some chapters from my midlife story
Midlife is not a crisis.
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It's also not nothing.
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It may *not be* the culmination of success, the rest at the end of a long journey of striving, that we're all kind of primed to expect by this culture. Or - if we end up here - there's a kind of a drop - I got what I wanted, but I don't feel how I expected to feel. Now what?
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Midlife is a rebirth. And birth is often violent and terrifying.
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I live in a world of duality now. I've lived in duality for a few years now, but this new duality is different.
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My old duality was a duality of allegiance to myself and my truth on the one hand, but of self-deprecating fawning to the world on the other.
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Of down-playing my successes, and over-explaining any deviation from the path prescribed by the over-culture.
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Of second guessing myself (the external pressure is just so intense) and keeping a lot about the true me hidden, for fear of judgement.
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I thought I was doing a good job of keeping these two worlds separate but the truth is, every time I disparaged myself out loud, it sunk in. It corroded me.
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I used to have a respectable job as an entrepreneur selling beauty (this culture understands the need to beautify) making 6 figures.
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And then I dropped that (!!), ended a 4 yr long relationship (that provided for me), and became a life coach and an astrologer.
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There was shame. And terror.
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I cringed to tell people what I did for my new work. I felt like such a fraud. So lost.
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I had no relationship, no money, no career success, no property, no home. None of the markers the world checks for to see if you check out.
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This was an interesting gauntlet and for a while, I got distracted. I obsessed about the lack of money, applied for "real world" jobs. There was suffering there. I even tried to re-open moss.
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I'm kind of glad I did all that though - in a strange way, I said to the universe, I guess I'm willing to try this game one more time, if it means I survive, and the cosmos replied, this isn't the groomed and easy path you think it is. Look around, the tangled woods are everywhere.
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And if there is no groomed safe predictable path for me, then the obvious option (or rather the option I choose) is to continue on the way that is the most true and desired. All the closed doors became a freedom. Became an odd support, a welcome confirmation, for continuing to move forward as a life coach and an astrologer.
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I let moss go finally - fully. It still feels weird to walk into that room and see no vestige. I started calling myself a life coach, freely, easily, loudly.
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I wore the shape of my future self like someone wearing a spring dress through the snow, like shoes at the beginning of the school year, just a size too big, like a borrowed garment, with a mysterious scent. I wrapped myself in it, I slept in it, I spent too much time in front of the mirror, twisting through angles and poses.
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I started telling people the truth. And they started leaking their yearning. They started admitting they wished they could leave their marriages too. They told me of their financial dependence on their spouse. The shackles.
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Women are still bound. So many women are still married only because they need it to survive. On a financial level. A practical level.
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Or so we tell ourselves.
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I'm here to show you it's not true.
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I am so utterly grateful to the ones who held my wild vision with me, for me, instead of telling me to stand down.
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Who believed I could figure it out.
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Cause I could. And I can. And I am.
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And the freedom is worth the uncertainty.
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And the uncertainty is something you learn to dance with, even love.
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And many of you might be thinking, the privilege. And yes, the privilege.
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But I guarantee you have more wiggle room, more options, more hope, than you might think.
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I will hold that vision for you the way the wild ones, the elders, held it for me.
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Change something. Anything. A small thing.
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You deserve to be reborn. This is a second chance.
