Who among us HASN’T wondered where the self confidence of our youth has gone?  Somehow, all that energy and ‘can do’ attitude is harder to muster.  I’ve noticed this with myself and many other midlife sisters...we want to reinvent with gusto—and some of us do—but for many, years of life experience have tempered our optimism.

Our member, Jean White, has poignantly expressed that feeling in this thoughtful essay.  What do we do to recapture our self-confidence?

It was a potent recipe for daydreaming:  Heat so oppressive that it forced thoughts, speech and any effort at movement to slow; Organic vegetables and figs served simply, but elegantly, from the hands that grew them; A hypnotizing ballet of hens scratching leisurely in the yard; Glimpses into the heart shared among women who were strangers just moments ago; Stolen breeze from a sister’s fan on an old porch that must have been saturated with the thoughts of women now long gone.  A summer evening with other mid-life seekers at Boggy Creek Farm sent my mind drifting to a time when I was willing to try anything and confident I would succeed.

In my twenties I moved with my husband and two young children to 4.8 acres of remote forest an hour north of Houston.  We were determined to create a wholesome environment for our family based on timeless values of hard work, independence, and simplicity.  I grew up in Houston and had never even visited a farm.  My husband’s family had rural roots but he never lived on a farm himself.  I’m not sure the source of our wilderness aspirations but I suspect it had something to do with the popularity of Little House on the Prairie along with the 70’s rejection of urban ideals.

The plan, which seems bizarre as I write it, included my husband building a log home from trees on the property while I tended the children, garden, chickens and goats.  The location was so isolated that there was no phone service for months and electric power was dependable only as long as not a single pine tree fell anywhere between our house and the source thirty miles away through the Jones Forest.  My husband worked 55 miles away in 24-hour shifts, often leaving me alone with a two year-old and a five year-old along with our menagerie.  

We could have filmed our own version of City Slickers in our stumbling attempts to tame the forest and establish our homestead.  But, for the most part, we were amazingly successful.  The log house was a masterpiece of thrift and creativity on my husband’s part.  The young woman who previously fed her family Hamburger Helper was canning, pickling, preserving, and making whole wheat bread and yogurt from scratch.  The Houston Chronicle even covered our story in a three page spread in the Thanksgiving edition.  I was taken aback by the attention, but in retrospect I am a bit in awe myself.

Who was this young woman who could grab a 22 rifle and shoot snakes in the henhouse, the barn and even the living room?   Where did she muster the confidence to tackle a huge garden with a hoe, rake and push plow?  What gave her the audacity to believe that living hand-to-mouth in a mobile home in the back woods of Montgomery County was actually a replication of Thoreau’s experience on Walden Pond?  

Thirty-five years later with a Master’s Degree and more life experience than I care to think about, I find myself struggling to rally that self-confidence.  The recent end of a long marriage that died a slow, suffocating death signaled the time for renewal—a fresh start.  My reinvention will depend perhaps more on a reincarnation.  I long for the spirit and strength of the young woman I once was and seek reconnection with those parts of myself that are currently lost to me.  The success of my life makeover will hinge on my ability to unite with her again.

 
Originally from Houston, Jean is the mother of two, grandmother of three and spiritual seeker who recently moved from Tyler to Austin, Texas.  She is presently taking a sabbatical of sorts from her career as a Licensed Professional Counselor and assisting her daughter with her life makeover.  Fate led Jean to WomenBloom through a Google search that, happily, went far astray from the intended target.

Jean likes to decorate, garden, bird watch and travel.  The project closest to her heart at the moment is the restoration of a 1959 Shasta travel trailer named Daisy.  Daisy is undergoing her own reinvention from an humble deer lease trailer to a yellow and white cream puff.  Jean’s “baby” has been in the shop for nine months but she’s told it should be coming home soon.

LIST OF COMMENTS