Into One's Own

For months, I've been thinking about Grace's musings about "coming into one's own." One's own what?

Sorry to say that after months of rigorous intellectual questions, the answer looks something like this.

My "own" was a silhouette of me...fully formed but not at all clear to me. And always just out of reach.

 Like Peter Pan and his shadow, I was always out of step with this silhouette. For decades, I shaped my self mostly by the noise I made bumping up against other people or other places, like a hard metal ball sprung loose inside a pinball machine. I sure could make the scoreboard light up but I could never grab hold of the girl in the silhouette.

And then, as I ticked toward 60, the frenzy seemed to die down almost biologically. It settled into a slow, persistent inner rumbling instead of mad chaos directed outward. And the rumbling had a strong magnetic pull. First, it took me into the kindler, gentler stitching world of Spirit Cloth...which lead me to discover all of you.  And that took me back into creating, back into my garden, back into my faith.

Back into deep and trusting relationships with a few trusted friends, one beloved man, and various boxer duos. 

 

All of which lead me in turn to discover, uncover, recover my self.

 

And I was able, at last, not only to grab hold of my silhouette, but to step into her.

Into my Own.