It's Your Turn To Live a Larger Life with NPR's Alison Aubrey

Alison Aubrey, such an honor and delight to have you here.

And you were the star of my meditation this morning.

I do a Friday morning meditation group.

And in this meditation group, I centered the whole meditation around the opening of your book, which I loved so much.

It came from a book that your mom passed to you from James Hollis, the psychoanalyst.

And the line that I just kept on repeating again, and we focused meditation on was the summons of the soul.

the summons of the soul, and specifically, why is now the time for you to answer the summons of the soul, the invitation to a second, larger life? Let's start there, the opening of your book, what this is all about in terms of your turn, and why that line stuck with you so much.

Sure.

Thank you for having me, Dr. Diana Hill.

It is so wonderful to be here.

And thank you for making this the center of your meditation.

I found that book, or that book found me, perhaps not by serendipity.

Perhaps my mother placed it there because she knew that I was asking questions that we tend to ask in midlife.

You know, I think I arrived... at this stage of life with my youngest in high school now, my two older boys sort of entering the adulting phase of life in their 20s.

And me, a journalist, I've been on deadline for, you know, two decades.

As I describe it, I've been kind of like jumping in this moon bounce of controlled chaos from like parenting duties to work deadlines and parenting duties to work deadlines.

And A couple of Christmases ago, I arrived at my mother's house for a holiday and I was just feeling like I'd hit a midlife wall.

I was a little bit burned out and I was starting to ask different questions of myself and my mother being who she is, my mother sensed it in me.

I hadn't even said a word and she placed this book on my bedside table.

As I write in the opening of the book, the first few pages really wigged me out.

Like this idea of a summons of the soul, like it immediately like made my heart kind of jump a little bit, but it also made me terrified.

You know, I realized that I had been doing the same thing for the last like 20 years and it was probably time for some change in my life.

And I was a little bit scared to face it.

You talk about going into your son's room who had left for college and seeing all the trophies.

And it's almost like you're like peering into the vastness, like you're on the edge of the vastness of, oh, wow.