I’ve always loved how this abstract I painted reminds me of a treasure map.

Because I’ve been having some deep and delicious ponderings lately about PURPOSE, both in midlife (40-60 years) as well as purpose in the Fourth Quarter.

If I were asked to name the ache I hear most often from women my age, it might be this:

“I’m not sure what or who I’m here for anymore.”

Roles shift. We’ve become astonishingly competent at things we’re no longer entirely sure we want to keep doing.

And so we try to manufacture new “purpose.”

But manufactured purpose feels…um…manufactured.

Contrived. Ugggggggh. (As an artist, both copy and contrivance is anathema to me…I HATE it.)

What if, instead of copy or contrivance, we looked at our ACTUAL life (versus “wished for” life) as an opportunity for a cartography-related session of evidence gathering?

Friend -

I need to tell you where I’ve gone.

Not far. Not away from you. Just…elsewhere. I’ve begun writing on Substack and I want to tell you why, because the why matters more than the announcement.

Today my husband signed his name on a stack of papers and handed the next guy the keys to thirty years.

Thirty years of spiritual community, altar calls, salvations, and feasting - both spiritual food and physical food. Thirty years of babies dedicated and saints mourned.