You can’t judge your story by the chapter you’re currently in.
‘I can’t write about the heaviness I feel about this birthday and share it with the world. It sounds so somber.’ I told my husband as we sat on the couch sipping our morning coffee.
The conversation had circled to my upcoming 55th birthday and a new writing piece I started. I wanted the article to carry a tone that celebrates the midlife season and one that helps ease the dread and anxiety that persists around ageing.
Instead, the story echoed a melancholy I needed to unravel first. To do that unravelling, I had to take a step back in time to the start of my midlife chapter.
What’s the point of growing old?
If someone asked me eight years ago to describe myself in one simple sentence, adjectives such as intuitive writer, psychology graduate, family historian, and creative entrepreneur would not have made the list. That’s because those are parts of my identity that were still waiting to be unveiled. That unveiling happened when I reached midlife.
I often describe the transition to midlife as my most transformative life stage. That’s because I didn’t quietly retreat into the backdrop of life. I refused to decline into obscurity because someone said ‘your best years‘ are behind you.
Rather, midlife felt like a re-awakening to life in a whole new way.
As an INFJ personality who thrives on drawing deeper meaning from my experiences, the transition to midlife was a pivotal turning point. Like so many others who cross the threshold into this life season, I dreaded the future, largely because of the sombre views that surrounds ageing.
Yet, something wasn’t adding up.
It didn’t make sense that we live in an age where life expectancy is increasing, yet our perceived value is capped at midlife. If that’s the case, what’s the point of growing old, I wondered? Why doesn’t life spans end when you reach that middle age. Was I missing something in the argument that decades of lived experience, wisdom, skills, and contributing to society in pivotal roles counted for nothing because you’ve reached an age on a calendar that makes someone uncomfortable?
An Unexamined Life
The unexamined life is not worth living.
SOCRATES
Socrates famously said an unexamined life is not worth living. I wonder if it’s because he recognised the valuable insights you can miss when you don’t understand what flows beneath the surface of your life.
Partly because
In my case, an unexamined life meant moving through decades without truly knowing my deeper self. I was too caught up in the frantic pace of life and the roles that needed my attention. And partly because I was existing but not fully living.
Along the way, I never noticedthat I was slipping further and further away from my true nature. My relationships, although valued, felt constrained. Though I was moving through time, something felt missing. Like missing pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. It was only when I stood at the threshold of midlife that those discrepancies became obvious.
What influences your thoughts, your feelings, and your choices? Because whatever it is, it will always show up in your actions.
As I stood there at the start of my midlife season, facing those feelings of dread, I paused to question its origin.
- Where did that angst flow from?
- What was contributing to that sense of dread, and
- Can you shift those limiting beliefs. Because all it does is cause harm to those who are saying it and to those who believe and internalise it?
Three things became clearer:
- Dread and anxiety about ageing can strip your curiosity and willingness to approach your future with openness.
- Worse, it can discourage you from pursuing wholehearted living – the kind that brings together your innate strengths, natural abilities, your creativity, your passions and vast life experiences.
- It can weigh down your spirit and instil a sense of helplessness and complacency instead of igniting the freedom to explore and uncover the unexpected possibilities and richness that all life stages hold.
Particularly, when you view yourself as one that’s constantly evolving. Psychoanalyst, Britt Marie Schiller (PhD) calls that the self that is never completed.
A Journey of a Thousand Miles
When I chose to approach midlife from this perspective I started experiencing the opposite of dread and fear. I started to find my way back to my truest self. That’s the self that holds all those beautiful pieces of you – your passions, your creativity, your innate strengths – all the things that makes you unique. And that equips you to help make the world around you a softer place for others.
It’s why I launched this blog, joined a writing community on Substack and designed the Midlife Roadmap. These resources share a common objective – to spark curiosity in others struggling to find a footing in the midlife transition.
I would not have reached those goals if I didn’t examine my life and unpack and dismantle oppressive views about ageing that doesn’t make sense. And more importantly that causes harm to individuals, families, and society.
But what is it that causes us to blindly believe what we’re told and follow paths through life that doesn’t honour our truest, authentic selves?
A Life Interrupted
If you have a history of that included trauma, social injustice, significant loss, abuse, neglect or conditioned roles that haven’t been tended later in life, it will leave shadows that follows you into your future. For me, those shadows stretched far back to South Africa’s sombre social history. But that’s a topic for another time.
In her book, The Garden Within, Dr Anita Phillips describe trauma as an earthquake that shakes your inner world. She maintains that the effects of trauma can feel like aftershocks that extend decades into the future. It shows up as low stress tolerance, unwanted behaviours, and triggers that causes you to live life on what feels like shaky ground.
Add that to the persistent negative views on aging alongside the inevitable ups and downs of coping with big life changes and it can leave you grappling to find your footing. For me, it showed up recently when I approached my birthday, and reached what feels like the midway mark in my midlife chapter.
Milestone birthdays like these is usually a time when you tend to take stock of your life, your goals, your dreams and notice how far you’ve come and how far you still keen to go.
The climate surrounding my dreams and goals feels stagnant, like I’d bumped against an invisible wall. I was in a waiting season where nothing seems to be moving forward.
If you’ve been that in-between state of no longer, but not yet, particularly when the stakes are high, you’ll relate to the stress it can generate.
Caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place
This is also when I found myself caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place, trying to strike a balance between deeper honesty and optimism about my midlife journey while feeling stuck in a waiting season. So I reverted to the one thing I’d learned in decades of conditioned living – I built a hedge of privacy around my angst.
But the risk of building hedges around your vulnerabilities is that it also keeps the good stuff out. In my case, it created a barrier my personal journey that flowed into my writing. This is disastrous for an an intuitive writer whose writing flows from my lived experiences.
