Life is a Series of Passages

Brick steps, oak trees, front porches, flowering plants, and driveways set the scene of early morning passages from summer to fall, beaches to classrooms, and loud houses to peaceful havens. Images are taken and instantly displayed to proudly share the start of another journey. Today’s social media images beam of smiling children dressed in their best, wide-eyed and joyful, passing from freedom’s end to scheduled beginnings – anew, fresh, ready and excited to see what is behind a new classroom door.

In 1976, Gail Sheehy, an American author, journalist and lecturer, wrote one of the ten most influential books of our times called Passages. Although I was at the beginning of my teen years, the soft covered book was in our house bought during a Cape Cod vacation. Some of my earliest “wisdom” years came from reading books from self-help authors such as Sheehy’s Passages, Norman Vincent Peale’s Positive Thinking Every Day, and Wayne Dyer’s The Sky’s the Limit while sitting on my dock on the lake. I assume I liked reading these self-help books as I transitioned from elementary school to junior high school when so many changes occur.

As I witnessed these beautiful smiling images of school kids today, I took a photo standing exactly where my now, 27 and 24 year old sons, used to stand annually for their first day of school photos. The selfie shows my bald head covered by a rose-colored hat with three fingers raised up to form the letter W, for women of course. Instead of celebrating the passage of my sons into a new year, I’d celebrate my passage from an alopecia diagnosis to living, dreaming and working fully again. The truth is time doesn’t stop, our kids grow up, we morph into mature women, we face illness followed by recovery, and pass through another year of time into a new place whether we like it or not.

One definition of passage is “the act of going from one place to another or changing from one condition to another.” Women entrepreneurs pass through doors to establish their companies, entering unfamiliar venue rooms to learn and network with other women and even travel through changing marketing platforms to stay relevant. Entrepreneurship is always about a passage but we don’t stop to think about it that way unless it’s a new year or a day like today when we all start again in a hushed office or house.

Today’s blog post is a gentle reminder that transitions, passages, alterations of oneself, home, business and life is okay. Life is for the living correct? If so, then we know life is ever-changing and ever-flowing moving us from one porch, driveway, and beach or office space to another one. The textures of our lives change too as we adjust to adding staff or family, losing people we love, maturing in our personal life or business entity or even gaining wisdom from every day readings. Rejoice that your journey is a positive one gently moving you forward in life.