Ah, what I didn’t know at 50. I had no idea at that time that I’d end up leaving my full-time office in the basement of my house to take on a full-time job at the Diocese of Albany as Director of Communications for more than six years. I had no idea I would train to become a yoga teacher at 58, fulfilling a 30-year dream that I’d started and put off multiple times, and that I’d end up teaching at an amazing studio multiple times per week every week. I had no idea I would end up leading large retreats that draw 40+ people in various places and that I would develop a growing community of people who now make up my NSS Tribe. I had no idea I would sign up for Holy Ground, a spiritual director training program, from which I will graduate in the spring. I had no idea I’d walk away from my full-time office job at 59 to pursue my true professional love again: writing spiritual columns and books, leading retreats, teaching yoga. I had no idea how my body would begin to age in obvious ways that would, at many times, hamper my ability to do things I always took for granted, like bending down to unload the dishwasher or carry a laundry basket or do the work in the yard I love so much. I had no idea that the hair I stopped coloring almost ten years ago would not just go gray immediately, and now I wait — no, I anxiously anticipate — finally going fully gray, although my stylist tells me that it’s a long way off since I was a natural-born red head and apparently we gray slower/differently. Check back with me in another ten years.

At the time I wrote: “I don’t want the rest of my life — however long I get — to be only a time of fading, even though part of me welcomes that idea…I think whatever comes next should be a time of growing in the important areas of my life, as a spiritual seeker, as a wife and mother, as a human being, and maybe in some of the less serious and more fun areas as well, things I haven’t yet had a chance to try but have always wanted to tackle.”

I smile as I read that now, because it was all true. Was it true because I just got lucky, or was it true because I worked to make it happen? Both, I would say, without question. Last night, when I couldn’t fall asleep, I lay there with my hands on my heart, my trusty rosary beads there for comfort (as they are every night — my version of a favorite stuffed animal), and I smiled and felt so incredibly grateful and content, peaceful and in harmony with everything around me and with God. And I thanked God for all of it — for the blessings I am so grateful for today and for a full life that has had its share of sorrows and challenges and hardships but that remains a complete gift. Everything has led me to this place, and I have no doubt that whatever is coming next will lead me where I still need to go, to what I still need to learn — however much I might want to avoid some of it.

Life in my 50s has been a ride and a half, and I can tell you that as I stand on the cusp of life in my 60s, I’m excited by and grateful for the freedom, wisdom and growth that is still waiting for me, if I dare (and I do). When I turned 50, I remember thinking that if I lived as long as my grandmother, I would get to do my entire life over again. Now, at almost-60, I am past that possibility, making it very clear that I am on the downward slope of a beautiful life, a slope that I hope will be long and gradual. And I could still get 40 years if I duplicate my E-ma’s arc!

So I’m going to live this last week in my 50s full of gratitude and joy, reflecting on this life of abundance that has been mine for six full decades. That is no small thing, and I am grateful to the point of bursting — either into laughter or tears or both. I’ll be back next week as I herald in my 60s with more thoughts on all of this, and maybe some fun goals and hopes and dreams. Because dreaming is free, and it is definitely not just for the young.

When I wrote a birthday post last year at this time, when I was turning 59, I said: “As I round out this decade and prepare for the next — if I’m given that opportunity — I hope to become even more Mary than I’ve ever been. You’ve been warned. More writing, more meditation, more yoga, more retreats, more spiritual direction, more speaking truth to power, more travel, more learning, more cooking, more dancing, more singing, more creating, more exploring, more dreaming, more, more, more. To paraphrase Mary Oliver, I have no intention of “breathing just a little and calling it a life.” Full breaths until my full stop.”

Amen to all of it. I’m going to take that plan and kick it up a notch. I’m hoping life in my 60s will go to 11. (IYKYK, and if you do, you’re probably old like me.) 😉 Peace out, 50s.

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Bishop Edward B. Scharfenberger has accepted the resignation of Mary DeTurris Poust, diocesan director of communications, effective Jan. 28, 2022. Ms. DeTurris Poust has served in the role since September 2015, after initially being brought on six months earlier to create and maintain a social media presence for the bishop and the 14-county diocese. A search is underway for her replacement.

“Mary brought a unique blend of journalistic skills, spiritual insights, and social media savvy to the position, not to mention a lifelong Catholic faith that informed everything she did,” Bishop Scharfenberger said. “While we are sorry to lose her, we are grateful for her tireless efforts on behalf of the diocese and the larger Church, and we wish her all the best as she continues to spread the Gospel through the written and spoken word.”

