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Dear Reader,

Childhood is about adapting our authentic selves to survive.

The wisdom years are about letting go of conditioning to remember the authentic self.

I’ve spent decades observing children and gaining expertise in the early childhood phase of life.

Now, in the wisdom years, I’m discovering that it’s an opportunity to come full circle, remembering the foundation that was laid in childhood.

I’ve noticed some things I have not seen young children do and wonder why they are so familiar to many adults, including me.

• Children don’t criticize photographs of themselves.

• Children don’t apologize for taking up space.

• Children don’t say “I’m fine” when they aren’t.

• Children don’t withhold love to protect themselves.

• Children don’t hold back on asking for what they need.

• Children don’t negotiate with their feelings. They cry when they’re sad and laugh when they’re happy.

• Children don’t wonder whether they’re worthy before they belong.

• Children don’t have to be asked twice what they like and don’t like.

The question is: When did survival replace authenticity?

As children, we weren’t pretending.

We were adapting.

The mask wasn’t a mistake.

It was a survival strategy.

It served us well when we needed it.

But many of us continue wearing it long after it has outlived its purpose.

Many adults spend decades perfecting a self that was built for survival, then wonder why they feel so disconnected from themselves.

I wrote the Graces of Aging as a path to reconnection. The Fourth Grace of Knowing Ourselves is the grace of remembering.

Not creating.

Not achieving.

Not improving.

Remembering.

Do you remember what it felt like to look at a photo of yourself and just think, “That’s me!”? Not to criticize your hairstyle, facial expression, parts of your body or clothing choices - just recognize yourself in a moment in time.

To be honest, it takes me about five years to like a photo of myself. My first impression is that I look terrible.

Only with time do I look back and wonder why I couldn’t see then what I can see now:

I looked just fine.

Can you remember what it felt like to take up as much space as you needed? Not to apologize for putting your feet up or spreading out on the floor or taking a seat at a crowded table?

I learned as a child in a full household to shrink to make room for others.

It’s common for people to answer, “How are you?” with “Good”. But what if you were honest? Was there a time when someone asked how you were, and you told them the truth. What did that feel like?

There are people I love, yet I still hold something back. I withhold so as not to get hurt. But it’s not so with my grandson - he knows I love him and does not safeguard his love.

One day, while driving him home from school, he suddenly realized he forgot his backpack. It was a Friday. There was food in his lunch box which would surely rot over the weekend - maybe even attract bugs or rodents.

So, we drove back across town and got his backpack. While driving, he let me know that he was glad to spend extra time with me. An inconvenient trip became an opportunity to enjoy time together - and he expressed it freely.

How about asking for what you need? Do you remember how? I know that you knew as a child. You also knew how to express authentic feelings - like crying when you were sad and laughing when you were happy.

What if you didn’t wash your hair and you were leaving an exercise class when you saw someone you haven’t seen in a long time, would you dodge them? Do you have to look good to belong socially?

I suggest that when you were young, you were able to do these things. And I think it matters to use discretion in expressing ourselves. I’m not talking about losing your filter but noticing where it has become more restrictive than need be.

In childhood, the door to our consciousness is wide open.

Then moments of embarrassment, rejection, or shame begin to close it.

Now is the time to re-open the door and remember the freedom that comes from being our authentic selves.

No more hiding, masking, pretending, pleasing or performing.

While writing about the graces of aging, I have been picturing it, remembering simple things that I like and don’t like.

And what it felt like to be free. Because at this time of life, nobody is telling me what I have to do and when I have to do it. It’s up to me.

I remember as a child, sitting on the branch of a tree at the beach, reading all afternoon.

Nobody was telling me who to be.

Nobody was grading my choices.

Nobody was asking me to perform.

I was simply myself.

Perhaps the Fourth Grace isn’t about becoming wiser.

Perhaps it’s about finding our way back to that branch.

Not to be children again.

But to remember who we have been all along.

To remember ourselves.

-Judith

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Dear Reader,

The children I taught never seem to disappear.

No matter how old they become, I see them as the child they once were.

And somehow, they seem to know that I do. They greet me with an open heart - like a child.

Goosebumps. Every time.

It’s a moment that stays with me and begs for processing. It is a gift to meet an open heart - to connect one vulnerable soul to another.

