Hi, I'm Anne Johnson and in 2024, I started my life over from scratch at 60 years old. It was something I never anticipated I would need to do, nor that I would find myself all alone while I did it.

 

My marriage came to an abrupt end after 37 years. I moved three states and 1,000 miles away from the land where we had built a new home just 3 years prior. A place where I thought my spouse and I would spend our retirement years together.

 

Things did not work out as planned. I had a rough awakening to the reality I'd been trying not to see. My marriage had deteriorated. We were little more than roommates, but far worse. The man I had trusted my entire adult life, my spouse, was not the same person anymore. I suddenly felt disposable, as if I had reached an expiration date unknown to me. Things were terribly wrong. I had to take a total gamble on myself and a leap of faith into the unknown. I had to leave the place and people in whom I had invested so much of myself my entire life,

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So, I set out to do just that. I traveled nearly 1,000 miles across three states to seperate myself from a situation that was not only toxic but felt dangerous. Making the decision and taking the action to put myself above everything else I thought was important was the first step in taking charge of my life. That one night of what looked like failure and fleeing was the bravest thing I could have done. It has 

also forever changed me. 

 

What I discovered was that I had a lot of soul-searching and healing to do, along with adjusting to a complete lifestyle change. After living as a mother, wife, and a career woman with a stable income, I had so much to learn after having stripped my identity away.  Adjusting took a lot of time and personal mindset work. It felt like there were two versions of me existing at the same time. One who wanted me to pull it together and start getting on with learning how to start over and repair myself. The other me was broken, felt worthless, and too damaged to imagine how she could survive - or if she deserved to.

 

Healing is still happening, but my eyes have been opened in so many ways. Despite the steep learning curve in redefining myself and what life should be for me now, the learning process is positive and exciting, too. I can't imagine turning around and going back to the

life I had before.

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Maybe you have had a similar experience. One where you have an awakening and realize you need to make serious changes for yourself if you hope to live the next phase and forward happier, healthier, or wealthier. Or if nothing else, just to feel more alive! Hopefully you won't need to do it in a state of desperation as I did, but because you are ready to start living a life that is in alignment with what you really want for yourself. You can do it, I know this, all you need is the desire, intention, and willingness to take action.

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It is possible to make a major change in your life and succeed even if you are a mature woman over 50. Change and Happiness are not reserved for the young.

 

Two years ago I had nothing but name, two credit cards, and a car. These were the things that helped me survive and start to change my life. Those three things, determination, and unexpected help from strangers who I decided to call my angels. People who appeared out of nowhere and gave me guidance when I needed it most. Either out of kind awareness or happenstance, it doesn't matter how or why except that they helped me make it through. It certainly felt like divine intervention at times for me.

 

Yes, making a huge life change, or transformation, tests us in every way possible. It can be frightening, an exodus of the comfortable normal waters we are accustomed to. Change is also an ongoing process. It should be, because living life to the fullest is a BIG DEALs 

Change should make us feel a little uncomfortable, and little stretched outside of the regular boundaries.  If we are feeling uncomfortable with doing something new or different, we should celebrate. We should seek out that discomfort because that is how we know we are learning and growing. Hopefully, we keep doing this for the rest of our lives. The alternative is stagnation.

 

Yet, the very thought of such life-altering change can cause many women to deny the need or desire for change. They will go on living unhappily everafter, thinking they can find peace somehow by settling for what already is. That is fear providing a false sense of comfort through an alternative to making a step toward the unknown of an action that will change your life. Fear will keep you stuck and tell pretty lies about why it is better to remain the same.

 

We can't let ourselves buy into the fear. 

 

How will you feel five years from now if you do?

 

Perhaps you will look back and see the unhappy and fearful woman who could have started making some sort of change years ago

but didn't because it was scary, she didn't want to bother anyone, or it seemed to difficult. After five years, you are the same woman

only now, in retrospect, you wish that you weren't. Worse than that is the follow-up excuse that will keep you stuck for another five years or longer. It's too late to change now. You are too old. You are stuck what would people think if you started making changes like going back to school, getting a loan to open coffee shop / bookstore, or writing that novel?

 

STOP!

 

What if, instead, you could look back and see all the tiny changes you made, counted all the little wins along the way, and realized that even every failure was a lesson on the path of a new life you have crafted with your determination and courge to take a chance and invest in yourself over the past five years. All of those things you had been afraid of in the beginning made you start to believe in yourself and grow your confidence and momentum and have brought you to a new place, a new life, new love, certification, career, or other freedoms. 

 

Even though we may have tough things to work through in order to make changes we want in our lives, it doesn't mean we should let fear keep us stuck or frozen in time, holding all the hard and heavy  things with aching arms. That isn't all we've got!

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Life should be a continous evolution to the best possible version of ourselves. We only get one life in these particular bodys and in this particular time of existence. We are ever just one decision and one step away from experiencing so many good things life has to offer. And the best thing is it doesn't matter if so may people have already done and achieved the things you wanted. There is not shut off valve on your dreams, there is no limited quantity of success available to human beings. Only your mind can shut down the possibilities that are waiting for you to reach for them. Your old hopes and dreams are still wearing their cute sailor suits, waiting for you to scrape together some gumption, show up, and set sail on the Hope Floats Boat!

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Maybe you don't think you deserve to change yourself or chase old dreams - that what you want is too much or  too big -

or that it might bother other people if you start thinking about yourself.

I have one answer for this delema: Start thinking about yourself!

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It is time for a revolution!

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This is your life and nobody elses. No one is going to praise you on your death bed that you sacrificed your hopes, dreams, and

needs so as not to bother anyone and instead remained small, quiet, and pleasing. They will not have even noticed!

 

Realize that you not only matter but are the most inportant person in your life because you are the owner of it. Nobody else.

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As someone famous once said, 'Happiness is an inside job."

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Nobody else on the planet can care for you, have your back, or have your best interests at heart better than you. 

 

If you want to trust, love, and give the best life has to offer to anyone, it must be you above all others, first.

 

That may sound ridiculously selfish and you are fully authorized to be selfish, and I'll tell you why.

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Giving yourself the authority to choose what you want and to go for it is giving yourself unconditional love. You cannot expect it from anyone else. We may have experienced some form of it from our parents growing up. These two people, if we were fortunate to have them in our lives as children, most often thought we are astounding and brilliant no matter what we did.  However, there are often

strings of criteria attached that we had to meet to keep us in their gleaming limelight, too.

 

Real unconditional love exists on an even higher plain than this. It is part of what I call 'the all of everything' to which everyone of us is universally related. The soul sea, so to say, which you could think of as a non-physical plain of existence and wholly made of love. And what is love but everything we want for ourselves in order to be our happiest. We already have it, but must remember how to tap into it.

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You cannot care and love anyone wholly and truly in this world unless you are ruthless in taking care of yourself as if you were

queen of the universe.

 

You are the lmportant person in your life!

 

From the day you are born to the day you die - you are the one living entity who will always be in your presence. You must be able to trust, love, and be ever kind to this girl. She is quietly counting on it.  When you take care of yourself the best first - you are able to give the best expression of yourself to others in your life.

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Show up for you.

 

Give yourself love by granting permission to make changes and follow your dreams.

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Create a life that is great for you and then share your joy with others around you as you go.

That creates joy compounded, and it doesn't get any better than that!

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