The article felt lopsided because it missed the intersection between honouring the bittersweet realities that so often unfold in our journeys. There are always lows that accompany the highs, and losses that intertwine with your wins.
I wasn’t giving the article enough room to breathe and expand into what clinical psychologist and author Dr Ramani Durvasula calls stacking multiple truths, the core of radical acceptance. These are truths that apply to the same situation but don’t necessarily fit together well. She maintains that once you can acknowledge these truths that co-exist alongside each other, it can move you through denial and dissonance and help you foster acceptance.
Will Ageism Ever Go Quietly into the Night?
The challenge in sharing this struggle in a culture where the decks are already stacked against empowered ageing, carries the risk of stoking those embers. Particularly because the attitudes that underlie age bias are often rooted in falsehoods as a recent article describes. It frames ageism as one of the last socially acceptable prejudices that psychologists are working to change through various interventions.
I welcome this type of focus on anti-ageism interventions. It’s such an important conversation to have publicly. But also with ourselves as midlifers because those falsehoods are so pervasive it can filter into our subconscious and impact the quality of our midlife experiences.
Do other midlifers face a similar struggle in their journeys, I wondered. If so, how do you break through that barrier?
Is Your World Too Loud?
Have you ever felt like the noise that surrounds your life has been turned up so loud you can barely hear yourself think? Much less process the many voices inundating you with constantly shifting beliefs, views, and injustices. Instead, it depletes your soul’s capacity to hold you steady.
All the chaos vying for your attention makes it impossible to hear your inner voice – that gentle whisper you can only hear when you quiet the rumbling. Or, worse, when disaster catapults you off the spinning treadmill and forces you to clearly assess what’s in your control and what you’re shaped to do to help make the world a softer place.
In the midlife season, you need that stillness to question the status quo instead of blindly following mainstream thinking. At this point in life, you’ve lived enough and acquired enough inner resources to decide what holds truth in your lived experience. That includes what you make of your life at any age on the calendar.
A Scarcity Mindset Will Always Trip You Up
Waiting for things to happen at the right time and in the right way is one of the hardest things to do in a world revolving around a scarcity mindset. It compels you to seek quick, band-aid fixes for complex challenges that need stronger, deeper solutions. Rushing to fast-track your goals can lead to emotional distress and devastating outcomes, whether you’re fifteen or fifty-five.
You’ll know you’ve fallen prey to a scarcity mindset when there’s a persistent soundtrack playing in the background urging you to hurry up because your time’s running out. If you don’t make haste with your life plans now, you’ll miss your moment.
While it’s true that time takes on deeper significance when you reach midlife, there’s a difference between living with deeper intention and rushing dreams and goals from a place of fear.
The external push to make things happen quickly caused the angst I felt as my birthday approached. Yet, the goals I’m pursuing have been years in the making and needs enough time to come full circle.
How do you wait well in your waiting seasons?
How do you steward your waiting seasons well and not caught in chronic cycles of worry and stress?
In her book, The Garden Within, Dr. Anita Phillips references a quote that reminded me to leave space for the natural rhythm of the human spirit:
People… are defined by their creation in the image of God, living souls, whether they know it or not. They are not problems to be fixed, but mysteries to be honored and revered (The Pastor: A Memoir by Eugene Peterson).
If you’re constantly focused on quick, measurable outcomes for your aspirations it leaves no breathing room to just be and to honor the mysteries of your journey.
How Do You Balance Vulnerable Honesty with Optimism?
Circling back to the morning coffee chat with my partner, he listened quietly while I shared my thoughts and feelings. Then he replied:
‘I think you should write the piece. There may be someone out there who feels the same. Someone who needs to hear that it’s okay to feel these mixed emotions but they can’t locate the words inside themselves.
He added:
‘Writing is a gift and as with any gift or natural talent, you have a choice about what to do with that gift. You can bury it or share it with others. Even if you only reach one person with your message. That could be the one person who needs it most.’
Phew. I needed to let that sink in.
I took a sip of my coffee and watched the clouds drift in over the hills in the distance. Each morning I sit in the same spot watching the days start and end. And every day the skyline looks different. And I thought, isn’t that what life seasons and personal growth is like too – a constant drifting, evolving, and shifting.
Even though I’ve made big shifts in my midlife journey, it is an ongoing journey.
A Message for the One Person Who Needs to Hear This
As I let these insights take root, I took a deep breath, took hold of my pen and journal, and let these multiple truths find their way onto the page.
Four Key Takeaways
- Don’t judge your story by the chapter you’re currently in.
By only focusing on the chapter I’m currently in, I overlooked all the positive changes I’ve made spanning my entire midlife season. - Big Dreams Needs Enough Time to Bear Fruit
Being in a waiting season, doesn’t mean your life is stagnant. Some shifts happen faster than others. As long as you stay plugged into realistic goals and take small, brave, intentional, and manageable steps to craft the life you’re innately shaped for, the unfolding will happen in due time. - Quiet the Noise
This frantic world can easily overwhelm and drain you and strain your capacity to cope. There is so much beyond our control that calls for resilience and faith in something outside ourselves. - Make Space for Multiple Truths to Co-Exist
Crafting a fulfilling and empowering midlife chapter means making space for the inevitable highs and lows that accompany this life stage. It’s a natural part of the human experience and not something to conceal for fear that it may feed into the limited views and stigmas surrounding age.
I distilled my thoughts into a poem titled Living Quietly in a Noisy World. It’s available as a free resource on Substack.
Until next time, travel gently on your midlife journey.
XoXo
Glynis / The Midlife Introvert
If you’re struggling to find a footing in this life season, The Midlife Roadmap is a self-paced, digital course that walks you through six guideposts to help you thrive on purpose in this powerful chapter.