Pat Taub
Aging has brought a renewed interest in the spiritual questions I grappled with during my late night college bull sessions. Is there a God? Can prayer make a difference in one’s life? What is my spiritual path?
In my middle years I was too busy raising children and building a career to grapple with meaning of life questions with the intensity of my younger self. Life was too full of distractions to allow for deep spiritual reflection while the end of life was a distant horizon. Now that I’m in my 70’s, Mother Time reminds me that my clock is ticking rapidly, while the greater frequency of deaths among loved ones nudges me towards facing my own death.
My brain is bombarded with messages from my stirring soul: “Pat, what is your spiritual grounding? What needs tending to in your soul garden?”
Looking for new growth in my soul garden
I’m discovering that I’m not alone. A recent study by Loyola University on spirituality and religion among older women found that a natural consequence of aging for many women is to engage in soul-searching, clarifying their spiritual and/or religious beliefs. To quote the Loyola study:
Aging invites women to come alive in new ways as they honor the journey home to their authentic self, a self that is always larger than what they can dream.
A woman reflecting on what gives her life meaning
This journey feels contingent on time spent alone devoted to reflection. Time to ourselves is often more abundant as we age, freed from work and family demands. Mary Pipher, in her bestseller,Women Rowing North, refers to this period in the older woman’s life as “slow time,” offering new opportunities to connect with our souls through writing, listening to music, or being in nature.
My younger self found meaning in non-traditional spiritual communities, but as I’ve aged my soul craves ritual, organ music and fellowship. As one who has always questioned the established order, I surprised not only family and friends, but also myself, when I joined a church. It’s a welcoming progressive church with members, who share my theological struggles, reassuring me that my ambivalent relationship with God isn’t all that unusual.
Feeling the love in my new church community
While church attendance comforts me with allies in my spiritual searching, it’s not enough. I still have to resolve the on-going tension with a sibling; my guilt over my far from perfect single parenting; and with the possibility I will remain a single woman for the rest of my life.
Jung reminds us that spiritual suffering and struggle are part of life, and our job late in life is to integrate them, to emerge from the suffering with new insights, or something resembling a new self. I interpret this as working the soil in my soul garden, clearing away the muck so new growth, new blossoms can emerge.
Time spent in nature enhances the connections to my soul
Soul work is hard, but I keep at it because I have been rewarded with new understandings and more peaceful moments than I’ve experienced at any other time in my life. Writing a mother-daughter memoir where I came face-to-face with my role in my struggle with my mother was incredibly liberating. It softened all my primary relationships. Processing the death of my ex-husband and forgiving him for the hurts he inflicted cleared away more muck in my soul garden.
Writing about my relationship with my mother was very healing
I still have ample soul work to do. I know I’ll stumble and regress but having seen the light reassures me that I’m on to something.
Florida Scott-Maxwell, an early 20thcentury psychoanalyst offers encouragement: When you truly possess all you have been and done, you are fierce with reality.
A soulful woman, “Fierce with Reality”
