What the Heck Is Coming Next?

My life is like a sponge. I’m either absorbing as much around me as I possibly can, or I’m squeezing out the juices of self-expression. There’s always this constant contrast happening. Absorbing and expressing. Absorbing and expressing.

I hardly think of myself as a fixed entity. I think of myself as a river in motion. A flame flickering. Particles constantly rearranging themselves. If you know me, you know I’m like a cat with eleven lives, constantly reinventing — the fashion model, the massage therapist, the yoga teacher, the university professor, the author, the sailor, the farmer, the psychonaut, the cat lady. All of them part of me, but none of them really defining me.

My mother, on the other hand, she was always just mom. It’s the only thing she really wanted to be — a stay-at-home mom. I’m unmarried with no kids, and I wonder if we’d even have anything in common, if she were still alive.

She’s not here. She’s been gone since 1996. I’ve actually existed longer on this planet without her than with her. But she has been ever-present. An affable spirit. Always around me. Sometimes very clearly communicating things to me from the other side of the veil.

So while I don’t wonder what will happen when I die, I do wonder what will happen when I live past fifty-two - the age she was when she passed.

I was in a hurry for the first 5 decades to get everything done on the bucket list. Traveled to fifty countries. Lived uninhibitedly — always in a rush, always in a hurry. And now, on the precipice, a month away from this threshold, I am settled. I am homebound. I have a house and roots and many cats and friends, and a sense of waiting. Anticipation. Suspense. What the heck is coming next?

I look around at the women of a certain age and how they are navigating their fifties, sixties, seventies, and beyond — jumping on trampolines, injecting Botox, taking GLPs, or letting their hair grow gray. And I can say: I want to be all natural for all of my days, but I wonder if the beauty industrial complex will convince me otherwise as I begin to sag and crinkle and bloat and fade.

This is a topic not easily discussed with the women around me, because everyone fears aging as much as they fear the patriarchy and aliens and taxes and bankruptcy. There’s just these forces — things that feel so large, so looming, so important.

But I have this small whisper all the time saying: You’re missing your life. You’re missing your life. So I’ll step away from devices, go stand in the yard, and look around, and think: what do you mean? And really, there’s just this calling to watch the grass grow, and the butterflies pollinate, and the clouds move across the sky, and the kittens play in the yard. Anything else lacks in comparison.

And there’s an equal and opposing force pushing an agenda for women of a certain age to be relevant, not be invisible, conquer menopausal midlife with glowy skin and a tight ass.

My story of being a girl and a young woman, a nomad, and wounded — it’s all true. It’s all fading in the rearview mirror. And the new story, my golden-girl age, is yet to be written.

I conjure the archetypes. The witchy woman, wise with her herbs and her insight. The bitter socialite with her fashion accessories and martinis. The eccentric artist with her colorful canvases and purple hair. The homebody, perfecting each nook of the house and reading books until her eyes wear out. All of them fun and familiar and incomplete — just like me.

And maybe I’m just trying too hard to find a fixed version of my future self. Trying to be like mom. Just mom. One entity, one purpose, one identity. Maybe my ethereal self will just keep shape-shifting as she goes, same as she always has.

I think I thought I’d land somewhere more specific. More defined. More certain. But the questions just keep coming. There’s always more questions, more expansion, more reinvention, more change.

I think I thought I would become her at fifty-two. No more body, just light — and freedom and joy and energy and presence. And maybe that’s the attainment, the enlightenment that won’t be accessible for some time. At least not one month from now.

In the last thirty years, I have said to mom, over and over: I want to come home. I want to come home. Because for the last thirty years, home is not a place on this planet for me. I’ve been permanently split between worlds — for thirty years — which has gifted me many magical abilities of six senses and empathy, but never a true sense of contentment or completion.

And mom’s response has always been no. It’s not time to come home yet. She has told me when it was time for others to come home, like her brother. I knew he was going before he knew he was leaving. And I’m confident mom will let me know when it’s my turn as well.

But in the meantime — what am I supposed to do with this one wild and precious life?

I’m Dr. Gabby and I write really good books, teach transformative classes and run @consciouspalmbeach. Our next meetup is July 7.

Learn more about me at gabriellepelicci.com