Bishop Scharfenberger brought Ms. DeTurris Poust to the diocese in an effort to transform the Office of Communications from a traditional press office to a responsive and pro-active communications team that would use technology to further the mission of the Church. Ms. DeTurris Poust also serves as associate publisher of The Evangelist, the weekly newspaper of the diocese, and as vice president of its board. Her monthly column, Life Lines, will continue to run in The Evangelist.

“I am honored to have had the opportunity to serve the Diocese of Albany for close to seven years, and I’m proud of all we accomplished with the help of a great communications team. Now it is time for me to return to what has always been the heart of my ministry and professional life: writing, retreat work, and public speaking,” said Ms. DeTurris Poust. “I am so grateful to Bishop Scharfenberger for his commitment to transparency and truth, for his support of Catholic communications as the premier way to evangelize, educate and inspire, and, most importantly, for his unflagging efforts to bring healing to the survivors of sexual abuse.”

Prior to joining the diocese, Ms. DeTurris Poust spoke nationally about the need for the Church to use social media as way to reach Catholics and non-Catholics alike, telling the U.S. Bishops at their General Assembly in Baltimore in 2012 that “like it or not, Facebook is the new parish hall.” Bishop Scharfenberger also recognized that need and initially hired Ms. DeTurris Poust to establish a diocesan presence on various social media platforms. When she was appointed Communications Director five months later, that role was expanded to include media relations, redesign and maintenance of the diocesan website, video production and promotion, and more. Since then, the Communications Office has grown its digital presence year by year and has won numerous national Catholic Media Association awards for its social media campaigns and graphics, website design and content, press releases and breaking news.

“None of this could have happened without the talented and dedicated staff that has supported and executed our campaigns so expertly,” said Ms. DeTurris Poust. “I am so grateful to those who have worked alongside me to translate the bishop’s vision and the Gospel message into digital, video and print products.”

The author of six books on Catholic spirituality and six books of seasonal reflections, Ms. DeTurris Poust is the former managing editor of Catholic New York, the newspaper of the Archdiocese of New York, and contributing editor of Our Sunday Visitor newsweekly, and has also served the dioceses of Metuchen, N.J., and Austin, Texas. She is a nationally known retreat leader, and her writing appears regularly in various publications and on her blog at www.notstrictlyspiritual.com.

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Back when I was in my 40s, I remember waiting for, longing for some magic moment when wisdom would descend upon me as if in a visible way from above. I don’t know if I expected a dove to alight upon my head à la the disciples at Pentecost, but I was definitely expecting something monumental and obvious. Turns out wisdom is a slow burn, and when we’re not looking — if we’re paying attention to our inner life — it is there beneath the surface doing the difficult and critical work of chiseling away at the world’s expectations and demands to reveal the True Self sculpture that may have been locked in marble our entire lives. Like Michelangelo freeing David from the confines of stone, we eventually find ourselves standing there, naked before the world (in a figurative way, of course) and completely at ease with it. No, not just at ease with it. More than that. There is awe and joy, celebration and freedom all wrapped up in the revelation of who we really are once we are ready to be unleashed, untethered.

Although I do feel old thanks to some physical decline that just can’t be helped once you get to a certain age, I fully expect — God willing — that there is an entire new chapter waiting around the bend. I can sense it, taste it, see it just beyond my grasp. It may take me a little bit to get the current me into the the spot I can see up ahead, but it’s there, beckoning me to spread my wings a little wider, take the leap, learn the things, go to the next place I am called to go into to become more fully the person I was meant to be.

As I round out this decade and prepare for the next — if I’m given that opportunity — I hope to become even more Mary than I’ve ever been. You’ve been warned. More writing, more meditation, more yoga, more retreats, more spiritual direction, more speaking truth to power, more travel, more learning, more cooking, more dancing, more singing, more creating, more exploring, more dreaming, more, more, more. To paraphrase Mary Oliver, I have no intention of “breathing just a little and calling it a life.” Full breaths until my full stop.

I found this song today, when I was creating the playlist for the Birthday Gentle yoga class I taught this morning. It spoke to me, so I thought I’d share. If you’d like to listen to my full Spotify playlist, you can find it at Another Trip Around the Sun #59. Onward!

