Why an Hourglass?

Nancy shares her story about the hourglass with Cherryll. Click to watch the video or read the story below.

I received a beautiful hourglass on my 21st birthday from my best friend. I’ve loved it ever since. One day while gazing at it I thought back to our single years, all the fun we had, and how carefree life was for us. I contemplated all that had happened since those days: moving away from each other, marriages, children, loss of parents, my divorce, her cancer, beginning my business, and her retirement were a few of our milestones.

Our lives are much like the hourglass and our journey resembles the grain of sand traveling through the hourglass. We begin our life with little responsibility and unlimited possibilities, unencumbered with plenty of space and nothing but time. As we get older, life becomes more complicated with more responsibilities, pushed and pulled by life. As the sand moves toward its final destination, it becomes crowded, the individual grain is influenced by those around it, similar to us and our responsibilities to others. The closer it moves to the center, the greater the pressure until it enters the squeeze point where it alone must make it through the passage, just like our own journey through midlife. This is often a time when we feel overwhelmed, confused, and possibly very much alone, maybe for the very first time.

The Hourglass is the symbol chosen to represent the message of our workshops. It can be seen as the eternal representation of the feminine image. Also, it is visually demonstrates the passage of time, slipping away while we watch. It clearly depicts a beginning or the first half, a narrowing middle, and opens up to a second half. It’s that middle time–your middle years, which we focus on in our workshops.

The pressures and the major changes in mid-life create force us to question everything that has come before and we wonder what is next for us? As the sand drops into the “second half”, once again life expands and new possibilities exist again. Life offers us a new way of being. How you define your next stage of our journey is up to you. Remember you are not alone. For the first step on your journey, click to receive “Five Secrets to a Brilliant Second Half”.