SPIRITUAL RETIREMENT

'Why We All Need Space To Pause, Reassess & Begin Again'
Personal Story by Elizabeth Blake-Thomas

My favourite food is avocado. It can come in any form, prepared in any way. I often choose it in the form of guacamole while sitting at my workspace, and it always comes with crudités. Among those vegetables is usually a large piece of fennel.

Ever since I first began ordering it, I had told myself that I didn’t like fennel. Every time it appeared, I left it behind. Then, the other day, I decided I should try it. Put it this way: it is now my favourite thing. I literally cannot get enough of it.

What would have happened if I had not been brave enough to stop and question the story I had always told myself: “I don’t like fennel”? Would I have continued missing out on something amazing?

So, how does this connect to spiritual retirement? I see openness to change and the willingness to question ourselves as the route to creating space for spiritual retirement. It begins by reconsidering the stories we have always told ourselves:
This is the way things should be.
This is the way life is.
This is the path you have chosen, so you have to stick with it.

My daughter came up with the phrase “spiritual retirement” because I needed to stop and change, but not in a final way. I do not want to, and cannot imagine myself, no longer working. I simply see work as taking several different forms throughout the phases of my life.

I began working at the age of 15. I established and ran my own company, leading individual drama sessions and camps for people only a little younger than I was. This led me to create a business teaching drama in schools and arts centres, which eventually led to using those same storytelling techniques in the business world. From there, I became Head of Drama at a prep school, followed by becoming a full-time mum and teaching privately.

A few years later, I began my life as a television and film director. It was an all-consuming career, and Mother Daughter Entertainment was born. Successfully earning a living in Los Angeles for 15 years is not a feat to be ignored, and I am very proud of myself.

Recently, however, the mourning period and enormous change that followed the loss of Chai, my four-legged soulmate, upended my entire life. Everything I thought I knew, wanted or believed changed. My priorities shifted, and suddenly, the world I knew and had created no longer felt right. It felt alien. I literally felt like an alien in this world.

I turned to my art and began telling stories through paintings, characters and books. Creativity poured out of me, becoming a way to understand my grief. Without my realising it, change began taking a different form. Space had been created for the next phase of my existence. The version of myself I was retiring from would have to alter and evolve. A new sense of purpose was beginning to reveal itself.

I had a choice: I could listen, or I could ignore it.

I began allowing whatever the universe intended to lead me towards into my everyday world. I created 50 by 50, although I completed the project by the age of 48: 50 children’s books that I illustrated, wrote and added to my Etsy shop. My art was leading me towards a different path.

​The film world began to fade as I realised that my daughter’s purpose was to be in that world, not mine. I was meant to be the conduit who supported her and helped her realise her own purpose and potential.

I was not only realigning my practical life. My entire being was realigning as well. My soul, heart and mind were ready to open and receive whatever the next 48 years might hold. I trusted the universe to reveal the journey I should be taking, what I should learn along the way and who would become part of it.

That is what spiritual retirement is all about.

It could be misconstrued as a midlife crisis, but it is so much more than that. It is a readjustment. It is a pause that allows us to look, reassess and step away from the hamster wheel long enough to see our lives more clearly. It is an opportunity to experience the “overview effect” within our own lives and re-establish how we see them unfolding.

I love the concept of the overview effect. When astronauts leave the Earth’s atmosphere, they suddenly see our planet, life and what it all means from an entirely different perspective. This is what spiritual retirement can offer us: a new way of seeing.

Imagine what might happen if we allowed ourselves a moment to slow down and create space for whatever might emerge. I am grateful that Chai became the reason for my pause. I had no choice. However, we do not always have to wait for a life-shattering moment to remind us to stop and reassess. Either way, I am so grateful for mine.

Chai was my reason for being when she was here in physical form, and she remains my reason for being now that she has taken her spiritual form.

It has now been one year since Chai left the physical world, and I miss her more every day. The space in my heart that she filled feels bigger and bigger, and she continues to change me in ways I never thought possible. Our connected consciousness feels more beautiful and powerful than ever.

Do I miss her physical company? Absolutely. But she is with me in the deepest way.

As the year passes, I say thank you. I thank her every day for the life she gave me and continues to give me. My spiritual retirement is enhanced by her presence. My wish is for everyone to experience even a small moment of space simply to be, and to give themselves the time to consider what spiritual retirement, at any age, might look like. ∎

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Find & follow Elizabeth on Instagram: @elizabeth_b_t