As I stand at the horizon it appears as if an artist has divided the canvas in half and I am standing at the edge of the known and the unknown. Each day I have been breathing in a new understanding and breathing out that which has become stale. I am left with myriad thoughts, none of which has had time take hold. And so for the next couple of weeks I will practice what has found me and what I have found. Fresh thoughts need practice. Process without practice keeps one stagnant. As Joan Erikson taught me: “Wisdom comes from life experiences well-digested.”

The very first time we met was on a jetty in our little town of Harwich Port. You have to be a little crazy or daring to tiptoe over the icy rocks as waves splashup one side and down another. On this particular day I was in a deep fog. I had escaped to Cape Cod to seek the direction I had lost along the way. And what should I bump into but a statuesque elder, her silver hair blowing in the wind. She turned and set her eggshell blue eyes on me as if she were expecting a visitor. “Do you suppose we’re the only two people in this town in the fog?” she asked, finishing her question with a bit of a giggle.I soon would learn that she was the partner of claimed psychotherapist, Erik Erikson and together they coined the phrase Identity Crisis. This was my lucky day. She was to pass on her thoughts of a life well digested and many more original gems. No more sitting around pondering my navel and staying in my head. Wisdom was found in the senses. Lethargy comes from lack of action. Energy is created in reciprocity.What jetty or bridge, or mountain will you head off to? “Always keep your hands on the plow and keep pushing,” she would say. Serendipity happens when you step out of your comfort zone.

I once was a fearless girl. But I seem to have lost her along the way probably because I was too busy taking care of others. I want some of that fearlessness back…the stuff that led me to disobey my mother, pelt snowballs at my brother’s gang single handed, swim nude knowing full well that people would soon inhabit the beach, or tell on my best friend when she lit an entire box of matches and almost burned our garage down.

Time’s a wastin’. If I hope to make it into the Odd Gals Hall I best begin to loosen up, be occasionally defiant, not shy away from the ridiculous and begin to take on one fear at a time, not unlike the sculpture on Wall Street called: Fearless Girl who symbolizes Female Empowerment.

What fears do you want to release?

As I was driving in Orleans I came to a stop in front of an old shabby building that would have never caught my attention except for the sign above the door…the Odd Fellows Hall. As I continued on my way I found myself imagining who those odd fellows were and what allowed you have to be labeled one. The more I thought about it the more I wished for an Odd Gals Hall. Too many years of a woman’s life are used up being perfectly camouflaged, meaning being like everyone else. At this stage of life, I long to be odd. What a relief to finally be whatever comes naturally—silly, ridiculous, defiant, peculiar, outrageous, naughty and more. There may not be an Odd Gals Hall but that will not keep me from being one.