When I was telling my friend P that I wasn’t sure whether to celebrate my 60th birthday in Portugal or California, we started joking that I should have a world tour and call it my jubilee. The idea stuck, and I kicked things off surrounded by my closest friends in California’s wine country. In addition to visiting Spain and Greece, we have explored Portugal more deeply — from a therapeutic forest (only the fourth designated one in the world) to road trips into our favorite Portuguese wine regions. I’m now preparing my closing ceremonies in my beloved Açores. After centuries of my family lineage, I am a short blip of time that went far afield into the new world. It seems a befitting close of this year to return there.
Technically, a jubilee is celebrated every 50 years, according to the Hebrew Bible. It is a year of restoration and recovery, which called for indentured servants to be freed, debts forgiven, and land returned to its original owners. While I did not have a ram’s horn to blow, this has been a year of setting myself free of some old habits, forgiving emotional debts, and returning titles and roles that were someone else’s, not mine.
It has been a year of taking stock, as well, as I move into this chapter. The redesign and launch of this site is my own way of “setting the table” — a seat for you accompany me and, I hope, learn alongside me.
Many coaching sites focus on transformation. They promise a magical formula that will turn clients into the best version of … someone else. True transformation — the kind that sustains over time — is neither quick nor linear. Seeds are planted, and it takes care, attention, nutrition, and light to coax them into blooms. That’s a hard sell.
Universities offer courses for people like me — at a particular professional edge. One curriculum has three key pillars — reframe, revitalize, and reinvent. They are all worthwhile forward-moving efforts, yet not enough attention is spent on reclamation, much less integration. How many adjustments do you make in adulthood? To fit in, to be accepted and acceptable, to reduce friction? How many accommodations do you make, one degree at a time, until you barely recognize yourself or can hardly answer the questions, “What do I want?” or “When am I most myself?” How often have you abdicated your sovereignty in the interest of going along to get along?
Thresholds are invitations to clear out the underbrush, the detritus that impedes your path. These moments offer the time to renegotiate roles and gather up the tools you need to move ahead. They are also opportunities to reclaim your self.
What if you don’t need to be transformed or reinvented at all? What if what you really need is to shift your center of gravity back to yourself, to be more fully yourself?
Making sense of your life can increase your perception that life is fundamentally worth living and helps you integrate what you have already learned into the fabric of your life.
The pattern is different for everyone, at different stages of their lives. I’ll share my journey — and set path markers for anyone who comes along — here, and in my Love Letters.