But it can also be a burden.

For me, it comes naturally to approach children with an open heart. In their presence, I want to bear the message that the world is good and welcome to it.

There is plenty of time to learn there are also many challenges in life. Later - when they have developed the emotional and cognitive resources to address them.

But with adults, it’s not so easy. Instead of an open heart, we often safeguard ourselves from being hurt. And that is often what hurts us most.

The young child is open and vulnerable. They have not yet learned to be anything but their authentic selves. No masks, defenses, or ego protecting them.

Looking back, I realize that very child I have loved, lives on in my heart. I knew them before they adapted and loved them just as they were.

That’s the self I encounter in my former students, no matter how old they are.

Now, at this time of life, I am ready to reveal the child in me while I embrace growing older.

To return to the authentic self who expressed herself in childhood.

It’s been one of my greatest joys to witness children grow - in the classroom and in my home. Recently, I have had the privilege of observing our grandchildren growing and learning about life.

The youngest one has had big reactions to minor accidents. Something happens. It hurts. He cries (actually it’s more like a shriek), seeks comfort, but often continues to hold onto the upset.

In time, I have noticed he has become easier to comfort. When a cut on his finger is cleaned and covered with a band-aid, he runs off to play.

By having his needs met, he has learned it is safe to express them.

Lately, he brings me the box of band-aids, showing that he knows the procedure.

But it is not always this way. We are conditioned by our environments. When I grew up in the 1960’s, we were told not to cry. I learned to conceal my pain and to avoid seeking comfort.

I hid the child I once was, the one that still lives deep inside of me. She was too gentle, sensitive, and vulnerable to expose to the challenges of this world.

Yet, in the presence of young children, I have always felt free to bring my inner child out to play.

That inner child is my authentic self - the one I disconnected from. She did not go away but was waiting to be reconnected with.

I am someone who feels things deeply - always have been. At this time of life, I still champion the young child - but also my peers - who are now elders.

They have more in common with the young child than I had realized.

This is how I’ve come full circle. My work has led to this phase of life that I call Entirement. And Life has granted me the time and space to live into it.

That means peeling away the conditioning that taught me to safeguard my most sensitive and vulnerable self in order to belong.

Years of practice in the realm of early childhood has given me a stronghold in nurturing the authentic self, the one I am returning to now.

Every child wants to belong. It’s a human need.

The other day, I went to a Pilates class. It was crowded so I asked two participants to move their mats a little to make room for mine. They did it but clearly, they were inconvenienced by it.

My inner child felt it. But I decided to let that go and love myself. And to see the inner child in the other women.

A sensitive soul sees things not everyone sees and feels things deeply. Would I give up the gifts to be relieved of the burdens?

No, I would not. I accept that my sensitivity creates an imbalance. And that it is a call to love.

As a kindergarten teacher, I could only teach the children if I loved them. That’s what made them feel safe.

The children taught me something I didn’t fully understand at the time.

What they needed was what I needed, too.

I get that now.

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Dear Readers,

When I was a child, I learned how to leave.

Not physically.
I was still there… in a body.

But when things felt overwhelming, I would go somewhere else.
Somewhere that felt safer.

Up into my head.
Away from what was happening.

I was pretending that everything was ok.

Even though, I knew it wasn’t. The tensions were real. But we ignored them, imagining that would make them disappear.

It worked.
Until it didn’t.

Because the truth is—when you leave an experience, it doesn’t leave you.

It waits.

I know this because I’ve carried unprocessed moments for years.
Not just because they were hard…
but because I wasn’t fully there for them.

And I didn’t come back later to meet them, either.

That’s the part no one tells you.

Avoidance has weight.
The body remembers.

So, this year, I chose a different way.

Presence.

Which, for me, means embodiment.
Staying in my body.
No matter what.

Showing up for my life as it’s happening.

Because when I’m present, I have access to something I didn’t have before:

My own power.

Not control.
Not certainty.

But the ability to move through an experience
without leaving myself behind.

I felt this deeply in Costa Rica.

We were walking through the rainforest.

And something interesting happened.

We kept stopping.

A rustle in the canopy…
everyone paused.

A bird call…
heads tilted upward.

Movement in the trees…
we stood still and waited.

The rainforest was alive.

