Who are you, really?

Weeks 33 & 34, Midlife Journal Guide

Who are you, the core, underneath all the layers of roles you play?

Self-discovering

Whatever the reason my clients come to me for some midlife coaching: to come out from under the overwhelm; to plot the path forward after a loss or life change like a divorce; to grab this new exciting, extended midlife by the lovehandles and redefine the next stage; to instigate change - I always start with self-discovery.

Why? Because you can make all the plans in the world, but if they’re not coming from a place of deep self-knowledge, from who, and how and where you are in your life at this age, at this stage with all the experience and learning you have accumulated, whatever that is, you are likely just ticking someone else’s checkbox…. and that someone else doesn’t know you, now. It could be your parents, it could be the outdated societal posturing about who and how a woman should be. It could be from a much younger, less wiser you, and you haven’t updated your interior software.

I often use the analogy of the nesting Dolls sets. You start off as your innate core and then quickly take on the first layer / doll cover from the family and culture you are born into. Then perhaps another from the career / lifestyle path you choose. Then another as a partner. Another as a parent perhaps. Until the outer doll is the one you are presenting to the world… and the one reacting to all the external demands and expectations. All of these doll covers are valid but if you’re not careful - and women in particular can fall prey to this for lots of reasons (overwhelm, burnout, outdated conditioning, socialisation) - the layers can smother the core, instead of the core colouring the outer layers. Especially at midlife when life can feel just a tad intense.

Cheryl Strayed, author of the wonderful Dear Sugar columns, and the bestseller, Wild, once wrote that when you start out in adult life, you are bursting to answer the question, “who am I?” By the time you get to midlife, you need to ask instead, “Who am I, really?”

There are two reasons why I start all my coaching with a direction of Know Yourself (followed then by Back Yourself, and then Believe in Yourself).

Firstly, our generation of women were not taught to explore ourselves. We were given a map and told to stick to the key signposts: education, career (at least this was new), wife, mother. We weren’t given the skills or permission to think about mapping our own way, based on our innate thoughts and interests. So much of my work is helping women sign their own permission slip.

Secondly, when you start that first checklist as a young adult - the one you will judge the success of your life - you barely know yourself. You have only just grown out of the tribal survival instinct as a teenager to blend in at all costs, you are still under the shadow of what your parents and culture expect of you, and while you might have experienced some of life’s wonderful and worrying ups and downs, you are driven by hope and happiness as goals without really having a clue yet of life’s lessons like patience, monotony, reality falling short of expectation, and most importantly, not really knowing what you don’t know!

Now, you have lived more. You have experience. You’ve discovered over and over what you didn’t know. Now you know what you don’t know. Now you have loved, and lost and discovered resilience you could never have imagined. You have found joy in the most unexpected places. You have been surprised by life, and surprised yourself. Which is why checking back in with yourself is so important and why this journalling journey can really help you do that (or any journaling, coaching, time out practise).

A big part of this is learning to understand where some of your thoughts have come from. One of my favourite parts of coaching is when a woman has this wonderful Aha! moment when she realised that a thought that has blighted her her-ness like a tiny stone in her shoe, was never her thought in the first place. It was her father’s disapproval, her mother’s fear, the patriarchy’s patronising bullying, her first boyfriend’s issue. Or it was simply a poor interpretation of events from a younger self or any manner of reason. “I’m too old”. “I’m not good enough.” “I can’t change.” “I don’t want to rock the boat.” “I’m fine.”

Now you have lived a bit more, you can peel back the layers of your nesting doll self, and discover who you are, really.

For those of you newly following me on Your Midlife Matters (thank you for being here!) I’ve already explained how this year-long Midlife, redefined Daily Journal Guide adventure with yourself will work in Power is in Your Hand. You can start this journalling guide at any time of the year because it’s not date related: The daily prompts from Weeks 1 to 32 are here.

For ALL my lovely subscribers there is my free Midlife Daily Journal Template in my previous post here which you can use as a guide each day - and what I personally use every day.

For just €5 per month, this Midlife Daily Journal Guide (and lots of other content and discounts on coaching) is for my paid subscribers.

So let’s get into the prompts for Week 33 and 34 of your journaling journey.