Holding Life More Lightly
A midlife practice in letting go of control.
Last week I wrote about choosing your inner Mermaid over the conditioned Good Girl. I had lots of private messaged and it clearly struck a nerve.
It isn’t just that so many women in midlife want less pressure, less over-responsibility and more mental and emotional bandwidth. It’s that we want to use that extra bandwidth to be ourselves again. To create. To explore. To learn. To yelp and whoop and yes, occasionally sit down with a cocktail and do absolutely nothing.
I choose Mermaid as my anti-Good Girl relief because that’s what most makes me feel like me. Strong, vibrant, instinctive. Freely moving and twisting with the tides and currents of life (because my midlife has been very twisty and turny and seems to have no intention of evening out!). Flowing rather than controlling.
But maybe your real self isn’t a mermaid. Maybe she’s a lioness. A poet. A wild and fragrant flower. The sea. The moon. Whatever makes you feel most like yourself.
The more I practised it during my holiday in Donegal, the more I realised the key way to choose your mermaid over the Good Girl is to manage your attachment to everything.
The Good Girl grips tightly. The Mermaid loosens her grip... and trusts.
Trusts herself enough not to control everything because controlling everything is NOT YOUR JOB (despite being conditioned to think it is).
The Mermaid isn’t attached to the outcome
Donegal gave me endless opportunities to practise this again.
One evening, instead of eating dinner at the “proper” time, we wandered down to the beach at half six, went for a glorious swim, walked home dripping and laughing, lit the fire and then made dinner.
It sounds ridiculous to admit this, but for me that felt wildly liberating. My Good Girl likes dinner at the right time. Everything organised. Everything under control. Years of being responsible for everyone and everything means once I get dinner done, I can relax. My mermaid allows me to relax anyway and trust dinner will happen when it happens. Nothing terrible happened. I let life happen over a schedule and it felt good.
Then there was Spritz my lurcher puppy. She’s not a swimmer and doesn’t like being left alone. But after holding back on so many swims so we could tag tail with the dog, I decided to let my mermaid loosen the grip. My Good Girl would have stood on the beach beside her while everyone else enjoyed themselves before squeezing in a rushed swim of my own. Instead I tied her up with some treats and we all waded in.
Yes, she barked. Yes, she was unhappy for twenty minutes. And I went swimming. Eventually she just sat down and forlornly waited. But that swim was even more glorious because usually even the dog’s happiness normally comes before my own.
That’s how deeply this conditioning runs.
Sometimes somebody else is going to be unhappy because you’ve chosen a little happiness for yourself. That isn’t selfish. It’s equality. It’s accountability. It’s where boundaries are born.
Later in the week my daughters’ friends joined us for a couple of days. Of course I looked after them. I fed and watered them, and took them to jump into the freezing Atlantic but mostly I left them to get on with enjoying themselves.
Good Girl me would have been relentlessly checking they were happy, entertained, comfortable, fed, watered and having the holiday of their dreams. My Mermaid swished her tail and put down the burden of managing everyone else’s experience.
There’s a line I often say to clients because it’s something I relentlessly have to keep practising it myself:
It is not your job to make anyone else happy.
You will never please all of the people all of the time. So you might as well please yourself some of the time.
One thing I’ve learned having three daughters is that my attachment to the outcome of a happy family meal is always the problem. If one daughter says something to another and the atmosphere explodes, I experience it as failure (or they’ve let me down). Worse, I somehow feel responsible for fixing it.
When I was really struggling years ago, I saw a family therapist to help me navigate the hellscape of parenting three teenage girls on my own. She gave me two really important pieces of advice.
The first was, “Meet them where they are, not where you need them to be.” (I use this for everyone now).
But the second was simply, “Don’t get involved. Let them fight it out. It’s not your mess to fix.”
Every single time I’ve ignored that advice, I’ve ended up becoming the bad guy when they start fighting. This holiday I realised the outcome I’d attached myself to wasn’t dinner. It was harmony. Once I let go of needing everyone to get along perfectly, I could simply enjoy making the meal. I can’t control what one child says to another, but I can choose how I respond. They’re sisters. They’re going to fight sometimes. My attachment to happy-clappy Kumba ya dinners is only going to make me - and them- very unhappy. Only when I come to the table with no expectations does it just play out and my emotional triggers are kept at bay.
Every time I loosened my grip on the outcome, I enjoyed the experience more.
The Mermaid isn’t attached to her identity
The same thing happens with who we believe we are. For years I told myself I wasn’t someone who could enjoy cold water. Apparently nobody had told the Atlantic.
Now I’m swimming in Donegal at seven o’clock in the evening wondering why I waited so long. This is one of the most important aspects of my work. Helping women identify some really disempowering identities they have about themselves and what they’re able for.
On one of my long walks in Donegal, I’ve realised I’ve also become attached to another identity since my divorce. That I don’t have the time, the capacity, the emotional bandwidth, the desire, the ability to have another meaningful relationship.
But my mermaid knows that’s not true. It’s just a very convenient identity because it protects the frightened part of me. What if it isn’t actually true? What if it’s simply an old story that once kept me safe?
Sometimes our identities don’t describe us. They protect us. Perhaps part of midlife is allowing ourselves to outgrow them.
Mermaids are allowed to love. And be loved. So that’s a deep breathe for me.
The Mermaid isn’t attached to one plan
This doesn’t mean drifting through life without direction. It means planning without becoming imprisoned by the plan or attached to one very specific outcome or story of how it can be.
I often ask coaching clients, “What do you need for the next five years?” Not the next thirty. Not what’s just a continuation of the last chapter of your life.
What suits this one? The next six months. The next three years. Maybe success now looks like working three days a week. Maybe it means six months working and six months travelling. Maybe it means stepping sideways instead of climbing upwards.
One of my clients recently realised she’d been making career decisions based on who she’d been for the last three decades, rather than who she wanted to become next. As soon as she let go of that identity, she’s made a bold decision to work three days a week in a different location, giving her a by-location life for the next year or so - a completely different vision for her life.
One of my favourite coaching lines is this: The next decision you make is not the last decision you make. It’s simply the next right decision for the next bit of this meandering midlife.
Life has taught me that things change. Sometimes life changes them for us. Sometimes we change them ourselves. At 56, I’m building my life towards sixty.
I’ve got ideas for sixty to sixty-five. Could they all change? Of course. Keanu Reeves might yet appear and completely ruin my carefully considered plans.
But that’s exactly the point. Direction matters. Rigidity doesn’t. That’s what being a Mermaid really is. Not refusing to plan. Not refusing responsibility. Not becoming careless. Just loosening your grip enough to move with life instead of trying to control every current.
The more tightly we grip life, the heavier it becomes. The more lightly we hold it, the more fully we can live it.
What do you think? Where can you loosen the grip a little more?
My next online gathering for paid subscribers is next Wednesday 12th at 7pm Dublin time…. let me know if you didn’t get the link.
And if you want practical tools and techniques for embracing the real you a bit more, spaces are now open for my next group programme, My Midlife, redefined - A Practical Reset, starting 14th September for 10 weeks. Early Bird price is on until the end of the week. This is my favourite coaching adventure!!
You can also come join me in Marrakech next March for Soul&Spice 2027! You can start paying monthly now to spread the costs… it will be an unforgettable adventure - inside and out!
As always, if you need some structured space to practise your life, you can book some time with me. There’s my one hour Breakthrough Empower Hour or my 3 sessions Reset to get you started.