Let’s talk about mid-life transitions.
Mid-life can be a long transition – starting somewhere around forty years of age and ending around sixty years of age.
Within these twenty years, other life transitions may occur: Aging parents may need more care or may pass. Children may go to college or move out on their own. Divorce or loss of a spouse may force us to make changes we weren’t prepared for.
It is these other life transitions that tend to trigger something within us that says, “Do it now!” Or asks, “Am I truly happy?” Or wonders, “Who am I without (Insert person or thing that has had your focus)?
These are the wake-up calls that spark an urgency or sense of mortality within us. And I have known a lot of women who have tried to quell that wake-up call. Who have missed the opportunity to lean in and explore. Who claim to not have time for self-reflection, grief, or to choose for themselves at a time when the natural transition calls for it.
But ten years later these same women find themselves trying to patch over the torn places. They feel restless and unsettled. They’re exhausted from trying to keep up. And the thing they tell me is, “I thought it was a passing thought. You know, a moment of the ‘poor mes’. But it has stayed with me all this time…in the back of my mind.”
I urge you to consider this: when your psyche is presenting a notion that something may be amiss, listen.
Life’s natural transitions, such as the passing of a parent, can rock us. There is a natural period of grief and readjusting of identity. We tend to evaluate who we are in relation to the parent, whether we had a loving relationship, and whether there is any unfinished business or regret.
The same is true when a child goes out on their own. Who am I now? What do I want to do with the extra space and time? How do I parent an adult child who is on their own?
If we let ourselves reflect inwardly during these transitions, we are more likely to start sorting through our own past, who we’ve been, how we’ve lived our life, and how we want our life going forward to be different. And come to some conclusions sooner rather than later.
If you find yourself in one of life’s transitions, don’t be in such a hurry to get out of it. Sit with it. Let it speak to you. Listen. Ask yourself, “what is there here for me to tend to?” The answers may surprise you.
Even without one of these transitions to push us, mid-life can be a time to give ourselves this deeper kind of care. Check back here for tips and tools for navigating midlife. Carol is a coach working with women in mid-life. For more information about working with her, check out carolholguin.com.
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