The Mountains, the Coast, and Learning to Be Where I Am

Aug 31

4 min read

Reflections on turning 65, loving two lives at once, and finding fullness right where you are — from a certified life transition coach.

Split landscape: snowy mountains and turquoise beach meet in a glowing puzzle-piece seam under a blue sky. — stop making choices

It's a big birthday month - 65 years.

I keep waiting to feel some kind of way about that number, and mostly what I feel is reflective. Not dread. More like standing at a lookout point and being able to see, for the first time, the whole road I took to get here.

That road covers some ground. I spent years raising a family in Iowa. Then a divorce rearranged everything, and I landed in Colorado, where I stayed for a decade and where, somewhere along the way, I stopped being a person who lived in the mountains and became a person made of them. Then life asked something else of me. My mother needed care, and Florida is where that care happened. She's gone now. I'm still here.

Every time I come back to the mountains, something in me exhales before my brain catches up. My soul knows this place. It doesn't have to be told.

And yet — my life in Florida is good. Not a placeholder, not a waiting room. Real work I care about, people I love, sunlight on water, a chapter that asked a great deal of me and handed something back I didn't expect.

For a long stretch I treated this as a problem to be solved. Which one is home? Where do I actually belong? When do I get to stop being split in two?

It took me longer than I'd like to admit to notice that the question itself was the thing making me tired.

Every transition tells you the same lie

I've moved through a handful of the big ones now. Divorce. Relocation. Caregiving. Loss. Each one arrived carrying the same whispered message:

The life you knew is over, and the one that comes next hasn't shown up yet. So you're nowhere.

That message is convincing. It's also not true.

Maybe you know the feeling from a different doorway. The house that went quiet after the last child moved out. A marriage that ended, whether you chose it or not. The empty side of the bed. A body that has started negotiating with you about hills and stairs and late nights. A career you handed back before you were sure what came after.

Different doorways, same room. That in-between place where you're not who you were and can't yet see who you're becoming.

Here's what I've come to believe after standing in that room more than once: fulfillment is not waiting for you somewhere else. It isn't in the next city, the next season, the next version of yourself who finally has it figured out. It's available in the actual life you're living today — the one with the unresolved parts still in it.

Three things that helped me

Ask what this chapter needs. Not what the last one needed. The habits and roles that carried you through the previous season can quietly become the thing keeping you from this one. It's worth checking whether you're still living by instructions that expired.

Let two things be true. My soul lives in the mountains. My life in Florida is full. Both. I spent years thinking I had to pick a winner, when what I actually needed was permission to hold both without calling it a contradiction. You can grieve something and be grateful at the same time. Most of us are doing exactly that.

Collect the small yeses. Not a five-year plan. A walk you take on purpose. A class you sign up for. A phone call you've been meaning to make. Presence is built out of ordinary moments, and it tends to arrive through the side door while you're busy doing something small.

Sixty-five, from the lookout

I don't experience this birthday as an ending. It feels more like elevation — far enough up the trail to see how the switchbacks connected, and to notice they were going somewhere the whole time, even the stretches that felt like wandering.

Wherever you're standing right now, I'd gently suggest it isn't nowhere. It's a real place, with something in it for you, even if it isn't the place you planned on.

If you're standing in the middle of your own transition

Sometimes the fog lifts a little just from saying it out loud to someone whose whole job is helping you find your footing. Not to fix you — you're not broken — but to help you hear what you already know underneath the noise.

I offer online life transition coaching, which means we can do this work wherever you happen to be — mountains, coast, or the kitchen table. If you're curious what a session might feel like, I'd love to talk with you. One conversation is often enough to loosen the knot.

Peace in the present isn't something you earn by arriving. It's something you practice where you are. (a lesson I learned from my Mother while caring for her during dementia. To live in the moment. "Thank you" Mommy & a Happy August Birthday to you also)