3AAQmTztG

MIDLIFE SPIRIT
Remembering Coloring and Connect the Dots?
By Darlene Chadbourne
Remember coloring books?
Midlife is a time to connect the dots of your spirit, your being, your thought process and
your body into a forward moving vehicle of change. I want to draw your attention to familiar
things that will spark new ways of thinking about you and your life. Update your thinking
and your image of who you truly are.
Your parents waited to introduce this learning tool until they thought you could distinguish the difference between
coloring in a book and coloring on the walls. As a child you needed to work on your gross motor skills and what better
place than the expansive canvas of a spacious wall? The large, unlimited thinking with no containment and no
boundaries was a feeling of freedom before you learned the rules. Being a child, you loved the wide open spaces. You
loved the freedom. You loved just being all that you could be.
Coloring taught you how to control your movement, your feelings, your emotions, and your voice. Everything was
about keeping things contained and controlled.
If you could remember how to color outside the lines again, you could give yourself permission to express thoughts
and feelings outside the boundaries that define the body. Once again, find that expansive canvas called a wall. Painting
walls can be a metaphor for coloring outside the containment of a book. If you cannot paint the walls where you live,
try overlapping pieces of butcher paper on a wall with poster putty and color to your heart’s content.
Connect-the-dot books came next.
These allowed you to make your own lines by connecting dots, following the numerical sequence that eventually
connected back to where you started. This led you to solving the mystery revealed. You were the creator of the picture
with inner and outer space even though you didn’t know what the picture was going to be. The not knowing made no
difference because you had the power to create by connecting the dots.
To this day I still love the power of connecting the dots to reveal metaphors and pictures created by drawing boundary
lines containing space in time. Different
times require different lines, shapes, and
sizes. If you feel stuck in your old
containment from childhood, give yourself
permission to color outside the lines and
connect the dots. Be the creator of your own
container.
www.darlenechadbourne.com
www.facebook.com/nativepaths
midlifespirit@gmail.com