Dear Midlife Maven,
I know you feel kicked around, pushed back, and voiceless. I see your struggle; I see your fear. I see you. And I see your potential for courage because courage is never present without fear, but always the willingness to face fears head-on. It’s like that Sarah Bareilles song, "Brave": “Say what you wanna say…and let the words fall out…honestly, I wanna see you be brave.”
I can say, “I wanna see you be brave” because I wish someone would have said it to me directly, not in some sideways, condescending, lip-service whimsical way like “You can become whatever you want to be,” but straight on: “Laura, I wanna see you be brave. I wanna see you kick the crap out of the day.” Because being brave starts, despite the fear and overwhelm pressing down.
Being brave starts from a small place. Being brave simply starts.
Finding my brave
It’s how I found my brave, Maven. When I was a junior in high school, I started dancing. Found that I freakin’ loved it! Went off to college and made it into one of the best dance programs in the country at the University of Michigan, and from there ensued a dance career with only two years of semi-formal training. At age 25, I leap-frogged into a totally different line of work with my husband and another couple, owning a flower shop, where I became the manager, wedding consultant, and then business owner. While simultaneously building my Fitness Pro career.
Fast forward a couple more years to when my husband’s career gave him the opportunity to move overseas…I moved. After 10 moves within 17 years, we found ourselves back in the US, and at age 50 I landed my dream fitness job. But I agreed to support my husband’s career, and we moved once again. Now 11 moves in, I developed crippling symptoms due to a tick bite and there was no energy or motivation to reinvent myself.
I clearly needed help, and within a year, I found my way to Breakthrough Shadow Coaching, which then prompted me to start my own coaching career. Now at age 60, I’m building a creative, in-person workshop, letting go of fear and the “what if’s” that the wilderness of midlife throws at you.
What have I learned? You don’t wait for “being brave” to show up. You just have to move. You take action because bold moves are essential for taking risks and getting you out of your comfort zone. Until you move, nothing will change. We midlife women have a lot confronting us. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: being a midlife woman is not for the faint of heart.
Midlife requires your bravery.
Aging and Physical Changes…
A quick question for you, Maven, to get started on these midlife minefields; have you felt the physical changes yet?
A little “off-putting” to put it mildly, right?! Society pressures us women to maintain a youthful appearance, to look, talk, and behave a certain way. Not meeting those standards is hell to pay. Worrying about the judgments society saddles us with can diminish our self-worth if we’re not careful.
It’s during this season we regularly face up to the reality that our youth and vitality are fading. Slipping through our clenched fingers like dune sand in the Imperial Sand Dunes just outside of Yuma. We can imagine relationships, career prospects, and an overall sense of attractiveness ebbing.
But here’s the thing, Maven, and I want you to hear me loud and clear: you are worthy. You are worthy!
Regardless of what society pressures you to be, you are worthy, and you’ll need to know that in the deepest part of you, if you’re going to face the physical changes, the bitchiness of fluctuating estrogen levels, the wrinkles, gray hair, changes in body shape…you name it! I found my worthiness during a terrible experience with Lyme disease. It set me right back on my butt, and I didn’t even know that it was already doing damage to my body for the ten years prior…that’s the crazy part! When I finally got checked out, it was learning about the longevity of Lyme disease, how to live with it instead of how to get rid of it. I felt like my body was completely disowning me.
Finding my brave meant embracing my experience by reaching out for help from a coach. She helped me face my debilitating shadow beliefs and do the bone-bending internal work of changing habits and mindsets that didn’t serve me.
Sounds like a party, doesn’t it? 🙂 There’s actually a lot to celebrate now.
Career Stagnation or Change
Perhaps, Maven, you’ve faced career challenges in this wilderness. Our family’s constant moving about from my husband’s ever-evolving career never allowed me to experience career stagnation per se. Nevertheless, career stagnation inspires change, and I can say a thing or two about career changes–that’s for damn sure!
In fact, my mind is racing with all kinds of thoughts while I’m scribbling these things down for you. Let’s slow down so that I can actually read my writing when I type these things up!
Regardless of whether we’re contemplating career change because it’s stagnated or change is being forced on us, midlife is the season to evaluate our professional accomplishments. What have we done? What do we still want to do? What am I doing now to make sure that I accomplish the things I want to do in the second half of life? Fear that we’ve reached a plateau in our careers SO easily creeps in. Will I fulfill my potential? Will I get to do the things I really want to do?
Some of my clients who talk about stagnation often worry about job security, too. They feel stuck, blocked, stymied. What other suppressed metaphor do you need? The concern is that the current job no longer offers growth and challenges, which can often trigger more worries about layoffs when the industry changes. We’ve heard it from our youth: stagnation is the beginning of the end. Facing stagnation in our jobs can trip the “What the hell am I going to do?” switch and send us spiraling.
You get me?
Finding your brave during this time looks like not running away, speaking up, imagining a way out of the cage where you live.
Change and Reinvention
Speaking of “stagnation,” between that last sentence and this one I had to put down my pen, take a walk, and mix things up to sidestep my own creative stagnation. I felt it creeping in. I’ve got to practice what I preach, right?
Stagnation in midlife certainly triggers desires for change and reinvention. I can certainly speak to this. Midlife showed me how much more from life I wanted. I wanted so many things to be different. I wanted change even though change is so freakin’ scary. It made me feel like I was reinventing myself, which is exactly what I was doing, needed to do, and wanted to do even though it was difficult.
Let me say a little more about this, Maven. When I decided to be a coach after being coached during my darkest days dealing with Lyme disease, it was scary. I’m gonna do what?! It took me seeing that this new venture was really the culmination of what I had been doing my whole life: dance, fitness, being a business owner etc. Coaching- I saw-was a constellation that made sense of all these experiences. It gave form to my different, seemingly disparate accomplishments.
Finding your brave looks like tapping into your long neglected creative powers.
Sense of Self
This was the big unknown of midlife that inspired me to write to you. The sense of self. Midlife forces us to reassess our personal identity, values, and life purpose. We see what has gotten us here, and some things we like and other’s we don’t. It’s like we have to be reintroduced to ourselves. Who am I? What do I prioritize? What do I believe?
The real revelation for me, Maven, came when I found myself in midlife without a sustainable self-image because I spent the first half of my life prioritizing everyone else. I had wrung myself dry. In fact, my people- pleasing ways, immune-compromised me, and made it possible for Lyme to flourish. I started to see the connection between my sense of self and my priorities. It was a big deal!
Finding my brave meant questioning all the things I thought were true about me.
But here’s the thing. Going through all these changes prepared me for what I’m doing now. They forced me to move. They forced me to change. They forced me to find my brave. To see how big my brave is and grow it. And now I help others grow their brave.
And I can say, “honestly, I wanna see you be brave, Maven”
Love, Laura xxx
*I wrote this article for the Finding Your Voice Community. I am a contributor to their magazine and a VIP member in their community.
Certified Life Coach | Empowering women to prioritize their emotional health by using my proven reinvention process to get more of what they want in life | I'm the calm in their life storm |Creator of AffirMotion