‘Where you long for the friend who calls only to find out if you’re well, be that caller for another. Where you long for eloquent prayers to be made of everyday things, let your own clumsy words bless your meals out loud. Where you wish for ritual under the moons, be the one who holds the heartbeat of gathering. Where you ache to be recognized, allow yourself to be seen. Where you long to be known, sit next to someone and listen for insight into what they love. Where you wish you felt necessary, give those gifts away.’ — Toko-pa Turner
I spoke to many remarkable women navigating midlife in the last few weeks. Many reach out to me because they want to be witnessed, seen or heard while entering this cycle. They crave a different relationship with themselves and other women and, ultimately, all life. I often hear this question in our conversations: ‘How do we create a new narrative about midlife?’
I feel that as midlife women, we need to learn to tell a different story about ourselves, about this life cycle, and we have to do it together.
I love the idea of reframing challenges and transforming struggles into opportunities for growth, transformation and connection.
There is something magical, empowering and healing about telling a story and sharing it with others. It is uplifting to have conversations and reach out to friends, sisters, elders, mentors, peers, and women who can empathise with us.
Being able to laugh, cry, talk about dreams, hopes, visions, make noises, dance, sing, beat the drum, rub each other’s backs in a circle allows us to remember. Women stepped traditionally into rites of passage together. Men usually would go out in the wilderness. But women would be together, making bread, art, weaving, planting seeds. Creating beauty together is part of our medicine.
If you reading this article, probably you belong to that group of visionary women who are reinventing themselves and forging new paths.
Probably women of my generation have not heard inspiring or empowering stories about midlife, perimenopause and menopause. On the contrary, I am sure that we all listened to horror tales about it and thought about this cycle with dreadful anticipation. Moreover, we lost maps, ceremonies, spiritual guidance, and eldership. That is why some of us experience a sense of loss, confusion or emptiness.
We, as women, have a pivotal role in the collectively needed change. It is time to step up to contribute to the planet’s healing and embody a new example and narrative that we can pass on to the younger generations.
The more we embrace midlife with courage, intention, kindness, curiosity, and strength, the more we can positively impact ourselves, others, and our communities.
Sometimes the journey is challenging. Especially in those moments and during the storm, we need to come together as women and create new possibilities through creativity, storytelling, poetry, dancing, ritual, connection and singing. This is a powerful way to say that we navigate together this initiation.<
You don’t have to do it alone!
We can find ways to connect not only to others but also to the more extraordinary powers surrounding us. This is also about embracing our relationship relationships with the non-human world. And that includes the elements, the waters, the winds, the wind, the trees, the mountains and the animals.
‘If you make, within you, the spirit-tree, the spirit birds and animals will notice, and … first … will come to investigate. Later, if the roots are good… you will become their home.’ — Darin Stevenson
Mother Earth has been seen as an object or something separated from us in recent history. We lived more communally and in harmony with the planet and the mystery of life for a very long time.
When we feel alone, isolated and lost, we forget our natural connection to the invisible and living world around us upon which our existence depends.
We are, globally, in an extraordinary transformation process where the new and the old come together. We can dream awake and create new possibilities and new ways of being.
So this is an invitation to think together about how can we reframe the challenges of midlife as women. How can we step together, take responsibility, create more beauty and transform the struggles into a great adventure?
I feel that together, we can start asking each other different questions that may contribute to creating new narratives and hold all life sacred.
What if you and I had a pivotal role at this moment in history?
Which stories would you like to share with your children and grandchildren?
What if you and I could fly high like an eagle, be rooted like a tree, be transparent like water and fierce like a jaguar in this rite of passage?
What if all the struggle is naturally part of a process of inner alchemy that will allow you to know yourself and your medicine better?
What if sleepless nights are a portal into a sharper vision?
If you believed that your poems, songs and dances matter, what would you do differently?
How would you feel if you embraced midlife as the most sacred time of your life?
I would love to hear from you.
Thank you for taking the time to read and hang out here with me 🙂
‘One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. Soul on deck shines like gold in dark times. The light of the soul throws sparks, can send up flares, builds signal fires, causes proper matters to catch fire. To display the lantern of the soul in shadowy times like these — to be fierce and to show mercy toward others; both are acts of immense bravery and greatest necessity. Struggling souls catch light from other souls who are fully lit and willing to show it. If you would help to calm the tumult, this is one of the strongest things you can do’. — C. Pinkola Estes.