Explaining a wish

I was visiting my family last week to take my youngest sister, who is now 50 out to dinner.  As we left the dinner venue, I said I wished her everything I found in my 50's.  That probably needs some explaining, since so much of the last 5 years was so difficult.  But I do stand by it.  

When I was 49, I was at the lowest point in my life.  It was connected to a job I never ever wanted to do, but the job came to me at a point in my life where it worked, where it fit my life and gave me a sense of stability that I lost after we left farming. I was very very good at my job, good at that kind of work, because it fed my need for things to be ordered and have the right place and the right purpose.  Over time, I felt trapped, trapped by obligation to family, to Brian, to many people that I really liked.  I gradually lost confidence in my ability to be anything else until I lost all hope that there could ever be anything else.  When I write that out now, it sounds so mild, but it was so very, very dark.  Being without hope is the hardest thing.  

 But in spring of my 50th year, I came to knitting.  I found it wasn't just knitting, it was KNITTING.  For some reason, knitting is where my brain always needed to go.  I found and still find, an endless well of creativity, and joy, and goofiness, and light and air, so much so that I wonder how I used to breathe.  I found strength and belief in myself and the power to change my world.  The whole structure of my inner life changed.

And that gave me the ability to change the rest of my world. Life got so much better and oh so much more fun.  Through it all, my dear Mr. Needles, stood stalwart, supporting me, building me stuff, listening to my endless yarn talk.  He was happy that I was happy.  Isn't that just the greatest thing?

 Yeah, in the middle of my 50's Brian became ill and in very short order, passed away, but if that had happened to the person I was at 49, I would not be sitting here chatting today.  Simple truth.  That person could not have withstood the pain.  Even as it was, I very nearly didn't.  But I did, and there it is.

When Brian died, I knew that I had knitting.  I knew that I had something to hold to and I knew that as long as I had something that I really liked to give me strength, I would somehow get through the hard parts to something else. Don't get me wrong, the loss looms large daily, but I know how to handle it now and how to walk that path of sorrow.  Sorrow is always in my eyes and my heart and is there for anyone who cares to know me, on my face, as much a part of me as knitting.  There are parts of that journey in time, I would not live over again, not in a billion years and I would not wish on a single soul.

But what I wish for my sister, for everyone really, is that they find something that feeds that inner you the same way knitting feeds me.  My 50's were the highest of highs and the lowest of lows, but at 60, I feel like I left that decade stronger and more sure of who and what I am than I have ever felt before.  I found my inner light and as silly and new agey as that sounds, that light sustains me.  Maybe most people don't find these things so late in the game as I did, but I have a feeling I am not alone.   

I wish that for my sisters.  For all of you.  Find that thing that lights the inner you and find a way to live it.  Everyday.