When Betty, a good friend of my father’s, asked me at a family wedding, “So what are you doing now?” – I completely froze. I had no clue what to say. I was six months pregnant with my second child at the time and had been out of the workforce for two years. I had chosen to be a stay-at-home mom, caring for my first child full-time, although I never really stayed at home since I was involved with several community organizations as a volunteer.
Luckily for me, Betty sensed my discomfort and chose to rephrase her question. “What would you like to be doing?” Much to my surprise, bells went off in my head, and I started rattling off a to-do list.
It became clear to me, after that encounter, that my identity had always been tied into my career. Without it, I did not know who I was. I was a mother, but who was I really?
That marked the beginning of my midlife journey into self-discovery and a search for a larger creative calling. And here I am, twenty years later, on the back end of midlife, facing a similar question. “Who am I as I move into this next phase of life and what do I feel called to do?”
This is where Rumi’s quote offers great wisdom, giving us permission to be open and allowing, silently drawn toward the pull of what we really love.
An Emerging Crescent Moon
On an early evening winter walk, all bundled up in a new coat with matching hat and gloves, I set out on a favorite path of mine that led through a small forest, out into a meadow that had been marked as conservation land. It wasn’t uncommon to see wildlife wandering across this meadow—a red fox or a coyote or maybe a flock of turkeys stopping on occasion to take in the sight of human visitors. It was their land, their home, their natural habitat. The area was open and expansive, and on a clear night, the sky was spectacular and filled with stars. The Milky Way was visible, running directly overhead, adding to the celestial magic.
On this particular winter evening, as dusk turned to night, I paused in the middle of the meadow and looked up, noticing a handful of sparkling stars in a corner of the sky and a slight sliver of crescent light that resembled the moon. It was just enough light to make out the definition of the moon against the darkening night sky, pulling her out from beneath her own curtain of darkness, but not quite enough light for the waxing crescent phase. It was that in-between space of a new moon phase and a crescent moon. It reminded me of those many times in my life when I would peek my head out of that place of not knowing and into the light of possibility. Getting a glimpse of the light, both inner and outer, always stirred excitement within me.
As I looked up at the sliver of a waxing crescent moon, I found myself going back to my theatre days, a time when I believed my joy was found on the stage, immersing myself in the life of the character I was portraying. I always felt at home in the theatre. It was my happy place—a place where I felt connected and alive. And I began to wonder how I had gotten off that path.
There was a period in my life during my mid-college years when I began to seriously think about my career. I was torn between what I really wanted to do and what I probably should do to make a decent living. It was then that I received a message from someone who genuinely cared about me and who wanted to see me succeed in life. And being impressionable at that age, I heeded the message “Don’t be a starving artist. Find a respectable career and earn a good income. And if you want to keep theatre as a hobby, so be it.”
Keeping theatre as a hobby—those words stung. I didn’t want to hear them. I wanted theatre to be my career, and yet I knew I had a responsibility to pay my bills as the adult I was becoming. And suddenly, a divided road appeared—and down the “respectable career” path I went.
It was a moment I would come back to in my mind time and time again, and every time the divided road would appear, down the “respectable” path I would go. I kept theatre as a hobby for many years, even when I wanted to pursue it further. I had convinced myself that the advice I received was right, and I didn’t want to be a starving artist.
So here I was, standing in the middle of a meadow during an early winter evening where the wildlife around me felt at home and realizing that I was once again at a divided point in the road except, this time being older and wiser, I didn’t need to think about what a respectable choice might be to others. The only person I needed to answer to was me. What did I feel was respectable? Did I owe it to myself to listen to my inner yearning? To be seen in my own light?
The Gift of Landing among the Stars
During a summer writing conference, in a breakout session with a well-known fiction author, I was struck by a comment he made as he led us through an exercise on writing powerful endings. He said his goal as a writer was to leave his reader feeling pleasantly surprised to the point that they would proclaim, “Wow, I didn’t see that coming, but it couldn’t have ended any other way.”
It reminded me that while goals are good to have and desired outcomes are the ideal, there is nothing more satisfying than an unexpected gift that you didn’t see coming—outcomes that are better than anything you could have imagined.
I’ve always referred to these gifts as synchronicities, those moments when the universe steps in and gives you something better than you could have ever designed for yourself. This kind of magic happens when you allow yourself to be open to the opportunities that present themselves, sometimes out of nowhere.
It speaks to the beauty of the unexpected when you honor the organic twists and turns of your creative path, breathing in the reality that life often brings circumstances that are not part of your original plan, but somehow, they take you on a journey that makes sense once you arrive at a point that brings an aha moment.
Following Synchronicity and Landing on the Stage
Just two years shy of sixty, I saw a social media post by a local repertory theatre company announcing the launch of a program designed for people who were fifty-five and older with a passion for theatre and a yearning to find their way back to the stage. It appeared in my newsfeed as if it had been planted there by the divine, and I found myself responding without a second thought. I registered for the program with a note that said, “Perfect timing for a dream come true!”
My creative calling had found its way back, catching me pleasantly by surprise, swooping me up in a gentle wind, and putting me on the stage, a place I had been many times before in a variety of different ways, this time with an opportunity to breathe life back into a childhood dream that felt abandoned. I was given the opportunity to play a character that tapped deeply into my joy state, triggering a profound sense of purpose. I didn’t see it coming, and yet there I was.
It was like riding a bike. Everything came back to me, filling every cell of my being, like I had never left. It was the most magical experience with the most amazing people, and I rediscovered a part of myself that I truly thought I had lost. It inspired a sense of aliveness in me, one I had not felt for a really long time.
An emerging crescent moon gives us an opportunity to expand the understanding we have of ourselves, allowing us to get to the core of who we really are. When we peel back the dark curtain of expectations, what part of us is wanting to peek out? How do we emerge when we are pulled by what we really love?
It’s never too late to be what you might have been!
About Tina Games
