And so my untethered year draws to a close. Not with a bang but a whimper. The gentle unwinding amidst olive groves and extreme hikes on the mountains. Quietude. Another touch of loneliness.

A surprising anxiety sets in, and I look at it with some surprise. Where is the kick-ass confidence I felt in Switzerland? There's a feeling that I landed in Mallorca and the wheels fell off. 

When I have days jammed with meditation, exercise classes and a hike, followed by an arrangement to head into Palma and then dinner with friends, I find myself craving solitude to read and write and wander in nature. When I have a yawning day in front of me with nothing on the schedule, I want to be with others, to attend classes, eat out and get on with things. I feel an urge to rush out and do.

The realisation, of course, is that I need both productive engagement with others and time alone. Writing feeds me but too much time to do so removes the impetus. A certain amount of pressure is required to produce the gems.

And the anxiety? I see it as the final rumblings of a fixed mindset becomeing a growth one. Returning to school doesn't faze me, and I just have to remind myself that being older than the other students and immersing myself in the vulnerability of psychotherapy is just a continuation of the exploration I have been doing all this year. I can turn these nibbles of anxiety into threads of curiosity.

Four of us set off for a hike the other day, just after noon. Four women in their 60s, three unexpectedly divorced within the last four years, the eldest widowed about ten years ago. One I had met at fitness classes in the village, the others were new to me. Two were English, the other Danish. They have all lived in Mallorca for at least twenty years, and share a camaraderie that comes from being early in the vanguard of change in this island, that then was still recovering from the repressions of the Franco era. It wasn't the popular holiday destination it is now.

The two divorcées live in the homes they shared with their former husbands, but one talks about dragging his motor dinghy (a boat he promised to remove from what is officially her house) to a lay-by on a highway in the hopes that someone will just take it. There is a bitterness there that contrasts with the Danish woman who returned to a convivial relationship with her ex once the divorce papers were signed a month ago, although there is no talk of a rapprochement. 

The widow was widowed from one moment to the next as it was a sudden death. I was divorced three weeks after becoming an empty-nester. I couldn't help feeling that I'd been fired. 

All four of us went through abrupt changes, without any inkling of what was about to hit us. They were life-changing events that were out of our control. Yet how complete and full of life we are on our own. As we made our way along the dried-up river bed and then up to higher altitudes, we would stop and exclaim not at the spectacular views, but at how content we were with life. 

Last evening, on a zoom call, a woman who just published a book on reframing retirement, a woman I had never met before, laughed when she explained that in her 60th year she realised that her holidays were getting longer and more elaborate because it was the only way she could be with her husband. That was unaffordable, so she divorced him. Then, after meeting a new man several years later and moving in with him, just last month she returned to her own flat, while still maintaining the relationship, because she saw that she was turning back into a wife.

It's as if wifedom has little appeal once we get a taste of freedom. It's a state we don't wish to return to regardless of whether we go on to other partnerships. I see it more and more as I move away from the couple-centric life I lived when married and begin to meet the solo travellers. It's like a secret that was kept from us, at least from those of us raised in more traditional ways. 

There is opportunity in transitioning into this next phase of life, whether by choice or not, especially if there has been transformative and oftentimes painful inner work through therapy, body work or spirituality, which most women my age have done. Some men do as well, but generally ... I don't see the same in men in their 60s and 70s.

This is not a man-bashing diatribe but a celebration of women who are complete in themselves. I have many truly lovely men in my life, and one day I hope to connect on a deeper, more intimate level with someone. But ... what's the saying? I won't be a nurse, a purse or a mother.

I suspect I will write one more post, from London, from the place I packed up and left to begin my Untethered Year, which stretched into almost sixteen months. So stay tuned. I have only a handful of days left in what has been an extraordinary adventure.