The passage into late life requires an archetypal shift. The ego’s lifelong identity as “doer” disappears, and we enter a liminal time between past roles, identities, and values from the first half of life and an unknown future. It may feel disorienting and frightening, as if we’re on a tightrope without a net. We might ask ourselves, “Who am I, if not a successful CEO, teacher, psychologist, mother?” But if we continue to be the “doer,” to strive in heroic mode, denying the call to shift from role to soul, we will not cross the threshold into a new beginning.
What sabotages the call of the soul in late life? Join Connie Zweig as she introduces us to what she calls the shadows of age: denial and attachment to youthfulness, the inner ageist, identification with image and with doing, unfinished emotional and spiritual business, fear of death, and a loss of meaning and purpose. Explore how the tools of depth psychology, shadow-work, and contemplative practice can help us to uncover these unconscious obstacles, and to discover that our age is now our curriculum. With guidance, the inner work of age can become an initiation into Elderhood.
