A hawk and a text.

I have been struggling with something the last few days and really feeling lost, stupid, and like I made bad decisions. Wondering how a fairly accomplished and educated woman can makes foolish decisions. But also trying to forgive myself for being human, being curious, being overly sensitive, and overly sharing energy and feelings.

I’ve done a lot of reading, watching and thinking about breaking through.  Forging ahead.  Shedding and becoming a new version of myself, or getting back to who I really am.  Remember the book that was popular in the mid-90s, Reviving Ophelia?  I don’t think people read it any more but if I recall the theme and message correctly, it was about how girls are conditioned.  And when they hit puberty something happens to them in which they lose the freshness and fearlessness and essence of who were as young girls.  This definitely happened to me.  And I think it happened to other girls who were my age.  Something changed in middle school.  Hormones. Boys. Focus.  Passions that were healthy.  As a woman who is about to turn 60, I am still dealing with the repercussions of those long ago changes.  Am I the only one?  Am I a lunatic?  Recently I find myself craving those long lost passions and am trying to find my way back to them.  Back to my authentic self.

So how are these things related? The things I am struggling with go back to that pre-adolescent, I guess, trauma? Conditioning?  Social and peer pressures? And it has to do with how I relate to men.  I can feel how my desire to be wanted, to be seen as something special by males is centered on those feelings of unworthiness from almost fifty years ago.  The thing is, I have had good guys in my life.  Good boyfriends, good partners,  male friends and acquaintances.  I have been chosen and loved.  I have been lucky.  Even in relationships that didn’t last or that were probably not meant to be forever. Over the last forty years I made fairly decent choices.  My parents always made me fee loved. But there ws definitely generational trauma in my household growing up that surely affected my self-esteem.

Do I wish I could go back and do some things better or over? Yes. And those are things I perseverate about. Choices I made long ago. Did I make bad choices and try too hard to be loved by the wrong guys at times in my life? Definitely yes.  But for the most part my male relationships have been good, relatively. But they still have been affected or influenced by my feelings of incompleteness.  But what the fuck?  Why at this point in my life am I defining myself by relationships with men? Shouldn’t I be beyond this by now? I am trying to sort shit out so I can be me.  Unapologetically.  Fearlessly.  The thing I am trying the most to deal with is fear.  Fear of what, I’m not sure.  I’m beginning to think fear of really and truly living a life of, by, and for myself.  I have always had FOMO.  But what am I missing out on? I don’t know.  I do know that I am afraid life is passing me by. Of not experiencing EVERYTHING. I’m running out of time.  I have to stop being afraid of going, getting going, and breaking free. I  have to stop being afraid of who I am in relation to other people.  I need to fearlessly be me.  And that’s not easy.  I don’t even know who I am. 

I was sitting outside in my backyard, in an Adirondack chair in the snow, drinking coffee on this cold, snowy but sunny almost spring March morning. I was ruminating and meditating and asking the universe to help me go with the flow, and as usual, had a little morning cry.  Does anybody  else have a daily cry? Well, I do.  So I had my little cry and then from above I saw what I thought was a sign. I was about to go back into the house but before I did I wanted to stand at the edge of the yard and take in the cold beauty of the woods and the birds and the sun when a hawk flew overhead.  It flew over the house, circled and wafted over the cold woods, dipped and floated.  It was beautiful. Graceful, wings fully spread.  It really moved me. It was so beautiful.

And then when I went back into the house I discovered a text from a friend with a specific message.  This person had no knowledge of what I’ve been stressing about, and yet the text contained information that I definitely needed to read.  Another sign? I’m going to believe so. 

Here’s what I found about the symbolism of hawks from palosverdespulse.com  

Eyes on the Horizon: The Elegant Symbolism of Hawks

Messengers on the Wind

In folklore and myth, hawks are often seen as intermediaries—bridging sky and earth, intuition and action. Their appearance during moments of uncertainty has been interpreted as reassurance: trust yourself. You already know what to do.

Whether one leans toward symbolism or simply appreciates beauty in nature, there is something undeniably grounding about a hawk’s presence. It draws the eye upward and the mind inward.

The Art of Timing

Perhaps the hawk’s greatest lesson lies in patience. It watches. It waits. It strikes only when the moment is perfect. There is no rush—only readiness.

In this way, the hawk becomes a symbol of opportunity recognized and seized with intention. Not haste. No hesitation. Just perfect timing.

From birdify.com:

• Transformation: It is what you might be changing, doing different things, or stretching yourself into something new.

And maybe here are a few more signs.   As I was editing this and wrapping it up Steely Dan’s Any Major Dude and Marshall Tucker Band,’s Fly Eagle Fly were playing on Spotify.

Time to let go, girl, and get the fuck going and stop feeling like you need to feel bad about any and every fucking thing. Maybe I don’t need signs to know this. But that’s ok, I like receiving signs. Maybe the universe is listening to me after all.