Welcome

Hi, my name is Cecile and I'm fifty years old. Half a century of life experience—full of highs and lows, joys and sorrows, trials and tribulations. My quest for happiness has brought me to where I am today: a middle-aged woman who is no longer young, but who doesn't feel old either.

I was born in 1975, in a time before screens. We wrote letters, waited for replies, and sometimes slept in the streets to get concert tickets. Missed a TV show? You'd write to the network asking them to rebroadcast it. Life moved more slowly back then. You could still disappear, simply be unavailable for a while.

I'm grateful for the friends who have been with me for forty years, who knew my parents and share memories from when we were still living at home. I'm also grateful for the new people I'm meeting: parents of my children's friends, colleagues, neighbors. Friendship takes time and attention. True connection starts with knowing what you're about. Do you know that about yourself?

Me: …. I love peonies and dark chocolate, music from the eighties, the sound of a falling drop or a bird upon waking. The smell of fresh bread, the salt of drying seawater on my skin, bare feet in the sand. People creating and the light that then appears in their eyes. Soft materials, the wind in my hair. I love language, and understanding what's going on in my head. Knowing what's an opinion and what's a fact gives me peace—and it helps me determine what I do and don't worry about.

If there's one thing I've learned in these fifty years, it's this: we sometimes make things unnecessarily complicated for ourselves. Imagine if, in that particular situation, you had seen one more option. An option that was better for you. Would you have chosen that one? Absolutely, because your brain always wants what's best for you.

Be kind to your mind!

And trust that your subconscious mind already knows the answers to all your questions.