My desire is that this website offers you hope, support, and encouragement as you navigate through the sometimes rough terrain of a midlife transition. You are not alone on this journey of growth and change. Allow us to be your compass - guiding you on the path to living an authentic, fulfilling, and abundant life.
Do you find yourself asking:
Who am I? What is my purpose? What gives my life meaning?
At midlife, you begin to wrestle with the deeper questions of life. You desire to know your purpose and what gives your life meaning. Midlife offers a unique opportunity to reevaluate and, if necessary, correct your course - a chance to set new goals and priorities for yourself and make choices that will create the rich, satisfying experience you always hoped your life would be. It's a time to reclaim your forgotten dreams.
When does midlife begin?
You can't tell if you've entered a midlife transition by counting the number of candles on your cake. Reaching a certain age that ends in zero is not as accurate a predictor of transition as experiencing your first jolt of awareness that time is passing. If you've purchased your first pair of reading glasses, plucked a dark chin hair, launched your child into adulthood, or witnessed your parents' health decline, you've already received your wake-up call.
While forty typically represents the beginning of midlife, stressful life events - death of a parent or family member, divorce, loss of job, career change, significant personal illness, or early onset of menopause - may initiate the transition process in some cases as early as your mid- to late-thirties. On the other hand, you may be in your fifties and believe you've successfully avoided the process completely simply because you've failed to recognize what's happened.
Midlife may be denied, but not escaped. It's a biological inevitability to grow and enter the next stage of development. Like adolescence, midlife transition is a period of getting a sense of who you are and establishing your identity. Just as adolescence transforms you from a child to an adult, midlife transforms you from the person you think you are to the person you were meant to be. Midlife is a new birth, a new beginning, a chance to start over. It's a time to pursue your dreams and put yourself on the path to a fuller, more abundant life.
Awareness of your discontentment
Frequently, a midlife crisis is brought on by your own internal feelings of discontentment. It's a reaction to the fear of losing your youth - your "last chance" for happiness. You wake up one morning with a profound feeling of emptiness inside, haunted by a vague sense that something is missing in your life. Suddenly you're bored with what used to interest you and dissatisfied by your relationships or in your chosen roles in life. It's not uncommon to feel depressed, lost and confused. Just knowing that this is normal can help you stay sane.
Transition, according to Webster's Dictionary, is "a passage from one stage to another, whether gradual or abrupt." Transition by its very nature involves change, and change can be difficult. Change, even by choice, turns the familiar into the unfamiliar, resulting in feelings of fear and inadequacy as you enter unknown territory.
For many women, the transition to midlife is a period of confusion and uncertainty. About the time you think your development is coming to an end, you find yourself embarking on a totally unexpected journey of growth and change. Although a normal part of maturing, midlife represents distinctive adjustments for women:
- Losing your sense of purpose - feeling perplexed about the meaning of your life
- Shifting parental responsibilities as children are launched or need less attention
- Awareness that you're beginning to show signs of aging
- Concern about approaching menopause and how it will affect your life
- Behaving completely out-of-character - feeling like a stranger to yourself
- Bewilderment over a "crush" you've developed on someone not even your type
- Neglected talents demanding to be expressed - dreams and desires reemerging
- Boredom with activities that previously held great interest and dominated your life
- Caring for aging parents - discovering the roles are suddenly reversed
- Biological clock ticking - wondering if it's too late to start a family
- Questioning the accuracy of assumptions made years ago about God and faith
Embrace the woman you are now
Embracing life requires the courage to face your fears, change habits that perpetuate the life you have, and acknowledge the dreams you've kept suppressed. You probably know several women who have taken considerable risks in order to lead more authentic lives: perhaps someone who turned down a promotion to have more time with her family, forfeited a steady income to launch a new business, started a family after forty, earned a college degree in midlife, or took early retirement in order to volunteer full-time.
At forty, you may be a grandmother or you may have just had your first child. If your twenties and thirties were spent raising a family or developing a career - or maybe struggling to manage both - you suddenly discover that you're longing to do all the things you had to postpone for the sake of your children or work. Although those responsibilities may continue, you're now free to follow dreams you never before had time to pursue.
Wouldn't it be nice if our lives could be magically transformed without having to go through the awkward, and sometimes painful, process of transition? While that's not possible, gaining a clearer understanding of the transition process allows you to reduce your resistance to change and view it instead as an opportunity for growth. The process isn't always fun, but the personal growth and understanding of yourself that results is worth every struggle, every risk, and every painful mistake on the journey to living a more authentic, faith-filled life. Midlife isn't something you can avoid, so you might as well embrace it! C'mon, bring it on!
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