“Living is a magical thing. Each day is a gift to be treasured, because it will never come around again. We have everything we need within us to live the life we want to live. Consider the most amazing of journeys, a life full of possibilities.”

This story is about Carole’s journey and about the choices she made and the heart-searching and hilarity she experienced along the way. It is about the search for fulfilment in her heart, her soul and her mind in the mid-phase of her life. She needed to have the wisdom to make choices and then to take complete responsibility for the path that she chose, even after those decisions turned out to be less than perfect!

It is about the importance of having the courage to maintain a real sense of self and ultimately have peace of mind about who we really are. We should bear in mind that we know much more than we think we do and that there is no failure only the opportunity for feedback.

How do any of us make a choice? Well that’s easy, we use our value system. This represents a person’s sense of right or wrong, i.e. what they think they ought to be. A value system is a consistent set of beliefs and principles. Our personal values provide a reference for what is good, important and beneficial in life and it is the personal belief system by which we live our lives. However at some point in life values need to include one’s own personal wellbeing and growth.

This is the story of that phase of life after children have flown the nest and it involves change and challenge. In mid-life Carole decided to go and live and work in Spain for a while and then travelled extensively around the world. Although it was lots of fun it was also filled with some difficult soul-searching. Carole remarks, “I think I definitely lost my perfect person status along the way, but I gained some real self-esteem and definite fulfilment as a woman.”