No one told me it would be like this — how growing older is another passage of discovery and that aging is one grand transformation, and if some things become torn apart or even lost along the way, many other means show up to bring me closer to the center of my heart.

No one ever told me if whatever wonder waits ahead is in another realm and outside of time.

But the amazement, I found, is that the disconcerting things within the here and now that I stumble and trip my way through, also lead me gracefully home.

And no one told me that I would ever see an Earth so strong and fragile, or a world so sad and beautiful.

And I surely didn’t know I’d have all this life yet in me or such fire inside my bones.

For more self-study, The Urban Howl recommends The Universe Has Your Back: Transform Fear to Faith.