Dear fifty year old me, the best is still to come
I came across an article that was ten years old.
I sat with that for a moment. As I read it I found myself thinking about the woman I was when it was written. What she knew. What she did not know. What she was worried about. What she could not yet see coming.
And I wanted to reach back through time and tell her something.
It is going to be ok
I wish I could sit down with fifty year old me and say those words.
Not in a dismissive way. Not in a everything happens for a reason, silver linings kind of way. But in the way that only someone who has lived through something and come out the other side can say it.
I know how it feels right now. I know the uncertainty. The questions that do not have answers yet. The sense that the ground is shifting and you are not entirely sure where you are going to land.
I wish I could tell her that the landing is going to be softer and more beautiful than she could possibly imagine.
It will not be linear
What I want you to know about the decade between fifty and sixty. It is not a straight line.
There will be detours. Moments where the path disappears entirely and you have to find your own way through the undergrowth without a map. There will be losses that take your breath away and gains that surprise you completely. There will be chapters that close when you are not ready and new ones that open when you least expect it. And every single twist and turn, will lead you somewhere you could not have planned for. Somewhere better.
I know that is hard to believe when you are in the middle of it. When the uncertainty feels heavy and the future feels unclear. But I have lived it now and I can tell you with complete honesty that the detours were not delays.
They were part of the journey.
At sixty I am just getting started
I turned sixty and something shifted. Not overnight, more quietly than that. It was a sense of knowing who I am and what I am here to do that I could not have accessed a decade ago. At fifty I was still trying to figure out the shape of the life I wanted to build. Still carrying things that were not mine to carry and still saying yes to things that deserved a no.
At sixty I know better, I have written books. I have helped others find their voices. I have travelled. I have lost people I loved. I have discovered practices that have transformed the way I live and breathe and move through the world. I have rebuilt. I have grown. I have surprised myself in ways I am still processing.
There is no stopping me now.
To anyone in their fifties wondering what is next
If you are in your fifties right now and you are asking the questions I was asking a decade ago, I want you to hear this. The uncertainty you feel is not a sign that something has gone wrong. It is a sign that something is about to go right.
The path will not be straight. The answers will not come all at once. There will be moments where you doubt yourself completely and moments where something clicks into place so perfectly that you wonder why you ever worried at all.
But the life that is waiting for you on the other side of this decade is richer, deeper and more fully yours than anything you have lived before.
The best is still to come. I promise you that.
A question for you
This article was ten years old and reading it made me think about everything that has happened in those ten years that I could not have predicted, planned for or imagined.
It made me grateful for the detours and for the difficult bits.
What do you wish you had known ten years ago?
Leave your answer in the comments. I would genuinely love to know. Because I think there is something powerful about women sharing what they have learned with the women who are walking the path behind them.
We do not have to figure this out alone.
Kerry Edwards is a published author, ghostwriter and conscious connected breathwork therapist. She writes about transformation, storytelling, wellness and the art of becoming at every age. If something in this post resonated with you, she would love to hear from you, email kerryjedwards@mac.com.