What new doors can you knock on?

(and how many are you hiding behind?)

Twelve years ago, it was just a normal day, a busy afternoon, when there was a knock on my door that would have a profound knock on effect on my life and those of my three girls.

I answered, likely a tea towel or wooden spoon in one hand, baby on hip, face splattered with pureed sweet potato. the personification of a harried mum. (I seem to have surged from harried state to harried state since my first daughter was born… babies, birthing, food production, toddlers, sandwich years care of young children and a stroke-stricken mum who needed 24 hour care, marriage breakdown, and just when the shit settles, teenagers and peri-menopause. How is your harriedness? But I digress. Harriedness does that.)

I opened the door to find a lovely young woman standing there. A student. She enquired if I ever needed babysitting and would she consider her? I practically grabbed her by her jumper and yanked her into my hall before she knocked on any other doors.

But I kept my harried cool, and invited her in, to at least alert her to the fact that “baby-sitting” meant a baby and two pre-schoolers.  I can’t remember how long she stayed, but I made her a cup of tea and she hunkered right down and connected with my older two girls, Daisy and Poppy. By the time she left, Ruby was on her hip and I had made a meal with two hands for the first time in weeks.

Before long, Meabh was a regular fixture in our lives.  For her 30th birthday we gave her a little art drawing of us as stick people…and her knocking on our door with the words written on it: You knocked on our door a stranger. Now our home is your home.

Because two days ago that baby Ruby who gazed at Meabh’s new face that day, likely chewing on her long blonde hair, stood up, now aged 13, and sang a cappella at Meabh’s wedding. 

I then did a reading of a Freda Kahlo poem, which made me so proud because Freda Kahlo was a strong, unapologetic women, a role-model to so many. And so that young student who knocked on our door one day, a glorious, strong and caring women became a role model to my girls.

I’ll never forget going round to tell her my marriage was over, knowing I was breaking her heart, for she loved our family.  But she stepped in.   She flew out to meet us for a few days on the first holiday on my own with the girls.  She’ll never know what it meant to have another adult there even for a few days and how deeply I was able breathe again. 

There has never been a Christmas since that knock on the door that she hasn’t been there on Christmas Eve to watch them hang out their stockings and sing a little show. Or a Christmas morning. 

She stopped being their babysitter and became a big sister to them. She stopped being my babysitter and became my little sister.  

And here in Lisbon we watched her marry a good man. We’ve watched her own rollercoaster of romance for a decade and now breathe happily she is happily unharried in her love. 

I’m telling this story, not only because it has been a privilege to watch her become this wonderful woman, and for her to have watched so carefully my girls becoming too: Daisy is now a young women now,  not much young than Meabh when she knocked on my door'; Poppy is blossoming after the teenager turmoil, with Meabh keeping a steady watch; and Ruby, that little baby, has been promised first dibs on babysitting for Meabh if, and when, that time comes.

I’m also telling this story because now in midlife, I see how quickly my life has moved and changed, like hers will. It felt only moments ago I was the one getting married, harried with the impatience of launching full-speed into ‘proper’ adult life, babies abounding, (7 pregnancies, 3 babies) … and here I am divorced, my girls grown and growing, and I know that it is not the big decisions that really shape our lives, but often the small ones.

I see it with my clients all the time… they get paralysed or caught up in making the big choices but it’s the small steps that can change so much. The small step to be brave and sign up for a writing class (me after leaving my big career after Daisy was born and now a twice published author, another on the way). The small step to retrain in something of interest. The small step to reach out to someone. The small step on knocking on a door just in case something life-changing is behind it.

What door can you be knocking on that might lead somewhere?

What small step can you take?

What door are you not knocking on, a passion to follow, a purpose to explore?

We are the generations of women redefining every aspect of midlife. We get to knock on doors to so many rooms never imagined. We get to be brave and knock on the unknown. Some doors will never be opened. Some we will close again. And others will lead to unexpected adventures. 

We have this extended midlife, but life is still too short.

But we can get caught up in the harried life. We can drown in unrealistic expectations and forget to dream the unreal into reality. We can listen to the out-dated external narrative that still tells a woman who and how she should be.

My job as a coach to women in midlife is to help them see the doors, and help them find their own confidence to raise their knuckles to knock.  That was a door I knocked, just to see what might be behind it if I went back to college aged 47, not being able to imagine the utter joy this work as The Midlife Coach has given me. It is one of my life’s real pleasures to watch a woman’s face change shape as she realises there are so many doors she might consider, and then be brave enough to knock on some of them.

Have a think about the things that matter. The threads from your life that might have weaved a different path but can still be pulled. The possible doors you might knock on… the old friend you could reach out to, the course you might research, the conversation you could have that might make things better, the curiosity you might follow just to see where it might go, the sign up to a new exercise class where you might just meet a new friend, an enquiry to see if you can help out with your skills and change the trajectory of your life, the smallest actions that might seem inconsequential in the grand scheme of things but that become the changer of schemes.

Twelve years ago, that knock on the door might have gone unanswered and how poorer 5 people’s lives would have been. 

Midlife is not a time to hide behind doors. It’s a time to knock on as many as you can, to fling some open, to go searching for hidden doors, to knock and knock and knock and knock and knock until your life is rich and robust and alive. 

Last week I wrote about a client who was weary from a harried life of output. As we discussed what she wants a year out from finishing work, she let out an exacerbated cry for courage - “I want to feel alive by the time I retire!”

And so now we begin to find the doors of her life to go knocking on, no time to waste. 

The Diana Ackerman quote I love so much - “I don’t want to get to the end of my life and find I have have just lived the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well.”

It’s only by knocking on your metaphorical doors that you will find the width. 

When Meabh knocked on my door 12 years ago, it didn’t seem like a big decision. It was a small brave decision to risk an ask to earn some money while she studied at college.  But it has added so much width to my life, to hers, and to my three girls who found love in stranger, and she became part of our home.

Please, let’s go knocking on some doors.

For my paid subscribers, I’m attaching an exercise below you can do to help you explore what some of these doors might be. 

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And from weddings to divorce or separation…. In Ireland there can still be so much stigma around this yet I want to shout from the rooftops it is not a failure. It hurts like fuck, but it’s not a failure. I am running a one day retreat to help women through the emotions of recovery, reseting who they are now, and getting ready for the next stage of their lives.. and all the doors they might knock on.

Come join me on the 30th June! Discount for paid subscribers!

RENEW - Recover, reset & relove after divorce

Myself and Genevieve have been taking about this one day retreat for over a year, and I just wish I’d had something like this when I was going through my own divorce. 

We’re going to be workshopping with practical tools and holding space in three areas: recovery, reset and relove.

Recovery - looking at past patterns, we’ll be doing a how to let go of the past ritual, and giving practical tools for navigating the actual process of divorce in terms of defining your big picture, establishing clear boundaries, and co-parenting.

After lunch we focus on Reset… focussing on your present values and needs, checking in with who and how you are now, and defining what success looks and feels like for all aspects of your new life.

And finally in the afternoon we’ll be looking at relove - your future choices and chances and how to make sure you are embarking on a new love / sex adventure with the right curiosity and intentions. 

All the details are here and we’d love to have you along in Howth on the 30th June. If you are one of my lovely paid subscribers, email me at alana@alanakirk.com for 10% discount code.

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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

www.themidlifecoach.org

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