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The couple ahead of me looked at one another, and I saw the young woman put her hand to her face and double over. I wondered if she found the whole scene too upsetting, or maybe she was sick. When we entered the parking garage, the woman in the wheelchair and her aide headed to the elevator, while the couple and I moved toward the stairs. As they rounded the top stair and turned on the landing, we were facing each other. It was at the point I realized the woman wasn’t upset; she was laughing so hard she could not contain herself. She was laughing at the woman in the wheelchair.

I felt anger rising and debated saying something but held back, not wanting to get into a contentious conversation with strangers in a stairwell. I could see that her partner was not laughing and looked uncomfortable. They exited at the second floor, the woman still laughing uncontrollably, while I continued to the roof level. When I arrived at the top of the stairs, the woman in the wheelchair was being escorted toward a van. She was still crying out, and as I watched them move across the lot, I felt tears coming. Tears for the cruelty of our world today. Tears for the woman in the wheelchair, whose suffering is greater than anything I can understand. Tears for the woman pushing the wheelchair, smiling and talking so gently. Tears for the laughing woman, who perhaps didn’t know how to respond to a such a difficult situation and so opted for something terribly inhumane out of her own fear.

For as long as I can remember, when people saw others suffering, they would say to themselves, “There but for the grace of God go I.” There was a recognition that none of us do anything to earn our place or condition in this world and should, therefore, look with kindness on—and in solidarity with—those who have been asked to shoulder a heavier burden. Have we forgotten that, or is it buried under the avalanche of ridicule and bullying and intolerance that make up social interaction today?

When we close off our hearts and minds to those whose situations scare us or make us uncomfortable, the only ones we cheat are ourselves. I have to remind myself that this truth applies to all the women in the parking garage that day.

It is not enough to feel compassion toward the woman in the wheelchair and the woman who cared for her. Despite everything inside me that wants to fight against it, the Gospel calls me to have compassion for the woman who laughed as well. She has a condition that doesn’t require a wheelchair but is clearly much more debilitating. And I can only hope that those women looked at me with compassion for whatever fault or flaw they might have spotted but to which I am oblivious.

We move through this world viewing everything and everyone through the prism of our own experience, but Jesus tells us to throw away the prism and see everyone in the same light, the light of love. These days, that can feel nearly impossible, but it just might be true that only love can save the world.

This column originally appeared in the Nov. 4, 2020, issue of Catholic New York.

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So, I’m patting myself on the back right now for mere fact that I was able to connect all the wires, find the right buttons, and record anything at all. And that dovetails nicely with my topic: age and expectations, but even more than that expanding our boundaries beyond our self- (or society-) imposed limits. You can take a listen at the link below. I’d love to hear your feedback, including topics you might like me to address in the future.

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I write every night. Okay, almost every night. I don’t usually take that journal with me on trips because it’s too big, and every once in a while when I sit down to write I just can’t. Not because there were no blessings that day but because I’m in such an off mood it feels like my doing it for show would tarnish the “project.” You don’t have to be a mathematician to figure out that three multiplied by 365 is more than 1,000. So you can hit this number in less than a year if you start today. it’s so worth it. Trust me.

This isn’t my first gratitude rodeo, by the way. I’ve had multiple gratitude journals over the years. I’ve written about the practice, promoted it in blog posts and books and columns. Because it really works to change your attitude from one of lack to one of abundance. And it doesn’t all have to be over-the-top joy or benchmark blessings. In fact, it shouldn’t be. This is a practice in finding the blessing in the little things — the smell of fresh cut grass, the finch sitting on the feeder, the sound of rain on the sunporch roof, the kids laughing together at the kitchen table. And and of course there are big blessings, too, the ones that make us weep with joy that are not so easy to forget even if we don’t write them down.

Get yourself a notebook. Begin today. Just three little things. It doesn’t have to be a fancy notebook. It doesn’t have to be prose or poetry. It doesn’t have to be pretty. But just begin. And see where you are three months from now, six months, one year. I look back at my old gratitude journals and they are like snapshots into my life. It brings me such joy. I hope it does the same for you.

If you’d like to read some of my longer articles on the gratitude habit, you can find my OSV feature story on gratitude HERE and my Life Lines column HERE. I have lots more on gratitude on the blog. Just search “gratitude” and you’ll have more than enough to keep you busy. And, oh, I am grateful ever day for you! Thank you for being here on this journey with me.

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