Memories and Mapping

Your Midlife Sandwich

My home that’s now just a house

I’m just back home from my other home. Home to the place I made my home, from the home that helped make me.

I arrived back in Dublin with my rent-a-van stuffed with furniture and memories from my mum and dad’s house, my family home. Clearing it out with my brother last weekend was one of those jobs you are glad you only get to do once in your life.

Every room plays out a lifetime of reels…. My young teenage self sitting on mum’s bed watching her put her make-up on while we chat; my older teenage self studying in my bedroom or coming down those stairs I have walked down a million times to open the door to a boyfriend. Too-many-to-count me’s sitting at the kitchen table, the ghostly sounds of laughter and chatter from the many social events in this house still echoing, now hollow in the silence.

Memories: all the years I came back and reverted straight into my family role as I was out making my way in the world; all the years I came there with young babies; all the weekends I came back to help Dad care for Mum after her stroke, sandwiched between the needs of my two families; the years I have come up and kept Dad company; the recent months of care.

And finally, the day we sat holding his hands as he took his last breath, in the same room where we had done the same with my mum.

Thousands of me’s walked around the emptying rooms with me last weekend, and as the rooms emptied and the walls were bared, what shocked me most was not the memories, but the emptiness.

It is, in fact, no longer a home, but just a house. Once my mum’s tapestries and endless photos of her grandchildren had been taken off the walls, once Dad’s wood carvings and nature books had been removed, it stopped being theirs. I found that really strange. After only ever being a home, it was now just a house - and that was the most heartbreaking thing of all.

And then I realised something. The house does not house my family. We do. My brother and I. All the memorabilia from our family that will sit in our houses - and maybe in our children’s homes - are what carry the home forward.

But then there are the things you can’t decide whether to keep or get rid of (even saying those words feels awful: “get rid of”). Throwing away the things that don’t matter to you, that mattered to people who mattered to you.

It wasn’t always the things that I thought it would be.
The wood carvings my dad had made will find a new home.
Mum’s tapestries or pictures or memories from a holiday will remain and carry her forward.
No, it was the 12 pairs of my dad’s running shoes. It was the drawer full of teaspoons he accumulated from years of pocketing them from cafés. (Don’t ask me why, or judge him - he was addicted to being a teaspoon thief!).
It was the drawers of cards and drawings that my mum never threw out from me or my children.
It was the drawer with my grandfather’s fur hat, my dad’s walking hat, my mum’s tweed hat - things that mean so much but will likely lie in a box in an attic… too used to be reused and too important to be thrown away.

That was hard. But every memory of them and of me mapped out the pathways of my life as it has evolved.

Standing in those empty rooms, I realised something simple but seismic: our memories are not anchors holding us in place - they’re coordinates. Memories map the next steps we take.

And it’s the mapping that can be so challenging as we navigate the memories and models of expectation. But the memories can help.

Walking around the house, I could see my mum so clearly. I realised how deeply she shaped my own midlife map - watching her menopausal meltdowns, watching her rebuild, watching her find herself again after we left home.
She created space. She created joy. She created a second life.
And in doing so, she created a map for mine (both in terms of what I can do differently and what I can see as potential).

The memories I have of my parents as an adult far outweigh those from childhood. They’re the ones that actually guide me now. They help me map out how I want to mother my own daughters as they grow into adulthood. (This comes up constantly in my coaching - the art of building intentional adult relationships with our children.)

So now, as I stand here, an orphan, but still rooted in a family, a woman mapping the next stage of her life; a mother, friend, human becoming… I see it clearly:

Memories are the foundations.
Mapping is the intention.
And midlife is where those two finally meet.

What are the memories you want to be looking back on?

What are the memories you want others to have of you?

As you come to the end of another year, what are the memories that stand out, and how does that impact the mapping you want to make for next year?

As always, if you are a paid subscriber, I’ll send you a little exercise to get these juices flowing with feedback! Email me at alana@alanakirk.com

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🌟 If you would like to join me for a session on how to build intention and map out your next year, you can join me for my free Your 2026 Revolution on the 29th December. (You can show up in your chocolate stained Christmas pyjamas if you are still in a post-Christmas funk, or a bright new lip if you’re raring to get going into the new year. Either way, there will be a replay for those who also can’t make it live.)

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🎄And don’t forget if it’s beginning to look a lot like…… busy, you can download my FREE Don’t Lose Your Sh*t this Christmas playbook here.

🎁 Finally, if you have a pal, sister or colleague who needs a bit of support to soar or get unstuck, I have vouchers available for my 1:1 coaching Breakthrough Empower Hour here.

www.alanakirk.com