But it didn’t reveal itself to noise or distraction.

It revealed itself to presence.

Spider monkeys.
Sloths.
Lizards.
Turtles.
Crocodiles.

And birds—so many birds.

Toucans.
Macaws.

More life than I could take in all at once.

But here’s what stayed with me:

We became quiet enough to notice.

My senses were awake.
I felt safe.
Grounded.

Fully there.

Not thinking about what was next.
Not replaying what had already happened.

Just… here.

And in that space, something surprising:

It felt easier.

Because it turns out…

Presence takes less energy than leaving.

A divided consciousness—half here, half somewhere else—
is exhausting.

But when you’re fully in your experience,
even when it’s challenging…

there’s a kind of simplicity.

A clarity.

This is what I’m practicing now.

Not perfectly.

But consciously.

Noticing what I see.
What I hear.
What I feel.

Letting thoughts come and go
without holding onto them.

This isn’t detachment.

It’s something closer to what I call Entirement.

A full engagement with the life I’ve lived
and the life I’m still living.

The Costa Ricans have an expression, “Pura Vida”

to celebrate life as it is while living it.

I used to think it was safer to leave.

Now I know:

It’s safer to stay.

Even when it’s uncomfortable.
Even when it’s uncertain.

Because when I stay…

I don’t carry it with me the same way.

I move through it.

And that changes everything.

Entirement: Living fully.

Now, not later.

Lots of love,

Judith (aka Judy)

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Dear Readers,

When I returned from New York City, I expected to unpack my suitcase.

I did not expect to unearth myself.

The trip had been full — art and noise, long walks, beauty stacked on grit the way only a city can hold both. Something stirred in me there. Not dramatically.

Just enough.

When I got home, winter was still holding the landscape in place. Snow crusted the ground. The trees looked asleep. Life resumed its ordinary rhythm — laundry, picking up the grandkids at school, the familiar hum of daily responsibility.

But something had followed me back.

A restlessness.
A low ache.
A knocking.

For years, I have written about seasonal transitions — about what happens underground before we see the first green shoots. I believe in that hidden work.

What I did not realize was that some of my own life was still underground.

New York was not just a place I visited.

It was a place I had once been someone.

Younger.
Unformed.
Searching.

There was a chapter of my life rooted in that city that I had quietly sealed away. Not because it was scandalous. Not because it was catastrophic.

But because it was unfinished.

The city had brushed up against that chapter of my life - the one I had carefully folded away, or to be honest, I had thrown it into the cellar and locked the door!.
I thought I had archived it. Apparently, I had buried it.

There were choices I outgrew.
Feelings I outpaced.
Mistakes I did not know how to integrate.

So I did what many of us do.

I edited.

I kept the respectable parts of my story — the responsible woman, the steady teacher, the devoted mother, the thoughtful partner.

The earlier version of me? She felt inconvenient to the narrative.

So I placed her behind a stone door and called it maturity.

Except buried things do not disappear.

They wait.

After returning home, I tried to focus on the polished memories from the trip — the museum, the park, the conversations. But my body knew there was more.

It takes energy to block reality.

The more I resisted the old memories rising, the more fatigued I felt.

One quiet afternoon, instead of distracting myself, I imagined the tomb.

Cold stone.
Heavy door.
Silence thick with time.

And I made a decision.

I opened it.

Not dramatically.
Not ceremonially.

Just a willingness to look.

What I found inside was not shame.

It was a young woman trying her best with the knowledge she had.

She was idealistic.
She was naive.
She was braver than I remembered.
She felt deeply.
She believed in possibilities I later learned to temper.

There were painful moments in that season, yes.

But there was also vitality.

And here is what startled me:

When I buried what I labeled “bad,” I also buried her aliveness.

When we seal off parts of our story, we do not amputate selectively. We numb both the wound and the warmth. The ache and the spark.

Standing there — in this inner excavation — I realized that my discomfort was not regret.

It was incompletion.

Resurrection is not always about something dead coming back to life.

Sometimes it is about something buried being allowed to breathe.

I did not need to relive that chapter.

I needed to reclaim it.

There is a difference.

Reliving keeps us tethered to the emotional charge of the past.

Reclaiming gathers the energy left behind and carries it forward with wisdom.

As I sat with that younger self, something softened.

