MUSINGS FROM MIDLIFE
My Stories
Backing Myself
I remember standing outside the institute on a busy Melbourne street, frozen with fear willing myself to go in. At that moment, my phone rang and it was one of my closest friends, I burst into tears. That’s not random. I was attending an information session on a course I wanted to do but I couldn’t get myself through the door.
I had four young children at home, aged 1-6, and I was desperately longing to do something just for myself. My friend coached me through the entry, gently reminding me it’s gathering information only.
And that is how I stared my pathway to study. Hesitant, not believing I could do it and yet a little excited I might actually achieve something other than mothering my kids.
The Journey
One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice — though the whole house began to tremble and you felt the old tug at your ankles. “Mend my life!” each voice cried. But you did not stop. You knew what you had to do, though the wind pried with its stiff fingers at the very foundations, though their melancholy was terrible. It was already late enough, and a wild night, and the road full of fallen branches and stones. But little by little as you left their voices behind, the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds, and there was a new voice which you slowly recognised as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do — determined to save the only life you could save.