A Sacred 80th Birthday Reflection

Title: Stepping Into Spiritual Elderhood – A Sacred 80th Birthday Reflection

As I prepare to turn 80, I find myself standing at the threshold of what Wilbert Alix calls Spiritual Elderhood—the 11th of 12 Mystical Stages of Our Spiritual and Physical Evolution. It is not an ending, but a gentle invitation to become a bridge between the visible and invisible, the past and future, the soul and the skin.

In honor of this sacred threshold, I revisited the full map of the 12 Initiations of the Soul. Each one has shaped me—sometimes gently, sometimes with fire. Together, they have carved the path that brought me here.

I’ve shared this full reflection in Chapter 51 of my book A Listening Grandmother, and I now offer it as a birthday gift to you. May these stages speak to your own becoming:

1. Birth – The Gift of Immortality and Magic
2. Puberty – A Preparation for Life
3. Sexual Initiation – The Touch of Passion
4. Separation from the Feminine – The First Threshold
5. Alliance with the Masculine – The Father Quest
6. Realization of Betrayal – The Myth of Success
7. Mid-Birth – A Spiritual Birth Into Our Power
8. Reconnection into the Feminine – Finding the Lost Pieces of Self
9. Initiation into the Truth – Exposing the Mythology of Self-Deception
10. Atonement – Forgiving the Sins of Sun or Moon
11. Spiritual Elderhood – Master and Mistress of Two Worlds
12. Beyond Reality – The Final Passage

🎶 As I wrote, I listened to Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Neil Diamond—especially Be and Dear Father—alongside Mozart’s Piano Concerto in A Major, K.488. These two very different pieces help me access something ancient and tender—something that words alone cannot reach.

🌀 I also invite you to pause and reflect:

• Where do you sense yourself on this wheel of transformation?

• Which initiations feel complete, and which still unfolding?

• What wisdom are you now ready to live or pass on?

This is my way of celebrating 80 turns around the sun. With a listening heart, and a deep bow to the sacred path that brought me—and perhaps you—right here.

With love,
A Listening Grandmother