Wrong way sign next to a one way sign

My way or no way

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Recently, a friend was sharing that when she told another midlife friend about the book I had written on the struggles I was facing in midlife, her friend’s response was “well, if she has time to write a book then it doesn’t sound like she is struggling.”

Why do we do this to each other? Why do we shut down, complain or criticize when someone is doing something that either we:

  1. Wouldn’t do
  2. Are too scared ourselves to do
  3. Can’t do for whatever reason
  4. Don’t want to do

Midlife is probably the loneliest time in our lives. Far from being all grown up and secure in who and what we are, we look around only to find that some things that we invested heavily in (whether it is emotionally or financially) will not necessarily give us the payout we hoped for and counted on.

When our life crop has finally matured we may find that cutting corners on the cheap seeds has rendered a weak overall crop or we have put all our energy into become expert farmers only to be hit by disastrous weather right before harvest. We may find disappointment with the sum total of all the small choices we have made. We have let some great friends go as we hunkered down to parent and now find it harder and harder to connect with others unless we see them at our kids activities and even then, conversations become about tasks and techniques and we hastily wave bye as we are running off to the next event.

Through our routines we decide what and who we like and want in our circle and we start to weed out the rest, at first just for convenience, later more for comfort. Only, when we let the connection with ourselves go we can often start to confuse growth with movement. We put down our connection and curiosity with our own self, for good reasons, to grow other human beings or partner with another. But often in the meantime, we become critical to those doing it differently and we embrace the sense of control we seem to have over our lives, and those of the small humans in our care, and become selective and exclusive. We become convinced that we have figured it all out and what is outside our comfort zone is threatening. Then midlife hits.

Midlife is the time to face the gift of loneliness it brings and begin to be vulnerable again. Our way has been that OUR way, it is not the only way and it is not the correct way for many. It is has been just our path. To carry on the “my way or no way” method beyond our parental control and into the world can become restrictive and poisonous to our ability to fully grow as an individual. It is time to acknowledge that each stage of the game will bring new challenges and require new skills and tools from us. When, as in my case, our children grow to a point where command and control not only becomes dated, it becomes toxic to a healthy relationship.

Midlife energy is such a disruptive gift. When someone does something that doesn’t fit into your repertoire, be open to it. Work on getting to My Way is Not the Only Way.

Midlife Perfection

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Recently I have noticed something peculiar about my 40 something peers – many seem to have braces and are getting teeth whitening in the quest for a perfect smile.  When did this happen?  I guess, in retrospect, I did see it coming.  I was a gen-xer and child of the 70s.  I was also working class, which meant one word: snaggletooth. Braces were a luxury, one not afforded to us.  I had an overbite and probably a crossbite, but you made do.  The only perfect teeth I saw as a kid was my grandmother’s, in a cup, by her bedside.  Perfect teeth just weren’t the norm.  When I get fed up with the chasing of perfection today, I sit down and watch 70s television.  There we were as God made us:  yellow toothed, curvy with a little tummy and very few above a B cup.   We couldn’t hide, you had good genetics or you found another source of strength.  God just didn’t give with both hands back then.

Now, however, it seems we can have it all.  We can be wrinkle free, with a beautiful smile, a Double D cup and a perfectly flat stomach – all at the age my grandmother was passing down her famous Sunday roast recipe to her grandchildren.

I struggle with this expectation, especially as I reach my 50s.   At a recent dentist appointment I was told I needed a slew of work – in the dentist’s words I should “start saving my denaros.”  I kind of tuned out as he rambled on about receding gums, cracked fillings, veneers, crowns and, yep, braces.   I still don’t understand why I need any of this, my teeth work fine, thank you. Why is everyone so bothered that I am ok with my mouth the way it is?   I think his boat payment must be due soon.

Even at the nail salon the other day while just getting a simple manicure – no color, just buffed, I was asked if I had ever thought of getting lash extensions and permanent makeup.  Um, I just wanted my cuticles cut, but thanks.

At my dermatologist, while getting a mole checked out, I was offered Botox – just to keep me “looking as young as I feel”.

And as I am getting AARP materials in the mail, I am simultaneously getting plastic surgery postcards.

