Hi I’m Nancy Burns and I thought I would tell you how Hourglass Workshops came about. I received a beautiful hourglass on my 21st birthday from my best friend and have loved it ever since, it reminds me of her every time I look at it. One day while gazing at it I was remembering our single years, all the fun we had, and how carefree life was for us. As I looked at it and contemplated what had come since that time; moves away from each other, marriages, children, loss of parents, my divorce, her cancer, beginning my business as she retired, it became apparent the hourglass is like our lives. Life is slipping through our fingers like the sand in the hourglass and there is a time when we stand alone facing life’s challenges and ask “What’s next”?
The Hourglass is the symbol I chose to represent the message of my workshops. It can be looked at as the eternal representation of the feminine image. In a more concrete way it is the visual of the passage of time and how it slips away while we are watching. I view it as a beginning or the first half, a middle, and a second half. It’s the middle, your middle years, that we are working with in the workshops.
Our journey is not unlike the grain of sand traveling through the hourglass. We begin our life with all the possibilities before us and no responsibilities. The sand begins its journey unencumbered with plenty of space and nothing but time. As we get older life becomes more complicated, more responsibilities as we are pushed and pulled by life. The sand begins its descent toward its finial destination and the space becomes more crowded, and the individual grain of sand is influenced by those around it, like us. The closer it gets to the center the greater the pressure until it is squeezed into a position of standing on its own.
Alone it makes the passage, just like our own journey through midlife. This can be a time when we feel overwhelmed, confused, and possibly very much alone, maybe for the very first time.
Pressures in our lives become greater and we are challenged by a major change or even a crisis; job loss, new career, empty nest, retirement, divorce, menopause, or death of those close to us. This is the time we question everything that has come before and wonder what is next? As the sand drops into the “second half” once again life is expanded and all the new possibilities exist again, just as life offers us a new way of being. How you define your next stage of our journey is up to you. Remember you are not alone.
