Are you widening in midlife?
(And no, I don’t mean your waist)
I don’t know about you, but life can feel fairly linear sometimes, especially when it’s “full on” (a lovely little term for shit perpetually hitting the fan).
It can be very much the vibe of - Put one foot in front of the other and keep on going. And if you keep doing that, eventually you’ll arrive at the time when all the stars align, you’re at the perfect weight, everyone in your life gets you, you’re finally recognised for all the work you do for everyone, you’ve reached the right rung on your career ladder and someone has finally discovered hangover-free wine. You have arrived. You might even get a Welcome Cocktail.
Poet and author Diane Ackerman wrote beautifully: “I don’t want to get to the end of my life and find I have just lived the length of it. I want to have lived its width of it as well.”
For women in the messy, mayhem, roles and responsibility-laden midlife, this can feel hard. Really hard. It’s all about getting through the day, checking off the To-Do’s while trying desperately to remember there is a whole, live, individual person in there underneath all the names and labels and hats you wear.
Yet there has never been a better time in history (and in many ways the first time in history) to widen our lives. To find purpose, passion, penchants for whatever lights you up to give you that width.
Yet, it’s a struggle. To juggle the amazing opportunities we have along with heavy heapings of pressures and expectations.
So much of my coaching is helping women find the context of their life - do I need to pull back and get perspective or do I need to hone in and find the actual issue that is blanket smothering so much?
Perhaps realising this time won’t last forever, or finding that little muscle that is stopping the whole body from working - a self-limiting belief, a thought that isn’t yours.
I wrote last week about the fact that because of the outdated conditioning and societal narratives telling us who we should be, it means we can’t always trust our first thought.
And here’s one of the most damaging first thoughts….. especially at midlife: That you are waiting to arrive. That if you tick all the boxes on the Checklist of Success that you created when you launched into adulthood, that you are done. That you can sit back and sip that cocktail while your life spreads out perfectly before you.
Becoming
Instead, to find the width of your life, you need to think of constantly becoming. To become who you are now, at this age and stage, whatever that is, and to keep investing in who you are becoming in all the glorious and gory ages and stages.
I had a client recently who was really frustrated with the fact her life wasn’t feeling the way she imagined she wanted it to be feeling for all the effort she was putting in.
I could tell she had two software systems running at the same time… the outdated one that was still expecting her to ARRIVE, and a newer one, emerging from a reconnection to self and a re-evaluation of that original outdated checklist. I asked her to make two lists: all the goals she had at 35, what was the life she was trying to create and was driving her? Then do the same for 55, her age now.
Out of maybe 15 goals / ambitions / drivers in each list, only 2 or 3 were the same. Under the 35 list it was about providing safety for her child as a single mother, building a career that would sustain them, getting to points on a map where she thought she would arrive. Under the 55 list however, it was about trying to enjoy life more, build community now her daughter was becoming an adult soon, only doing work she really enjoyed.
Energy Outage
What I saw in the two lists was two very different energies. The first one was a Chasing energy, the second was a Choosing energy. Yet she was trying to become the person in the 55 list by using the energy of the person in the 35 list.
We probably all need some Chasing energy in the early part of life, but stay on that for too long, in a constant state of hustle, drive, and always changing the goalposts, and you’ll eventually end up in burnout and overwhelm.
For her, she had reached a stage where she could step into her power more, choosing, widening her life, still directed but looking at the view to take in other options and possible pathways. As soon as she understood that, everything has changed.
When my mum was dying after five years of needing 24 hour care after her stroke, and my husband left, I was forced into a Settling energy. Not settling for (although I did have to accept her situation and single parenting), and not settling down (that didn’t quite work out as planned!) but a Settling in to myself. The Chasing adventure energy that had driven the early part of my adult life had helped me avoid that rather un-glitzy state. But now forced into a domestic dynamic of caring for my mum and 3 small kids with so little agency in my life, all my previous escape routes where shut down. Agency is a huge value of mine, but I loved my mum and family and kids so I had to settle into a space where I couldn’t escape.
I had no choice but to look into the mirror and figure out who I was now that all the stages of glamorous career and adventurous chasing had been removed. It was painful, uncomfortable, exciting and life-changing work. It took therapy, soul-searching, learning to be vulnerable, finding courage (real courage, not just the kind that allowed me to jump out of planes or go hiking up volcanoes) and a growing up, but it changed the course of my life.
Now, that I’m divorced, my mum has gone and I’ve become a whole new person with a whole new career, the energy in my life right now feels all about Creating. There is still untold laundry and inexplicable amounts of responsibility, so this doesn’t mean I’ve whipped my bra off and I’m skipping through fields of sunflowers all the time…. but the driving force behind me is no longer Chasing, or Settling, but Creating and exploration. Of constantly becoming a more experienced parent, of constantly becoming a better coach, of constantly becoming a more nuanced writer, of becoming a women of 54 and all the becomings I am, while also taking more time to look around me.
And often with clients, I’m helping them realise they are in a different energy period of their life and they need to update their software.
Even parenting requires constant becoming.
We think we become a parent when we click that first baby seat into the back of the car and drive this small human home. We’ve ‘arrived’ as a parent. Em, no. Every year I’ve had to become a newer version of a parent as my eldest became older. Until she turned 13, I’d never been the parent of a teenager. Until she turned 18 I’d never been the parent of an adult. And it’s not just their ages; it’s also their personalities.
I have to keep constantly becoming a parent to the constantly becoming versions of them.
What kind of parent do I want for each of them at each age and stage of their lives?
How do I become that parent?
The core of my current becoming (as a person and as a coach) is exploring how to age powerfully. At the core of that is having a deep and dynamic relationship with self, being an active participant in our own constant becoming. It’s not unusual to feel lonely at times, especially when life changes and kids grow up or relationships grow apart. I think that loneliness doesn’t stem from a disconnection from others though, but from a disconnection from ourselves. Ageing powerfully is connecting to yourself and becoming who you need and want to be.
I hope every woman in the busy midlife, connects to herself, is proactive about investing in herself and becomes the woman she wants to be. This week I had the privilege of being interviewed in the amazing Ready to be Real podcast by Sile Seoige where we really dive into becoming and all that it can be. I hope you have a listen and enjoy.
Here’s a snippet -
Podcast on Apple -
Podcast on spotify -
I’m running a special online webinar next week called Revive & Thrive on coming out form under the overwhelm to become more you. (Paid subscribers get a 10% discount - just email me at alana@alanakirk.com)
I’d love to know how you think about your own becoming, so please join me in the comments below (if you’re reading this in an email, please click on the link below to go through to the website to join the conversation.)
And please take a moment to like and share if you enjoyed it!
If you’d like to take a moment to check in on your life to see how you can manage things differently, you can book a one hour 1:1 Discovery Coaching Session with me where you get to think about you, how to manage this life you are living, and invest some time and thought on you. Radical idea that, is it? To invest some time and thought on you? Details are here.
Paid subscribers get a 10% discount - just email me at alana@alanakirk.com
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