When did it become expected that as soon as I start to age, I will frantically try to be one step ahead of it all?  That I will have nips and tucks and shots and extensions.  All for what?  I have seen the 20 somethings out there – they are cute and they mean business.

Even talking with people my age has become a challenge.  I was talking to a woman I had not met before and when she left, I turned to my friend and said I didn’t think she liked me very much.  My friend replied “oh no, that was just the botox, she can’t move anything above her nose.”  Oh.

As I ponder middle age and how I want to enter into the next phase, I am not sure this is the route for me.  I am all for bettering yourself and if it makes you feel good then go for it.  But please don’t judge me when I choose to age and own every one of my wrinkles and grey hairs.  I have seen my saggy skin on my legs in downward dog – I don’t need double D breasts next to that.

What is perfection anyway?  Is it so we feel good about ourselves physically, that we are never rejected, we are always admired?  I think I will forgo perfection for authenticity.  That will be my quest in the next stage of the game.  Oooh, I think there is a rerun of Charlies Angels on again.

 

Midlife Mud

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Midlife is that time when your ego is strong enough to handle the dark side.  Like, when Luke Skywalker goes into that cave and cuts off Vader’s head only to realize it was his face in the mask.  That is it, midlife.  We are strong, we have been training and we start to feel another kind of Jedi power, we also know we must follow it even though we don’t know why.

We are ready to handle the darkness- or at least step into it – another threshold.  Not because we are less scared or more brave, but because we know we cannot turn back and there is no other way to go.  There is a call deep within us – another hero waiting to emerge and we must listen to it or we will start a cycle of learning that will continue to bring the same things back to us again and again, leaving us wondering why the same things keep happening to us.

It is such a confusing time though, life goes forward, kids grow up, parents age, or worse, die and we are left to search – search for meaning in a world that seems meaningless and yet absolutely brilliantly perfect at the same time.  Maybe for the first time we can see it as it is.  It does not need us to change it.  We need to change ourselves.  It is our thinking, the ego,  that has gotten us thus far.  We must challenge the demands it has placed on us and let go – reach for more.  When we let go though, we often feel the rush of a current that sweeps us downstream – turmoil.  But really, we are just in the middle of things.  We are no longer being strapped into the ride and have the excitement of the tick-tick up the track, we have dropped and are twisting and twirling and screaming.  If we let go and trust that our journey is deeper than the external world we have worked so hard in, we will find ourselves reaping the harvest of this.  Not in the way that our culture tells us: a nice condo in the new grey haired Margaritaville community with a too-big car and trips with the grandkids – although nice, that is not enough to sustain us in the evening of life.  If we have done our work, perhaps we will find authenticity, integrity and wholeness.

We become who we were meant to be all along.

But what do I know?  I am still in the mud.

Midlife Liminality: 3 Questions to Ask Yourself

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Liminality

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In anthropology, Liminality (from the Latin word līmen, meaning “a threshold”[1]) is the quality of ambiguity or disorientation that occurs in the middle stage of rites, when participants no longer hold their preritual status but have not yet begun the transition to the status they will hold when the rite is complete. During a rite’s liminal stage, participants “stand at the threshold”[2] between their previous way of structuring their identity, time, or community, and a new way, which the rite establishes….

During liminal periods of all kinds, social hierarchies may be reversed or temporarily dissolved, continuity of tradition may become uncertain, and future outcomes once taken for granted may be thrown into doubt.[5] The dissolution of order during liminality creates a fluid, malleable situation that enables new institutions and customs to become established.[6] The term has also passed into popular usage, where it is applied much more broadly, undermining its significance to some extent.[7]

In Carl Jung’s stages of life, midlife is seen as the Summer/Noon of our lives, where “what has been is no longer and what is to be has not yet come into focus”  (Nancy Millner, PhD)

Jungian analyst and author Murray Stein names three stages of mid-life transition in his book, In Mid-Life: A Jungian Perspective.  Stein suggests that as people move from the accommodation of early life, they go through the rites of SEPARATION, LIMINALITY and REINTEGRATION on their way towards fuller individualization.

What happens to us when the sun shifts and shadows are different, and all we know is bathed in a new light?  When our stories need to be retold, when we make room for others at the table who are younger and fresher.  How do we handle that threshold?

