Therapy by Barbara

AN UPDATE AFTER MANY YEARS

A vision of my pathway forward

The Final Chapter years are not a straight road. They are a labyrinth — one path, many turns, with the center as our final destiny.

Actually, walking the labyrinth is a metaphor for the journey through life: it's shape creates a path where it's impossible to make a wrong turn - or be turned away by any obstacles, as in a maze.

A classical seven-circuit labyrinth drawn in a single line on aged paper

A labyrinth is not a maze

A maze is built to confuse. It has dead ends and false doors, and it is designed so that you can be lost inside it. For instance, much of what our culture says about growing old describes a maze: decline, confusion, a puzzle no one solves.

A labyrinth is the opposite. It has one path. It winds, it turns you away from the center just when you thought you were arriving, and it asks for patience — but you cannot take a wrong turn, and you cannot be lost. You can only be somewhere along the way.

Our life is like walking the labryinth. There's the way in, shedding ourselves of the things that capture our attention, to focus on one particular intention. The center is a place for still reflection and prayers. The way out is about bringing our new awareness into our lives.

I'm particularly focused on the Final Chapter years, preparing for a conscious transition to the next. Another walk into the unknown...which fascinates me...
In 2027, I'll be leading groups discussing this phase of life - and it will be open to all ages!.

Four movements of the walk

A VIEWING POINT OF THE ENTIRE LIFE SPAN

  1. The entrance

    What is set down on the walk toward the center

    You arrive carrying the whole of a life — work that defined you, roles you answered to, a body that once asked nothing of you. At the threshold, some of it is set down. Not lost. Set down, so your hands are free for what the walk asks next.

  2. The turns

    Grief, reckoning, and the changed body

    The path doubles back. You pass near the center and are turned away again. Illness, widowhood, a diagnosis, a child who has grown distant, a memory that will not come when called. These turns are not detours from the walk. They are the walk.

  3. The center

    What remains when the rest falls away

    There is a place in these years where striving quiets and something steadier is waiting: clarity about what mattered, forgiveness offered or received, the plain pleasure of an ordinary morning. People who reach it often say they were not prepared to find it so full.

  4. The walk out

    Offering it forward

    No one stays at the center. The same path carries you back out, and you return changed — able to say the true thing, to sit with someone else's fear, to give away what you have learned. This is the last and least discussed work of a life, and it is real work.

Who might be interested in this type of inquiry?

People interested in viewing their lives from a spiritual perspective, wanting to delve into the deeper meaning of their lives and purpose - regardless of their age.    

People in the maturing process, wondering what they are supposed to do with their lives.

 People already well inside them, meeting loss more often than they used to.

And for the ones walking alongside — adult children, partners, friends — who want to be useful and are not sure how.

Begin where you are standing

There is no correct place to enter a labyrinth other than the one in front of you. If these years have begun to ask something of you, that is reason enough to start talking.

Start a conversation

Barbara Smith, MFT — Concord, California. 510.205.5450.