Listless? Down? Maybe Being Dormant is Key to the Next Big Thing
Too Old for This Sh*t: How to Take Your Life Back from an Ageist Society
Get ready to be that diamond
This weekend sucked. Beautiful, soft rain, gorgeous perfect weather for this time of year, and I was down hard. My nose dripped full time, my eyes itched like mad, my sneezes blew out the glass doors.
By now, it’s been nearly five days of gorgeous weather, days I don’t get back, and I’ve been miserable. Not Covid, but bad enough. You’ve been there.
If you’re driven to achieve (our country thrives on such feckless rushing to a top that most of us never see), then down time feels a lot more than mildly inconvenient.
True down time, the kind that can transform, is almost seen as a failure.
Yet down time is so very important to who we get to become next.
The older I get, the more such down time feels like theft of life.
WAIT! I’m running out of time here! I can’t get sick! The world’s on fire and I have shit to do!!!
A friend called over the weekend, in tears. We talked at length about the conditions of our lives, two older people dealing with some, well, crap conditions. I’d just had that same conversation with my buddy Melissa that morning.
Honestly, must be something going around. Not my cold, either.
Down times for us A personality types can feel like an horrific waste of life. In our urgent, do-it-all-NOW culture, taking true, deep, down time can almost feel like theft.
I’m a prime offender with this attitude, which is why I have been exploring why the past five years have been so damned difficult.
I’ve gone through surgeries, PT, recovery, and more. Long time to feel dormant when my (patently unfair) standard is to be out chasing adventures all over the world. And if not that, then training training training.
If not that, writing writing writing.
If not, then I am just taking up space, invisible, much like this bus.
Do you feel like you’re spinning your wheels? Stuck in a relationship, a bad job, a house you don’t belong in? Drowning while you deal with a disease you didn’t sign up for? You might be in a dormant stage.
Are you recovering from the death of a spouse? Realizing that you really do need to seriously downsize and get into a much smaller space as you age, but you’re effectively rendered inert by the enormity of the task?
Expecting a big promotion and got let go instead? You might be heading into a dormant stage.
This is what it takes to become a diamond, as a friend said.
Let me set the stage.
I’ve read The Mists of Avalon, all 876 pages of it, about every five years since it first came out more than forty years ago.
Many of you have, too. For those unfamiliar, Mists is the retelling of the Authurian legend of Camelot through the eyes of its women. Morgan le Fay is the heroine whose journey binds the tale together. The book introduces her as a child who witnesses the rape of her mother which produces the child who would become King Arthur. The book then traces her maturation and spiritual development over her long life and evolution into the mystical Lady of the Lake.
With the onslaught of Christianity, the beauty of everyday magic and wonder fade into the mists forever. The book weaves history and fantasy.
What does she have to do with anything? Bear with me here. As I’ve aged, each time I read this book I understand Le Fay’s journey with far greater intimacy. In so many ways her story is every woman’s story. Love, loss, loss of identity, new identity gained, the prices we pay to be human, to rise above our humanity. To serve.
It’s every man’s story too, as men lost their magic and moved towards domination of nature as opposed to living in harmony with it.
This heroine spent plenty of time away from her island, often alone, and often subject to years of dormancy.
Because of King Arthur’s court intrigue, and the devout Christian Queen Gwenhwyfar’s fear of her power, at one point le Fay was sent to a distant kingdom to marry an elderly king. She was far from the action, far from the magical Isle, and limited to domestic duties.
During that dormant period she increased her powers and influence in ways that could only have happened while she was isolated. Because she was dormant.
It took me years to understand that the only way that Morgan Le Fay could become Lady of the Lake, the High Priestess of Avalon, was through her times of dormancy. They served a key role in her development, her discipline and her appreciation for the world she inhabited. So true for all of us.
If you’ve never read this book, or haven’t in a long time, it might be worth the investment. It may not speak to you as it does to me, but the insights into women’s lives, magic, influence and the price we pay for being human, especially female, are profound.
Morgan’s dormant period married to an old king she didn’t love reminded me that we all have essential periods of dormancy. We spend days, weeks, months and years doing things we don’t want to do, don’t like, perhaps resent.
Above all, how we often judge such dormant times as a waste when in fact, that time is what’s making us into the next iteration of Us. I have surely done this.
A few years down while my body gets repaired and healed is not a great price to pay for what’s possible. I have learned great empathy for people who lose their body agency and have to claw it back. That makes me a better writer. Better person.
There is always something coming, including the final adventure we cannot possibly know.
Some of you have an accident or an illness and you’re down the rest of your life. I have a friend with Stage Four cancer whose chemo just began. She’ll be down for a long time too. Her compulsive nature turned her treatment program into a project to be managed.
That’s a coping technique. She’s terrified to be down and vulnerable. I did precisely the same thing when I broke my hip in 2023.
Sometimes, though, we just need to go dormant.
Many of you take that time and do magical things with it.
turned to art: and many others turned to journaling:
Writers like
, , and explore all kinds of aspects of life after fifty for all of us, not just women, and all of it involves introspection and doubt, depression and angst. dips into life after a spouse’s death, being alone in the beautiful Oregon woods. She also contemplates the harsh realities of having to end that lifestyle. Me, too. My garage is full of boxes to that very ending.All pressures that turn us, over time, into something completely different. Dormancy, and moving through darkness, are essential to growth. Often something we can’t possibly see coming, but when we arrive, we’re gobsmacked.
took swimming lessons and beat back a primal fear. are Dr. Yazeed’s stories, including how she turned a layoff into a journey of success and celebration.
One more parting gift.
recently showed up on Substack. I’m a fan of his books. His most recent article speaks to right now. Whether you and I are in a dormant period, are being forced into one because of circumstances, his advice on resiliency is excellent:
As my hacking cough slowly subsides and I get to anticipate a return to summer rafting and adventures, I also get to contemplate the value I got from the last five years of being dormant. They may not be over.
I don’t get to dictate to Life, Life dictates to me. I get to negotiate terms with how I feel about the conditions I juggle.
We’re all in training to be the High Priest or Priestess in our own Avalons. As my friend said, we are becoming diamonds.
Let’s play.
Heartfelt thanks to all the great writers whose work inspires, soothes, motivates and helps us contemplate through tough times. Please consider
Thanks for the shout-out out Julia! The FIRST thing I did after quitting my three-decade career was rest. I'm not good at resting. what I could do though, was try to be content with whatever I was doing or feeling in the moment and leave the decisions for further down the line.
Once again, you’ve landed on just the right sentiments and words for the time. I was not expecting to experience the dormancy of unemployment this year, but here we are. A layoff forces a reset. I’m trying to balance the need to quickly put some things in motion with the need to just sit with the loss for a while. I’ve never been a type-A personality, never was especially ambitious about my career; I’ve zig-zagged through a variety of job titles and been good at most of them mostly due to an innate ability to learn and adapt. It feels different this time, though; I’ve been looking forward to retiring—albeit not quite this soon—and mixed in with the grief and anger and oh-my-god-we-need-the-steady-income-what-are-we-gonna-do is something I can only describe as relief.
I loved The Mists of Avalon and sadly had to include my paperback copy in our recent purging of stuff, but not before I bought it for my Kindle. It’s been years since I read it, so a re-read is clearly in order. I hope you’re kicking that virus to the curb!