Shifting From Role to Soul
The winter 2024 edition of Occasional Papers, a quarterly magazine of the Leadership of Catholic Women Religious (LCWR), featured an interview with Dr. Connie Zweig, author and retired therapist. Below are two segments from that interview. While written for Sisters’ Communities, it can have wider application for all of us.
Q: Would you speak more about the importance of learning to be astonished by wonder and how it can contribute to the growth into elderhood?
I think we are all a little numb these days. We are witnessing or being affected by so many interconnected crises – some personal, and some collective. In the midst of them we can lose connection to the everyday miracles that are all around us – a baby, a new flower, an insight, a new friend. We can lose our capacity for awe and surprise in our connection to the beauty of each moment unless we are really present for it... If we are in the past reminiscing or in the future feeling anxious, then we are going to miss it. This capacity to be in the present is one of the qualities of elder awareness.
Q: You speak of moving into the state of elderhood by stepping into the unknown and asking myself, “Who am I now?” Would you say more about why this might be an equally important question for a group to ask itself…?
Every rite of passage has three stages: letting go of past roles and identities, stepping into the unknown, and emerging renewed. A group could sit together and ask: “What do we need to let go of? Which old roles, identities, personas, obligations, responsibilities can we release? How do we step into the unknown together?” …We don’t quite know what is next, or how we will be in it together and support one another in the uncertainty. Where is that next threshold that we need to step through together? Engaging together in contemplative practice (see her book – The Inner Work of Age: Shifting from Role to Soul) can give a community a different sense and show who is emerging within you. When you have had very clear ideas about your collective life and where you are going, it can feel frightening if that starts to change.