For many of us, we question our relationships.  Maybe the spouse with whom we have lost the feelings we once had,  the job or career that no longer engages our souls and gives us a sense of purpose,  maybe our mortality as we almost audibly hear the click of a generation moving up in the cue of life.

This is such a vulnerable time as we call into question our choices, our values, our place in the world.  How do we find time in this culture or do, go, be to just relax, sit and ponder?  You can start by asking yourself these three questions:

3 Questions to Ask Yourself During Liminality:

  1. What does my soul require?   – The next stage in life will come with the understanding that it is a personal connection with self that will aid us in becoming our true self.  We let go of the need to please others.
  2. What do I need to know now?  – This is where we get in tune with that quiet, authentic voice that has been there all along, but has perhaps taken the back seat to responsibilities, expectations of others and life in general.  Take some time for yourself, sit quiet and ask yourself that question.  See what comes up.
  3. What should I explore?  – Often in our younger days we may have explored socially accepted  or expected pursuits and maybe it is some of those that you can go back to and explore through the lens of your new life viewpoint – finding a renewed sense of connection and purpose in them, but in our later phases when our personality is secure enough to explore the underdeveloped side of our personality, we may also find ourselves drawn to areas that we would have never given ourselves permission to explore in earlier life  but where there is passion and growth available for us (for example, a very “masculine” man taking up knitting later in life or a very “doting on husband” woman taking up intercontinental solo trips).  Chances are it is a very real part of yourself looking to express itself.  Give it some light.  

Asking yourselves these questions can start you looking at life in a new way.  I know I am going through this right now.  I have struggled with who I am and how I fit in.  I have left a job and am still on the threshold of something, not sure what yet though.   Let me know how it goes for you.

Midlife: How does it feel for you?

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Today, I heard some words that struck me.  I was at the end of a Pilates class and as we were doing our final physical check-ins, the teacher noted that if things feel worse at the end of a session, then you need to change levels – that you need to stop fighting the movements and think about how it feels for you rather than what you are trying to achieve effort wise. 

Maybe all this chaos in midlife is a way of stirring up the dust not to make it more difficult to be successful but to actually facilitate success.

In midlife, we pause, we push, we pull apart, but how often do we ask ourselves how is it feeling for us?  Especially moms who have spent a big part of their adulthood raising children, holding down a job, keeping it all together and looking like it is effortless.  What are we trying to achieve effort wise?  For many of us, it is perfection.  Perfect spouse, perfect friend, perfect mom.  If things feels worse at the end of a session, then you need to change levels.

When was the last time I asked myself how it felt for me?  When did I even come into the equation?  Why would I when perfection is an endless run on a long road with no breaks.  It’s being happy when you are not, it’s denial and depravation and loneliness and judgement.  I have come to realize that midlife is the perfect time to change levels, or at least check in and come face to face with out emerging selves.

How does it feel for you?  Is it time to stop fighting the movements?

 

 

 

Judging Midlife

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I was an English major.  English.  I used to tell myself that it was great being an English major.  Where else could you get art, history, philosophy and psychology all rolled into one?  Now I wonder why didn’t anyone pull me aside to tell me that it would take me nowhere.  

I made decisions based on what felt good:  I studied English, I volunteered, I traveled, I took low-paying public service jobs.  I felt great.  I got married, started a family, got the minivan and had it all.  That was my 30s.  40s hit and I realized I was low-paid, burnt out, and not needed as much by my family, oh,  and the minivan broke down.  Retirement was now closer than college and I wasn’t as young and cute as the rest of the world seemed to be.  I hit a wall.  I quit my job.  I started looking for myself again.

I haven’t found her.  What I have found is a bunch of skills no longer needed at this stage of motherhood:  spotting an uncovered light socket, always having cheerios and baby wipes on hand, car entertainment, silly faces, voices and jokes, sunscreen and colorful sunglasses.

Now I am reduced to the drive by drop off, an early bedtime (for me), long walks with my dog alone, teen vocab I don’t understand and the pure judgment of my every move by those who once thought I was magical.

Midlife so far has been a disappointment.  The rollercoaster has stopped on top of the hill and I have seen the whole park, now it seems a quick, terrifying decent into twists and turns: grey hair, aches and aging, comfortable shoes and a very untrendy, practical wardrobe.

