow me.
Waiting.
Not forcing.
Trusting that I would know when it was time to move forward again.
There have been rainbows. The moon shining brightly through my window. Hummingbirds by a stream in the early morning after camping with a friend.
A whole field of prairie dogs, looking out for one another, bringing me an almost ridiculous amount of joy. I found myself admiring the way they build and protect their communities.
All dogs. Not just the ones with money or power.
I’ve also been training again at my dear friend and coach’s Muay Thai gym. He has been a rock through years of my life that were quite chaotic, and being back there has felt like another kind of homecoming.
Muay Thai obviously has force in it.
But I don’t fight like that anymore.
It’s flow.
Fun. Playful. Intimate. Vulnerable.
There is something about training with people—hitting and being hit, laughing, sweating, screwing up, trying again—that feels like one of the best ways to bond and really get to know each other.
Maybe this is what I’m learning: flow doesn’t mean nothing is difficult.
It doesn’t mean there are no rocks. No rejection. No fear. No moments when a thousand-pound animal is walking toward you and you have absolutely no idea what happens next.
Maybe flow is simply learning not to force an answer before the answer arrives.
So yes, I am still a nomad.
I still don’t know where I’m going to end up.
At 48, I’m not particularly sure this is how I’m “supposed” to be living.
But here I am.
In this body.
At this age.
My therapist says this is what my soul came here to do.
I have no idea what that means.
And maybe, for once, I don’t need to.
The river doesn’t know what’s around the bend either.
It just keeps moving.
I used to be fire through and through.
Burn it down. Push through. Fight harder. Make something happen.
There’s still plenty of fire in me.
But lately, I’m enjoying the water.
And maybe I’m finally learning that I don’t always have to burn my way through life.
Sometimes I can simply let it carry me.
~
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