I love helping facilitate individuals, groups and organizations through transitions. In recent years I had the great privilege of participating as a care giver in my mother Betsi’s life transition. It was the most important and best work of my career and life. I needed and used everything from my work experience to navigate all that comes with aging and ultimately with her dying.

Though the year of our special experience of living together and walking the road of declining together is three years past now, I am still deep in transition. In a post-Betsi world I have learned how to do things I had never done and now without my mother’s counsel. I carry her voice in my head and her example as my guide post. In the process of attending to her estate I further neglected my own health, work life and responsibilities. And the weight of grief lays heavy upon my heart.

I thought I would pick up my life as it was before. Yet, I was changed. I found a gaping void of purpose making my efforts to gracefully transition challenging.

In these quiet years after my mother’s passing I am learning the power of purpose. My mother was near death when she came to live with me but soldiered on for another year – I attribute this to her daily discovering a new purpose for living. Being a contributor was my mother’s north star. As long as it shined brightly she was in motion. She gave up on living when placed in a nursing home where she could not connect with her purpose.

When she came to live with me, I engaged her in the decisions of her life and enabled her independence and autonomy. We became partners in finding a reason to live in the midst of dying each day. Her purpose was to bring all the loose ends of her life to a close while helping me with learning how to cook and maintain a beautiful home.

Our conversations were varied and deep and unlike any we had previously shared. My purpose was to provide a safe, unconditionally loving home to allow her to live and die as she envisioned. We were both energized by our purposes.

I am in the process of reclaiming my life and re-discovering my higher purpose as I transition into the final years of my career life. I no longer move like a sleek racing boat but feel more like the Queen Mary as I make this turn in life. I am very much like the cobbler’s children. I love to support others in their transitions but am clumsy in navigating my own.

I am learning that it requires me to ask and accept help from others. That it is ok to put myself first. And most importantly, that my purpose has not disappeared, but has been waiting for me to be ready to re-engage.

Leslie