I am an English major amongst Chief Listening Officers, App developers and Sustainability Experts 

What is one to do?  I read all the articles: 5 tips, 7 ways, 4 things to do but they don’t have my answers.  In a world where “what do you do” is a leading social question, I have failed.  What do I do??  What DO I do?  What do I do next?  I know what I have DONE, but it doesn’t translate to the future.  It doesn’t give me confidence.  It gives me shivers.  How do I keep going?  How do I make it fresh again?  Can I?  How do I reinvent myself?

So far I am disappointed in midlife.  It sucks.

 

Midlife – Not a Cultural Fit

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My life has been the most unstable career wise its ever been this year.  The inspirational quotes that say “when you jump you fly” forget to say “or you fall”.  I have experienced the second this year.  I chose to leave a solid job of more than a decade because the new head of the company decided I was not a good cultural fit.  She didn’t know me or what I was capable of, but I think my exploratory, passionate, ask why personality did not fit in well with her structured, process, policy and procedure type of world.  I get it. In that arena, I probably am a liability. So I chose to leave.

I pursued other interests for a while, but nothing was really more than a hobby and the thought of making a living on them just seemed too far off.  So I caved and returned to the workforce, only this time I picked up a 130 mile commute.  Better fit, but 15 hours a week I was in the car.  Unfortunately, when you live 65 miles from the nearest big city, this is reality.  But another opportunity came up recently where it was closer to home and the hours seemed great.  I was eager to jump in and start.

I worked a notice and a week later I jumped in with both feet to this new job.  Three days in I was told I was not a good cultural fit.  Five days in, I left.

What does cultural fit mean? Why can’t I fit in?

In midlife, I have experiences and skills, I want to walk in an make a difference.  I am able to take what I have learned and translate it into a new arena.  So why is it so hard to find a place to do this?  Maybe it’s them.  Maybe it’s me.  Damn, I still need dental insurance.

It’s so hard not to take midlife personally.  Kids get older and don’t need you as much.  I am not even a good cultural fit in my own home!

I think there is a lesson here and I am not sure what it is.  I can’t google it, I can watch a how to you tube video, I can’t just check out – what to do?

There must be a third way.  An option, a calling I am not hearing.  Even when you jump and fall you will eventually hit the ground.  I still feel like I am freefalling.

Just call me a midlife cultural misfit.  I will let you know when I land.

Losing my way midway

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What happens when you silence a part of yourself for the “should”?  Like water flowing, it finds a way to reroute itself.  The same is true for our inner selves.  After being a “super-commuter” for several months, 5 days a week, I had it.  I could no longer do it.  I was exhausted, never saw my family and missed most every school program they had.  Although I loved the work and it fit me, the commute did not.  I decided to take a leap with a closer opportunity.  Although there were many red flags with the supervisor and with the organization itself, I once again convinced myself that retirement, security and benefits should rule my decision making and that I could fit any job even if it didn’t fit me.

I resigned from my commute and once again, midway through life, became the new girl.

It was a disaster.

The red flags proved to be right, there was hostility, pettiness and mixed messages from day one.  I was told I wasn’t a good fit on day 3 and on day 5 I left.  DAY 5.  On one hand, I am so glad that I figured this out quick and the damage was pretty minimal. On the other hand, this blow to my ego makes me want to curl up in a fetal position and cry.  I think what I realized is I don’t truly know who I am in midlife.  I don’t know where I fit in and what I want to do.  I have worked all my life but in a more reactionary way: I applied, they accepted, we made it work.  Until we didn’t.  I realized that my old way of rolling with things and changing who I am to please others just isn’t going to help me in the next phase of my life.  Nowadays, there are so many work years that we have.  I am looking at maybe another 20 years in the workforce if not more.

So many articles and books talk of finding yourself.  How do you find yourself amidst family life, money concerns and small towns with limited resources?  How do you find yourself when, as the song says, you didn’t know you were lost?  How do you search for meaning in a world full of connected disconnect?  How do you pick yourself up and dust yourself off when the world around you is buzzing and flying by?  It is the mayhem of the midway.  I am once again off the tracks, looking for meaning in a meaningless space.