I could see how that season shaped me. How it sharpened my discernment. How it clarified my values. How it made my later commitments conscious instead of accidental.

And I noticed something else.

I had judged her.

From the vantage point of age, I had evaluated her choices with information she did not yet possess.

Of course she did not know what I know now.

She had not lived it yet.

The stone rolled back a little further.

There is a cultural story that as we age, we refine — shedding earlier versions until we become streamlined and polished.

But I am discovering something different.

Wholeness is not refinement.

It is integration.

The shy girl.
The rebellious young woman.
The responsible mother.
The reflective writer.

None of them cancel each other out.

They stack.

Early spring teaches this lesson every year. Beneath frozen ground, there is movement. Roots do not argue with the dark. They use it.

I had mistaken burial for growth.

But growth does not require disappearance.

Owning my life — all of it — feels lighter than curating it.

There is relief in saying:

Yes. That was my life.

Not as confession.
Not as performance.
Not as apology.

As truth. Nothing is more freeing than telling the truth.

The city did not haunt me.

It handed me something back.

A piece of myself I had left behind because I did not know how to carry her forward.

Opening that tomb did not drag me backward.

It strengthened me.

There is an energy that returns when we stop spending it on avoidance.

There is a quiet dignity in resurrection — not the spectacle of it, but the intimacy of it.

Allowing what was sealed away to breathe again.

Not unchanged.

Integrated.

When we refuse parts of our story, we shrink our capacity to love — ourselves and others. When we embrace them, compassion deepens. Judgment softens. Presence steadies.

Winter does not last forever.

But neither does burial.

Some things must be laid down for a time.

And some things must rise.

This spring, I am not searching for what is missing.

I am gathering what is mine.

All of it.

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For much of my life, I misunderstood love. I believed it was something proven through sacrifice—through giving myself up for the sake of harmony, loyalty, or care.

It took years, and more than a little heartache, to realize that love built on self-abandonment does not deepen with time; it erodes. What I eventually learned—slowly, imperfectly—is that the most loving thing I can do for any relationship is to remain in right relationship with myself.

There is no brotherly love, romantic love or any other kind of love without self-love. That means the worst thing I can do for a relationship I am in, is to abandon myself. Kindness, appreciation and affection do not flow from an untended soul.

To be honest, I have had to learn to tend and honor myself and give what I have from a wellspring of self love. That’s the foundation of true love.

And February is all about it! It’s the month of Valentine’s day. Hearts. Chocolates. Flowers. Declarations of love. What a pick-me-up it is to celebrate love during the second half of winter when we are growing weary of dark, dreary days!

My husband often gives me flowers on Valentine’s day and I usually write him a note; sometimes we go out for dinner. We always acknowledge our gratitude for a long-lasting relationship that nurtures our individuality and softens our edges to bring us together as a couple.

In our thirty-five year relationship, we have supported each other in becoming more fully ourselves and doing whatever we need to do. We are unique individuals but together, we are us - a synergy of two separate selves. Each one with their own way of seeing and doing things.

For example, Karl likes to get things done. Fast. To check them off the list and move on to the next thing. You could say that he prioritizes speed. And he has gotten a lot done and experienced success with that modus operandi.

I am also action-oriented but I value slow and steady, thinking it through before taking action. In my experience, fast action often leads to mistake-making which in the long run, takes longer. A methodical approach is what I value and has led to my greatest successes.

In everyday life, these differences in rhythms do not have a big impact. With practice, we have choreographed a dance together. It allows for coming together and moving apart, granting space for the other to move at their own pace and do what they need to do in the way they need to do it. In this way, there is a balanced and smooth flow to daily living.

It gets tricky, though, in moments of transition, when we need to make big life decisions together. My husband applies urgency to getting things done and I want to have in-depth conversations to determine the best plan of action.

So when he is chomping at the bit to take action, I might say, “Slow down cowboy”. That’s code for I need time to think this one through. If you want to learn about these archetypes, Click to read the Cowboy and the Librarian.

Before I learned to stay true to myself, I would step back, inwardly criticize my way of being, and let my husband take the lead. At some point in the arc of my personal development, supported by a loving husband who ironically, bears the consequences of this growth, I stopped going along. It’s not about his way or my way, it’s about coming together to find our way.

