I recall my friend Yona sharing her morning routine: “I get ready, then make some breakfast. I have a moment with Ilan, and then that’s it, off into the day.” That small story stayed etched in my mind. There is a simple, felt intimacy in sitting down for breakfast with a child on the verge of becoming an adult, a brief moment before they leave home; like all other moments, it will never be again.
Sitting today with my son Jasper, the last one left in the nest, I feel my priorities rearranging. I usually eat breakfast a little later, after a walk; instead, I crack four eggs, scramble them, and plate two.
We sit side by side and eat. I savour the moment. It’s simple and beautiful.
When Yona shared that story, it was only a casual moment in her day. As I sit down for breakfast, remembering the mark it left in me, I wonder what it touched. Perhaps a yearning for the intimacy with my children I wasn’t cultivating at the time. Perhaps a glimpse of what was coming ahead. Either way, I feel it now: the closeness in Yona’s story moving through this moment of honest connection with Jasper. The story does more than validate what I feel. It reminds me I am not alone; it lets me tap into a shared wisdom, one that keeps humming how fleeting this moment is, and how much this kind of intimacy matters.
We share stories as a way of relating to one another. It is one of the pillars of a rite of passage. As I move through this transitional time, a great shift in the body known as perimenopause, a rite of passage for all women, I am held by these stories, by the wisdom carried through the women who have walked a similar path before me. I am fortunate to have dear, wise women around me. I am grateful for that every day.
It is important for humans to share stories. It is important for humans to share wisdom through storytelling. Sometimes these stories are fictional archetypes; sometimes they are the intimate stories of our daily lives, offering a pathway for others to understand life as it comes at them.
To listen, to really listen, to a friend, to a family member, to another human you barely know as they share a story, is to cultivate a deep intimacy with life; to let their wisdom remind you of your own, to drink again from the well of our shared heart.
Thanks for reading.
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