Where do we go from here?

What Midlife Brings

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In Midlife, the tangled knot of our ego and belief system starts to unravel and we stand vulnerable and confused.  What was all this for?  How did I get here and what does it mean?  How do I move forward embracing the next phase of life?  One that asks new things from me, that demands my full attention lest I fall asleep at the wheel and end up in life’s ditch.  Yet it is a new road, one that we haven’t travelled on – one that was only for the old and outdated, not for me, not for you.

And why has my body started to betray me, despite all the times it has been a faithful companion, answering my requests for productivity without sleep, vibrancy without nutrition and perfection without purpose?  Why all of a sudden do those laugh lines seem deeper? The lightness seems more settled? and the world changing just as fast as I am seems to be forgetting?

Sure, I can hold on to a chapter that I am proud of, moments where I was the closest to the sun.  I can follow the urgent suggestions all around me to hold on desperately lest the world find me invisible tomorrow.  Exasperated, I look around, and experience a loneliness not know before.  A longing for innocence and time and dreams.  A longing to wonder about the future and know all things are within my grasp.

The loneliness comes from that space, like a secret you learn much later that leaves you feeling  hurt and left out.  Knowing that you were not the only one who didn’t know but embarrassed to say so in order for others to think the ruse of innocence was all on purpose.  You were always too clever to be fooled.

Yet in that loneliness is a seedling.  There is potential.  But for it to grow, the tangled knot has to be loosened.  Time has checkmated you.  There is no backwards. There is forward.  In forward, there are choices and lessons and decisions.  We see ourselves as if for the first time, learning to ask for what we need like a toddler.  There is a resistance as well, like trampling feet on a busy sidewalk, the seedling must endure.

We must go forward in our new humility.  Seeing things from a new perspective, finding our space as we carefully pull at the knot.  Respecting all the knot has brought to us and gives us in the moment.  Learning to hold it and cherish it and know that it is ours and ours alone.

Although, how do I learn to let go when I have worked so hard and I am tired?  Why can’t I just keep wrapping the rope around my knot? Big knots are powerful – they can be wielded like a weapon.  Without it I am defenseless. Yet, the calling is loud and it is hard to ignore it.  Those who have untied their knots are hard to see, for they are free.  They no longer need to show others their knots, comparing sizes and telling tales of each twist and turn of the rope.

Midway through midlife I wonder, I have no answers, only my knot in hand, looking forward.

Hiding Out in Midlife

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I just realized that it has been months since I posted.  I went back and read my posts and, wow, so much has happened.  Life has happened.  I was so excited to take a leap of faith and it was so thrilling and unknown and uncomfortable and then, bam, just like that, it stopped.

What happened?  I got scared.  Well, I didn’t at first.  I was working my new world – exploring my new landscape.  I even found a friend in the neighborhood who had taken a leap of faith as well to start her own business.  I was slowly putting feelers out and turning the ship around when my ego got scared.

How did this happen?  Well, we had given up health insurance and went on that beautiful thing called COBRA – who can ever afford this???  My ego started to kick in with messages about how irresponsible I was to leave a job with benefits.  We were looking at other policies that were really just catastrophic coverage.  That doesn’t sit well when you have kids.  The final straw was a comment made by my husband’s coworker about the irresponsibility of the situation and that was it.  I caved.

At this time, a call came in offering me an opportunity that was just in line with my old job – the old me.  Only it was 65 miles away.  I took it.  I threw away the clippings of my new life that I was trying to root and did what everyone around me expected of me.  I once again became responsible.  Only this time the price tag was a 3 hour roundtrip commute everyday.  5 days a week.  But we have insurance.

That part of me is all but quiet again.  Why did I do this?  Why couldn’t I have survived the storm?  Why did I cave so quickly?  I don’t know.  I am still working through this.  I am so disappointed in myself.   Even after I took the job, opportunities were coming in from the momentum I had gained in my adventure.  I turned them all away like unwanted solicitors. I shut the lights off and locked the doors.  Now I sit in the dark.

I am trying though.  I am still here not sure what to do.  Why is it so hard?  Why can I not believe in myself to be all in?  I stay here hiding out.