A manifesto for thriving at midlife
The Psychology of Midlife #2
In my first post about the psychology of midlife, which you can read here, I wrote about the emotional correlates of the midlife transition, how it all begins to feel as if life is going horribly wrong, and why that is completely normal at this time of life.
Today, I’d like to offer up a set of suggestions for thriving as you begin to pass through the challenging years of perimenopause and move on into menopause. And if you’re interested in the ideas I’m expressing here, you’ll find much more in my book Hagitude: Reimagining the Second Half of Life, and the forthcoming Wise Women: myths and stories for midlife and beyond.
If you’d like to listen to me reading this post, you’ll find the audio version at the end – paid subscribers only.
1. The changes and challenges we face at midlife are hard, but necessary. Winter is hard, but it’s necessary. The world might seem to be cold, hard, fallow, dormant – but winter is far from a dead season: under the surface, the seeds of new life are storing up strength for the coming of spring. Midlife is like that. It might feel as if everything is breaking, when actually it’s just changing. Transformation is part of life, and when we stop transforming, we stop fully living. Knowing that doesn’t make the hard times easier, but it gives them meaning.
2. If we want to pass through midlife and on into the second half of our lives in a grounded and authentic way, we need to fully inhabit the present, along with all its challenges and changes – and not in a spirit of resignation, but of acceptance, and maybe even quiet joy at the thought of a new story to come.
3. Midlife is the time to stop worrying about being different, and to let go of the need to conform to the cultural mythology which insists on defining who women must be. Define yourself, and if that means you’re different from the cultural image of perfection, be different. To be different can simply mean to be uniquely gifted; now is absolutely the time to discover, uncover and employ those unique gifts.
4. It’s never, ever, ever too late to become what you always dreamed of being. The old Devonware jug in my study, which I’ve written about several times and which I found in the run-up to my first midlife crisis (I specialised in them, back in the day), tells me this every single day, because engraved on it is the following verse:
No star is ever lost
we once have seen;
We always may be
what we might have been
Write that on a postcard or a sticker, and put it where you will happen upon it several times a day.
5. The ways in which we think about who we are depend on the stories we tell about who we are. Find your own story about who you are. Find a story in which you can shine; then reinforce it, embody it and tell it. Refuse all other stories which would reduce you. You are your own story; tell it your way.
6. Many women find that their dreams become more vivid at midlife, and this is for a good reason: we need their guidance. Dreams reflect the wisdom of our inner self: the part of us that understands what we need, even when we haven’t consciously figured it out, or even when we’ve already rejected it. Dreams can reveal the hidden insights which might point in the direction of a new path with heart. So take the time to nurture your dreams and to reflect on what they might be telling you.
7. We can’t mend everything. We can’t. And, sometimes, we simply shouldn’t.
8. At midlife, whether we like it or not, chaos is going to come knocking at our door. The origins of the word chaos illuminate its medicine: it is derived from the Greek khaos, referring to the void which was said to exist before the cosmos was created. Chaos, then, is the womb which waits patiently for new life: the potential out of which an entirely new world might be born. It can take you on a pretty wild ride, but that might just be the wild ride that you need.
9. Midlife is a liminal time, when we hover on the brink of profound transformation. Be gentle with yourself.
10. By the time we reach midlife and begin to approach menopause, women have taken a lot of shit. Rage is a natural response to the disintegration of old certainties and the dawning of new insights. Find ways to safely express it. Anger – and especially righteous anger, or wrath – can be a powerful agent of transformation. Don’t let it burn you up: use it as fuel.
11. Midlife years are often filled with uncertainty, as the old story disintegrates and we wait for a new story to emerge. The trick to navigating that time between stories is not to push too hard, but to let the new story emerge in its own good time – and to sit with, and perhaps even learn to cherish, the uncertainty of it all. Uncertainty is the apprentice of mystery. It’s an antidote to our desperate need to know, to predict, and so to control – and whether you’d like to or not, you’re not going to be able to manage your way out of your midlife transition. Uncertainty, then, can be a very fine ally.
12. Your body is changing; love it, all the way through. Look closely at the miracle of your changing hands, for example: the strange beauty of age spots and the elegance of more prominent bones. Learn to stay steady and grounded in a body which, as you age, will always be threatening to break. It’s brought you this far, and it’s designed to take you a long way farther. It deserves your love.
13. At midlife, and especially in the run-up to menopause, the profound changes we experience are encouraging us to re-evaluate our whole way of being in the world. It’s time to examine the structures which have supported you up until now. Are they the structures which will carry you into a positive and meaningful second half of life, or do you need to knock some of them down? Do the behaviours and habits – emotional, as well as physical – which you’ve acquired in the course of your life still serve you? Do your relationships nourish you, and the work that you do?
14. Take a leaf out of Apollo’s book, and the words inscribed on his temple at Delphi: Know thyself. Shine a light on all aspects of who you are. Acknowledge your Shadow. Examine your drives and motivations. Time is growing short: go deep.
15. Creativity is fundamental to women’s way of being in the world, and at midlife it’s a superpower. Create something – anything. Grow flowers, knit a scarf, stitch a quilt, glue some pictures to a piece of paper and make a collage, write a poem, pick up a pencil and draw, start a journal. Bringing new things into being reminds us that we’re part of a world that, just like we are, is in a constant process of becoming. Creativity can help us through the hardest times, and by helping us to express ourselves, it can help us to discover ourselves.
16. At midlife, many women find themselves longing for solitude and needing more time for introspection. No matter how impossible it might seem, it’s essential to carve out time – somehow, somewhere – to draw back from all the frantic busyness of life. At a time of such profound change, you need time to simply just be, to listen to what your body is telling you, and to listen for the soft whispers of your intuition.
17. It’s time to put yourself first for a change. At midlife, it’s time to start valuing yourself, to recognise your own needs, and to think of your time and energy as precious. This requires you to carefully consider how and when you offer yourself, to refuse to be exploited, and to expect reciprocity. It’s time to examine just what it is that we women carry, and why; it’s time to identify the burdens that you can safely lay aside.
18. Stop pleasing. Being nice is no longer your life goal. This new way of being in the world comes over many women after we emerge from the burning times of menopause to find ourselves profoundly changed. As perimenopause begins, the hormones that are associated with what we think of as ‘feminine qualities’ – relationality, emotion, the drive to nurture and to avoid conflict – begin to seriously decline. We’re likely to have considerably less patience with those who try to take advantage of us, and we suffer fools much less gladly. After decades of taking care of others or of deference towards them, we begin to realise that the maintenance of their happiness and self-esteem at the cost of our own is no longer our raison d’être. All of this is okay.
19. Refuse to be irrelevant. You have a voice and you have the right to use it.
20. Cultivate a sense of mystery. I think, as women grow older, that we miss mystery and we miss magic. But deep down, part of us knows that mystery still exists, and that it’s not out of reach. The part of us that can’t sleep properly when the moon is full, that stands on the seashore at sunrise, singing to seals. The part of us that yearns to set off alone one day into the dark woods – not, as when we were young, to test ourselves against the dangerous old woman who lives there, but one day perhaps to become her.
21. At midlife, some women find themselves strangely compelled to leave behind people or places, friendships, jobs or situations that just don’t seem to nourish them any more. Again, this is natural. Don’t rush into big decisions, but don’t be afraid to make them, either.
22. Menopause is coming. And it might be an end, but menopause is not the end: it passes, and there’s so much more life to come. Life is not over; it is simply, and irrevocably, changed.
Sharon