I knew if we rushed in and made mistakes, I would regret it. So I advocated for taking a beat to put all the cards on the table before we played them.

With maturity, giving up myself to please another, even my beloved partner, is no longer an auto response. I know it is a formula for resentment, and I simply cannot abandon myself anymore!

In our decision-making process, there might be awkward moments when he is pushing to go and I am holding my ground. With time, I have learned to do so with clarity and kindness, appealing to the relational aspect of us to make decisions together.

I do it not only for my own sake, but for us. It’s impossible to give away what we do not have. Self-love is a universal concept, but there is only one person responsible for the self I call me. And I am her voice.

It can be tempting to look to others for what is lacking or uncomfortable inside - but it is not constructive. Loving me is up to me!

On Valentine’s day, self-love is a gift I give myself. It warms my heart so I can spread love to each and everyone I meet.

Being in a healthy relationship with myself involves active engagement in my well-being. This doesn’t mean avoiding the tough stuff. Living up to my intentions involves discomfort as I learn, grow and expand.

My husband and I have had conversations about our plans going forward. We took an immediate action that was important to my husband and consulted with an advisor so we are both informed about our options. It may not be going fast enough for my husband, but it is going slow enough for me and we are making progress.

Self-love is not about getting everything we want but it is about staying connected to ourselves no matter what! We fill an inner wellspring of love - not to keep it but to give it away!

What I know now is this: loving myself is not a retreat from relationship, but a devotion to it. When I stay in my own skin—when I honor my rhythm, my limits, my longings—love has somewhere to come from. It becomes steadier. Kinder. More durable.

This is the love I continue to practice, imperfectly and with humility, trusting that what is rooted in wholeness can be shared without fear of disappearance.

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I wrote recently about presence—about attunement, alignment, and beginning the day from the inside out. And then, halfway through the day, I lost it.

Not all at once.
More like a slow unraveling.

Presence slipped into effort.
Effort tightened into irritation.
I found myself pushing instead of listening, reacting instead of responding.

I never saw my grandmother lose it. What I remember is her steadiness—a calm, confident presence that didn’t rush life or argue with it. Somewhere along the way, I absorbed an idea that presence was something you achieved and then maintained through virtue or discipline.

But presence, I’m learning, is not a personality trait.
It’s a condition.
And conditions change.

What followed the loss wasn’t failure. It was information.

We had just returned from a trip—nature and city, beauty and stimulation, questions that lingered longer than answers. We arrived home just in time for a playoff game that ended in a close, heartbreaking loss. The next day, I led a workshop that surfaced old self-limiting beliefs. Outside, snow and cold closed things in. Inside, life kept asking for output.

With my system already full, I added a technical task for a course I’m teaching. I completed it, but it landed poorly—usable, but not gracefully. Then I misplaced my phone. And my husband’s car.

None of this was dramatic.
All of it was cumulative.

The loss of presence wasn’t a mystery once I slowed down enough to look. It was a message: You’re asking more of yourself than your nervous system can give right now.

This is where self-knowledge enters—not as self-criticism, but as clarity.

Through journaling, something I already knew but hadn’t honored surfaced again: I need time to integrate experience. Specifically, I need about three days after a trip to let what I’ve lived settle into me. Not to analyze it. Not to summarize it. Just to let it find its place.

This isn’t indulgence.
It’s how I’m built.

The fantasy version of myself—the one I sometimes plan for—returns from travel energized, immediately productive, seamlessly available. She moves from experience straight into output with no lag, no cost.

But she isn’t real.

The real me takes life in deeply. Experiences don’t just pass through; they stay awhile. They ask to be digested. When I ignore that, presence is the first thing to go.

Losing presence didn’t teach me how to be better.
It taught me how to be more accurate.

From that accuracy, best practices emerge—not as rules, but as care. Fewer demands during integration. No major decisions while everything is still echoing. More space between stimulation and responsibility. A calendar that serves alignment instead of testing it.

These aren’t productivity hacks. They’re acts of self-respect.

Accepting who I am doesn’t mean narrowing my life. It means organizing it truthfully. It means releasing the fantasy of who I wish I were—the endlessly resilient, frictionless version—and choosing to live with the person I actually am.

That choice brings relief. And, unexpectedly, strength.

