My Mid-Life Crisis

Or as I prefer to call it, my Mid-Life Transition

These are crazy days. Though in some way we all might have suspected something dire was coming. Just look at the popularity of dystopian fiction. But when something like a pandemic that causes the world to shut down for months actually occurs, it puts everything into perspective. We can no longer pretend that the future is certain and that a dystopic future is fiction.

Now is the time to break the illusion of a certain future. The days ahead are never certain. We could lose someone we love, be in a car accident, our house could burn down, we can be diagnosed with a terminal disease or we could die at any moment. The idea that each day will proceed as planned is a delusion that we hold onto out of fear. In this way, this virus is a gift. It forces us to lean into the uncertainty, accept it and stay grounded.

The greatest tool we have right now is to stay present and stay grounded. Perhaps this is easy for me to say. For months now I have been deeply entrenched in my own spiritual and emotional healing. I have named it my Mid-life Crisis, simply because that is something most people can understand and relate to. Also, because it is true that many people often find they must reevaluate their lives when they hit their mid-forties.

It began in the spring of 2019 with feelings of anxiety and depression. My family and I took an amazing trip to Peru and though I am usually fraught with anxiety before our travels, it generally goes away during. However, that didn't happen this time. The anxiety and depression continued. Simultaneously, my tween daughter and all her hormones decided it was a good time to reclaim her identity as separate from mine and so began the fighting. I mourned the loss of my baby girl.

On our return from my trip, a business affair caused a major clash between me and my friend of twenty years, ending our relationship and my business, causing a huge rift in my heart.

This finally inspired me to seek out a therapist. I discovered that a lot of my confidence stems from external validation instead of internalized esteem. And so I slowed down my entire life. I looked at what was essential and eliminated everything else. I reflected on what I truly enjoyed doing, not what I felt an obligation to do. I meditated for hours a day, joined a self-healing program, quit the gym and went back to the yoga studio, started eating vegan, became much more picky about how I spent my time and who I spent it with.

All this work has led me to many self-discoveries. (One of them is how difficult it is for me to be vulnerable, so this newsletter is a little painful.) So, when this pandemic rolled around and the subsequent quarantine, it felt like a continuation of the work I was already doing. In fact, I welcomed it as an opportunity to slow down even more and to reconsider many of my life choices that I'm currently living out. Isolation suits me.

It's hard not to feel guilty for being okay right now, but that is also part of my work. I "should" be sharing everyone's anxiety and fears, but "should" means I'm not being present. I hope that my work staying grounded will somehow help others to feel the same way. Maybe I can show them another way to be. Not everyone has my personality, but everyone has the ability to slow down. We're so out of practice because we live in a world of go, go, go, produce, produce produce, do, do, do. What does it look like to stop and sit with yourself and all your emotions, good and bad? There's only one way to find out.

Sending healing love to all those who need it right now. Blessed be.