Can You Ever Go Back Again? PYL In-Flight: Apr 29, 2025
Welcome Back My Artsy Passengers:
I love art, design, architecture, and fashion. I love seeing and appreciating it when I travel and I can’t get enough of it. If I could spend my life traveling from city to city and country to country, visiting museums, soaking in the architecture as I wander the streets, and people watching from cafes and restaurants, I would. If you have been following Zeke and Terri Adventures and my Instagram, you’d probably say this is what I’ve been doing.
We’ve been in Bordeaux for the last 3 weeks and we haven’t been to a single museum. When we were here last May, we went to nearly everything we could with the Bordeaux City Pass and the one museum we wanted to go back to, Musée d’Aquitaine, is closed for renovation until May 6th. We leave May 3rd.
It’s been a little strange not going to cultural places like museums while in a French city like Bordeaux for a month. At the same time, the entire city is one big museum. Between the buildings, the streets, the shops, the people, the street art and murals, and the food, it’s one big cultural experience.
Everywhere I look, my fingers itch to take another picture to not just capture the moment in a memory, but to capture the art of it.
When I was in high school, I considered myself an artist. I loved my art classes and actually thought I was pretty good at one point. After we graduated, my sister and I joined my art teacher and another student for a 16 day art history tour of Italy, Switzerland, France, and England. It was amazing. We went to Rome, Assisi, Florence, Lucerne, the Loire Valley, Paris, Canterbury, and London. It was a long time ago and I may have done my fair share of partying while on the trip, but the snapshots of the architecture, art, and fashion remain fresh in my mind.
When I started college, I entered as an art history major thinking that I would become an archaeologist or an architect. My favorite class that year was my art history class where I learned about symbolism and was introduced to more time periods and art than my brain could absorb. Unfortunately, when I transferred back to the Bay Area, I let my art dreams die as I selected a more practical area of study: accounting.
I stopped drawing and painting. I stopped most of my creative outlets with the exception of fashion. I loved putting outfits together and topping them off with hats. My hat collection was fire as was my collection of mini scarfs. Don’t judge; it was the 90s!
Fast forward several decades and my clothing collection is limited to basic black everything with a splash of color added by my scarf from Gubbio, Italy and some fabulous earrings. While we were recording our Bordeaux home tour video, my entire travel wardrobe was hanging on hooks outside the closet and it was a wall of black as if I was in mourning.
Our Bordeaux flat (we got it through Home Exchange points) is near Rue Fondaudege which has lots of cute shops and restaurants on it including one shop with brightly colored clothing in the window. We walk by it at least twice a day and I couldn’t help looking at the bright, bold colors, wishing for the courage to go in and try something one. Trying on clothes in other countries is intimidating, especially with my limited French and not-so-petite body.
The other day we were walking back to our flat and I stole some courage from Zeke and walked in asking if the shop owner had anything in my size and that’s how I ended up with the orange dress I am wearing in the picture above. I decided it was time to shed the clothes I’d been hiding my post-menopausal body in and add color back into my life and wardrobe.
During my menopause transition, it felt like my life at dulled into shades of grey and black. As I’ve talked about more than a few times, and in Piloting Your Life, we tend to feel a sense of loss for what was and what may never be, either for the first time or ever again. The happiness curve is real for many of us who feel at our lowest in our mid-40s, wondering if we will ever feel like ourselves again.
What we don’t appreciate at the time is that this is a time of cocooning, where we are preparing ourselves for what is next. Our bodies and minds force us to look inward, harnessing our limited energy and attention spans to assess and evaluate what is most important to us.
I didn’t know that was happening but looking back, it’s so obvious, but I totally resisted it because I had no idea what was going on.
Now, as a newly minted 55-year old, I have been given the opportunity to revisit some things I used to love and create what’s next, with, as I just realized as I sat down to write this, creativity being central to everything.
As I was researching for Piloting Your Life (the book), I learned that for many women, menopause changes our brain so much that we may begin the most creative phase of our lives lasting more than 25 years. I’d like to say I am living proof of that.
When I worked with a life coach a number of years ago, she had me visit a book store and take pictures of everything that caught my eye. At that time, I thought it was interesting that nearly all of the book covers and titles were related to art, architecture, fashion, and pretty food but now it makes sense.
With Zeke and Terri Adventures, Terri Hanson Mead, and Piloting Your Life, I am living all of this.
As we get lost in our menopause transition, in midlife, we are encouraged to look back at what we enjoyed when we were younger, the things and activities we discarded for one reason or another. Maybe they weren’t practical. Maybe there wasn’t enough time. Maybe someone told us we weren’t good enough.
Whatever the reason, midlife is a great time to revisit and reassess what we once loved and enjoyed, to begin to define who and what we want to become.
I have to remind myself regularly that I don’t have to be good at something to enjoy it.
I also have to remind myself that I don’t have to be good at it the first time or the tenth time; that it’s ok to have a beginner’s mindset, just like getting on the yoga mat. It’s the practice of it that’s important, not the outcome.
Maybe it’s time for me to pick up some paintbrushes and charcoal pencils.
What are you revisiting from your youth? How’s that working for you? Drop me a line and let me know. I’d love to hear from and be inspired by you.
May you find peace, acceptance, and love today as you navigate being human.
With much love and gratitude,
Terri
This week’s song: True Colors by Cyndi Lauper. It’s all about being authentic and embracing who we are…this is the message of this week’s PYL In-Flight. “Don’t be afraid to let it show…your true colors.”
Journal Prompt: What did you once love doing? Why did you stop doing it? Would you like to try it again?
terrihansonmead.com
Piloting Your Life (the book)
Terri Mead YouTube Channel
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