Ever since it has dawned on me that I was approaching midlife, I tried to find workarounds. My goal was to understand what was happening to me physically, mentally and spiritually, and to find things that helped me through the process. I began by reading everything I could find that helped me understand the process better, and then tried the techniques suggested for myself.
What I have learned is that midlife is an amazing gift life gives us. It didn’t exist for former generations as a woman’s life expectancy made the usual adult life trajectory look like this: have children-hit menopause-die! Now we are much less likely to die in our 50′s, so we have a period of between 10 and 15 years after our children have become adults when we are healthy, fit, energetic and enthusiastic to use as we wish. This becomes an amazing opportunity to look back over what we’ve done, decide what we want to continue doing and what we need to clear out, and review the aspects of that got lost among our more pressing responsibilities. This is the time to pull out those girlish dreams, dust them off and see if they still fit.
So much of life is about showing up, assessing what is going on, then using common sense to decide what action we need to take, but after years of taking care of everyone else taking care of our own needs can seem daunting. Since I love making things, singing and traveling, these formed the backbones of my methods for working out what I wanted to do. Your passions will probably be quite different, so look through the ideas and adapt them to your own situation. This store has many hundreds of items that might appeal to you so suggest you make a cup of tea, sit down and start browsing. Let your intuition be your guide through midlife – and enjoy the journey!
