How come it’s taken me 30 years to finally finish writing my memoir – ‘A Sense of Something Lost’? The longest stretch was the last 5 or 10 years where I felt guilty for enjoying myself and not writing and then guilty for spending so much time writing and ignoring the children, grandchildren, dog! Oh, and the husband. Maybe it was a sense of duty that finally drove me – a duty I felt to all those thousands of young women like me who, especially in the 60s, were forced into relinquishing – or surrendering – our babies because we weren’t married. Help! I needed someone else to provide the answer to this dilemma. Not tell me it’s about writer’s block, or apathy or a big struggle I couldn’t fathom. That wouldn’t get me off my butt. It just creates guilt – an internal battle between the parent in your head telling you what you ought to be doing and the child in you that just wants to play and have fun. The Excitement of Discovery OK – so we’re told to accept our feelings, our actions in order to move on. But that seems paradoxical – to accept the very feelings you want to banish! Until I discovered Erikson – an American psychologist from way back who – oh so neatly – defines this situation as a natural process. So I’m normal after all, my dithering behaviour was normal! That’s so much easier to accept especially when he describes this ‘apathy’ as a ‘natural decay of our earlier ambitions owing to advancing years.’ So if we accept the decay of our ambitions then there’s a natural grief of what’s never going to be – leaving a space for what is still possible! Springsteen Says it All Like Springsteen at 70 (almost my age) at the end of the film ‘Western Stars’ he describes this age as his most creative time. He’s busy writing books as well as music. So he welcomes this period as a natural process, as in nature: like autumn and spring - things breaking down as well as breaking through. Think Natural How will you be in your mature years? stagnate or regenerate? Allow regrets, guilt, maybe shame to shape your life or use your experience to help and inspire others? To find out more about me and my memoir ’A Sense of Something Lost’ go to my link on Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B084GFG6WS/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0
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