Tag Archives: aging

Heart in an apple

The Midlife Heart: Palpitations

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With midlife comes many opportunities for women: a chance to step out of and redefine long held roles within a family structure, a chance to have more time to pursue often long forgotten interests, and hopefully more financial freedom to do so.

Within this transitional period, as we get used to the new us, we might find that the internal seems to be transitioning as well. Our midlife body may bring with it a series of reminders that it, too, is along for the ride.

A friend of mine recently shared her story of going to the ER convinced she was having a heart attack, only to find it turned out to be a panic attack, her first one ever. She has experienced heart palpitations on and off since then leading us to have many conversations about the midlife heart. You might even feel palpitations in your neck rather than in your chest!

If you have having heart palpitations for the first time in midlife, you are not alone. Lots of us are experiencing them as well.
They can be related to midlife anxiety, stress, hormones, thyroid issues, certain medications, too much caffeine, depression and yes, heart muscle issues.

It can even be that our “heart” becomes more open and sensitive in midlife, trying to pass on messages of things that no longer serve us. Dr. Christine Northrup talks about finding out what your heart is trying to tell you. Of course, stabilizing insulin levels and blood sugar is a first step in the right direction. She also suggests looking at progesterone cream or even estrogen for possible relief.

If you have heart palpitations and have ruled out any serious medical conditions as the cause, here are a few natural ways to deal with them:

  1. Reducing caffeine intake (although that’s not happening in my house – for the safety of all who live around me)
  2. Look at your diet. What habits have you developed that are no longer serving your health? Poppin by Wendy’s to grab a small Frosty on the way home from work can be refreshing, but remember it comes with 40 grams of sugar AND 48 grams of carbs. Why not find a knockoff recipe like this one? There are so many healthy recipes to replace the foods we love, why not be inspired??
  3. Trying meditation or acupuncture to deal with midlife stress (many insurance companies are now offering acupuncture benefits – Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Tennessee, for example, has added 50 visits a year to many plans for 2020). You can find an acupuncturist near you here.
  4. Try using the heart mudra (hear me out…I have a friend who this really helped – it is a hand position with an energy lock – you can find a 58 second video of it here.
  5. Try this pressure point technique.
  6. Try an Epsom salt bath (although there are risks if you have low blood pressure, so do some research)
  7. Try the Valsalva Maneuver. Ok, this one may feel odd but it stimulates the Vargus nerve. Many of us do it to clear water out of our ears, but it can help with rapid heart beats. Coughing and splashing cold water on your face can also be good, easy grandma-approved remedies to try.
  8. For overall heart care, try taking Blackstrap molasses regularly. Rich in potassium, calcium, magnesium, and iron, this stuff is Apple Cider vinegars suave cousin. Dissolving a teaspoon in a glass of water and drinking it daily can help – you just have to get used to the taste and strong smell.

Make sure that when your heart talks to you, you listen. In midlife, our bodies start to reveal long held secrets and patterns. What we do with that information is up to us.

What other remedies have you used and found helpful?

walkway with woman walking alone

The losing end of parenting….

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Today, my 13 year old daughter told me the way I dressed embarrassed her. I thought I looked good; I felt good in what I was wearing.

She told me I wear the same thing again and again and she would not be going on that walk with me, that people might see us. My heart broke.

I thought back to when she was young and wore her favorite shirt or pants or boots again and again and I would desperately try to hold back and let her be who she was and comfortable and happy in clothes that made her feel good.

How do I tell her that as she is coming into her own fashion sense, I feel that I am slowly losing touch with mine? How could I ever share with her the frustration and disconnect that I am all of a sudden feeling with a midlife body that is changing shape without my consent and taking my self-confidence with it?

How do I tell her that the clothes she is seeing me now choose are an outward reflection of the safety and comfort that I feel I am desperately losing on the inside in midlife? My changing as mother, my new role as an older female who feels suddenly dismissed within a youth-obsessed culture or the brutal reality of mortality that has somehow slipped into the room unnoticed and imposingly just stands there barrelchested?

How do I tell her how distant I feel from myself and how sad I am that she, my baby, is growing up and I realize that my ability to reproduce will soon gone forever?

I want to run to her and hold her tight and tell her to make good choices and be whoever she wants to be and celebrate life and that I love her more than she will ever know or at least until she herself is a mother.

But, for now, I don’t do any of that. I smile and nod with acceptance and put my headphones in and take that walk by myself.

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.