Presence returns not because life becomes easier, but because I stop fighting myself while living it. I listen sooner. I adjust earlier. I build my days around what keeps me attuned rather than what proves I can handle more.

The paradox is this: when I accept my limits, my capacity grows. When I honor what I need, I have more to give. When I stop aspiring to be someone else, I become more fully myself.

Losing presence was not a detour.
It was the path.

And the practice, again and again, is simple—though not always easy:

To live with who I am.
Not who I wish I were.

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You know the feeling —
that slow mental buzzing
where you’re not doing anything
but your mind is running a private marathon in the background.

Here’s what my nights look like sometimes:

I lie down exhausted.
Ready.
Wanting sleep more than anything.
And then the files start opening.

The “plan that trip” file.
The “holiday logistics” file.
The “kitchen remodel you can’t decide on” file.
The “don’t forget to text them back” file.
The “you should have handled that better” file.
The “grandsons” file — always glowing, always alive, always welcome.
And the “be a functioning adult tomorrow” file, chewing through battery like wildfire.

Even when I’m still, the mental equipment is not.
It never fully powers down.

And here’s what happens next:

My brain crashes.
My body doesn’t.
I toss through the night as if I can sort my way into rest.

In the morning I wake up a train wreck,
carrying exhaustion like a second skin.

For years, I thought this meant I was failing.
Not organized enough.
Not disciplined enough.
Not together enough.

But here’s what I’ve learned — and what I hope someone else needs to hear:

Aging hasn’t reduced my capacity.
It has revealed my limits.

The problem isn’t the tasks.
It’s the mental weight behind them.

We take on more than we should
because we were raised to be capable,
to be helpful,
to be efficient,
to be the one who quietly just “handles things.”

But that capacity came at a cost —
a constant drain on the emotional battery no one sees or measures.

We all have files that we can close.
A files that can wait.
Files that were never ours to carry.
Files that guilt keeps pinned open.

And I’m learning, slowly, to shut down the ones that steal my peace.

Not everything needs my attention.
Not everything needs a plan.
Not everything needs to be held in the background like a running program.

Aging well might simply mean this:
Choosing which life-files deserve to stay open,
and giving yourself permission to shut the rest.

Even my computer slows down when too many are files open. For me, when I am over-extended, instead of slowing down, I go into overdrive.

But, I am noticing sooner when my nervous system is entering stress mode.

Even an accumulation of small things can have a big impact. Micro-stressors like misplacing my hat or running out of something in the fridge, opens a file in the brain, which siphons energy. That open file activates the sympathetic nervous system, our support system for meeting challenges.

It also affects our heart rate, breathing, immune system and sleep.

When I notice my heart racing or breathing becoming shallow, if I don’t need to take immediate action, I stop and recalibrate. Why? Because spending too much time in the sympathetic nervous system takes a toll on my health.

The fight or flight, survival-oriented mode is meant to address an urgent problem. But most things are not urgent. Although it’s true when the sympathetic nervous system is activated, it feels that way - everything appears bigger, we become reactive, and our thinking gets scrambled.

So at the first sign of overdrive, I stop and breathe in four counts and out for eight, put my hand on my heart, or even wiggle my toes to re-orient to the parasympathetic nervous system. That’s the “chill” mode designed for resting and digesting before and after meeting a challenge.

It restores brain bandwidth, deep breathing, normal heart rate, and well being.

I have found that peace is not the by-product of achieving goals; it is the goal!

A peaceful state is a restful, relaxing, I’ve got this mode. Small things stay small and presence grows.

The shift is from anxious to embodied. Alive. Present. From reactivity to equilibrium. No more chasing emotional highs, striving, rushing, or holding too many files open in your brain. We were not built for chronic stress mode.

For dragging the open files from one year into the next. I want to start with a clean slate!

That’s why, instead of waiting for the crash, I shut down files to avoid overwhelm and regulate my nervous system before dysregulation takes hold. I know and respect my limits now.

The benefits? A good night’s sleep. Inner peace. Improved relationships. Overall wellbeing. A feeling of safety and possibility that goes with me wherever I go.

Exchanging constant striving for peaceful presence leads to the path of Love.

My new year’s wish for you dear readers: May you be at peace in your heart!

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