Smiling at possibilities…

 I keep telling some folks around me that restarting life in my 40’s is often difficult. Finding a new career, trying to refigure out my spirituality and faith, re-learning how to parent, recreating home, and learning who to trust and trusting myself. It is all new or being relearned. The up side is that it’s all about me and my authenticity, not what someone else is telling me to believe, think, or do.

I am trying to make new friends and deepen relationships with people who were formerly only acquaintances.

And, I am trying to learn how to do “romance” post the starry-eyed teenage and twenties years. This time includes my own teenage children. This go around in romance is no longer starry-eyed. In fact I am very aware that, more often than not, people aren’t always what they seem. It is hard work learning to balance healthy skepticism with allowing myself to live in the moment and just enjoy the adventure.

Add to this the saying that lesbians usually show up to the second date with a u-haul and….

I am seeing someone. And, a week in I told a friend from college that she is more invested than I am at this point. She told me to let my guard down. My therapist is nurturing this trepidation with words about comforting the part of me that is trying to let go of my old ways of being while at the same time going with a flow that seems natural to me.

And as children are along for the ride this time, I am really trying to be careful about both who I introduce into their lives as well as balancing the amount of time I spend with this person that would lessen the amount of time I spend with them.

This particular new relationship is not the head over heels sensation I remember from 20-25 years ago. There isn’t a throwing myself in feet first and loosing myself. Rather I do look forward to time we get to spend together. It’s comfortable. It’s gentle. When we are together, it feels like home. It feels like Tressel looks in the picture above. And though it’s not the breathless-giddy I remember in times of making something be what I thought it was supposed to be…it doesn’t make it any less love. In fact as I am 25 years more mature, maybe it is even more-so. And… I am smiling at all the possibilities.