The joy of all this transformation stuff is that, as I become clearer and clearer on "what I would do if I had the power," as my signal becomes stronger so to speak, I draw to me more and more resources and evidence of people on my wavelength.
This weekend, synchronicity brought to me some words by Brene Brown, a scholar and writer on topics like courage, vulnerability and shame:
Midlife is not a crisis. Midlife is an unraveling.
By definition, you can’t control or manage an unraveling. You can’t cure the midlife unraveling with control any more than the acquisitions, accomplishments, and alpha-parenting of our thirties cured our deep longing for permission to slow down and be imperfect.
Midlife is when the universe gently places her hands upon your shoulders, pulls you close, and whispers in your ear:
It’s time. All of this pretending and performing – these coping mechanisms that you’ve developed to protect yourself from feeling inadequate and getting hurt – has to go. Your armor is preventing you from growing into your gifts. I understand that you needed these protections when you were small. I understand that you believed your armor could help you secure all of the things you needed to feel worthy and lovable, but you’re still searching and you’re more lost than ever. Time is growing short. There are unexplored adventures ahead of you. You can’t live the rest of your life worried about what other people think. The time has come to let go of who you think you’re supposed to be and embrace who you are. (Wholehearted, 2009)
Goodness, I'm beginning to think I could have just quoted Brene Brown a year ago and spared my readers 150-some-odd blog posts. She says this excruciatingly well. What is so interesting is that 2009 is exactly when my unraveling started, and while it continues still, the fact is that it has entered a new phase. Seven years ago, I had no sense of who I was. Now I know. If life goes in seven year cycles, then I suspect the next one, from now until the age of 67, will be a doozy.
Abraham-Hicks (in many of their books and videos) offers an "emotional guidance scale." At the bottom of the scale are feelings like fear, grief, depression and despair. At the top, of course, is joy, love, empowerment and freedom. About five steps from the bottom is anger, and a fascinating point Esther Hicks makes is how many of us gravitate up and down the scale from despair to anger and then back again. She suggests that many of the people we know would frankly rather have us down in a despair and powerless mode rather than moving through anger into genuine power. But that's the point. Anger isn't a good place to stay. It's kind of the brick wall to break through en route up the scale, but it's a necessary step. I've felt a lot of it the last few weeks. I am so, so energized and feeling so, so stuck in an old pattern, that I get angry mostly at myself, but also at the people I perceive as having blocked my forward progress. Anger has been my armor, but also the wall that has sent me boomeranging backwards. So the path to embracing who you are involves somehow gently moving beyond that anger into the slightly higher emotions of disappointment, frustration and boredom. And from there, eventually, further up to hopefulness, enthusiasm, passion and power.
Midlife unraveling is terrifying. As you unravel, your absolute worst personal fears may well come true. My life is proof of that. And there is the risk that it may be hard, once things have fully unraveled, to turn around, break through the anger barrier and move up the scale again to new, genuinely joyful adventures. But "time is growing short" and there is no other option for those of us of a certain age. Once you have unraveled, it's a moment-to-moment choice to love oneself, to focus exclusively on the things and people you genuinely love, and to express gratitude and wonder for the things that are going well.
Like reading that Brene Brown quote just at the right moment. Seems I have a little power after all.
