There is something that happens in midlife that shifts a lot of things.
It’s like someone flipped the light switch and for the first time in years, we are afforded the time, space and energy to re-evaluate our lives. It’s a period where we finally get the importance of living in integrity with ourselves.
AND THEN THE SEEKING HAPPENS
Seeking to be in relationship with ourselves. Finding out that the way we lived before needed recalibrating. Accepting that we’ve been playing low. Dimming our lights. Keeping ourselves held back. Realising that we haven’t been fully showing up in life and that the needs of those we love came before us loving ourselves. It’s also this time that we learn how these ways of living were costly. It has cost us our identity. Our fullness of expression. Our being.
And the seeking extends not only with ourselves but also with those around us. Who are the people that we surround ourselves with? How do these people fill our lives to fullness? It’s a period where we realise the value of being real in friendships. How small talks and shallow conversations are not doing it anymore. We begin to search for depth. For connection that goes beyond the hi and hello. We begin to think of the people around us and how their lives are enmeshed with ours. But it does not end there, we also begin to ask ourselves, is this what I truly want? Is this what I truly want for a partner? For a friend? For work?
Midlife became that period where you look in the past and you take in the many different experiences that got you in this moment. Understanding that there were regrets, compromises, sacrifices and celebrations that came with being in this point in time. Accepting that even though our parents and ancestors have given us intergenerational wounds, we also grew and learned how resilient we are.
Midlife is that tipping point where the past beckons celebration and the future entices us with possibilities.
Is this what I want to continue doing?
Is this who I want to continue being?
Is who I am now serving the image of who I see myself in the future?
Am I in congruence?
Am I in integrity?
Am I living a life where I see myself?
AFTER THE SEEKING, IS THE HONOURING.
Devoid of societal and cultural expectations. Shedding the must haves and the should haves, we begin to see ourselves clearly for the first time in a long, long time. The wrinkles, the patches, the scars, the lines, the bulges. We begin to see our bodies as vessels that carried us through the past and begin to honour our bodies as the vessels that will carry us forward.
We begin to understand that the pain and suffering afforded us this moment in our lives. The junction we are in. And we honour our lineage, our parents, our friends, our community, our culture, our past. Taking in the gifts of the years we have lived, the people that we have crossed paths with, and the experiences that taught us grit, resilience, compassion, love and a myriad of other expressions of life. Honouring our pain, honouring the scarifies, honouring the roadblocks and the ways in which we navigated through, away, around and in them. We honour our choices and the people in our lives that took part in all these discoveries, all these subtle expressions of ourselves. People who were with us in our misery, in our joys, in our triumphs and in our deepest pains.
NEXT COMES THE CHOOSING.
Realising that we have a choice. Realising that by stripping off, deconstructing and re-evaluating, we get to this moment of possibilities. We get to choose who we want to be moving forward in the next decades of our lives. It’s not a rebirth, rather like a phoenix rising, we are reformed. We get to tune in with our fire, with the longings that we didn’t even know were there. We get to appreciate the relationships that make us come alive and where we can jump in deep waters with. We get to choose the relationships that are serving us.
There is something that happens in midlife that is extraordinary.
We begin to fully and deeply see ourselves. It’s like someone flipped the light switch and for the first time in years we know we don’t have to dim ourselves anymore.
Photo credits: Photo by Sage Friedman on Unsplash