Mid-life Unraveling
We can't afford to waste any more time.
Brené Brown did an interview in which she talked about what we’ve commonly referred to as “a midlife crisis”.
She spoke of how in childhood and throughout our lives we build armor as we experience trauma. Eventually that armor becomes too heavy for us to carry, and it “no longer protects us, but instead keeps us from being seen and known by others”. If we can’t be seen or known by others, we can’t truly be loved.
Eventually, for most, “...the universe comes down, puts her hands on your shoulders, pulls you close and whispers in your ear, “I’m not f*cking around. You’re halfway to dead.””
Brené went on to say, “This is what you see happen to people in midlife. It’s not a crisis. It’s a slow, brutal unraveling. This is where everything that we thought protected us keeps us from being the partners, the parents, the professionals, the people that we want to be.”
A midlife unraveling can happen later for some people, depending on the thickness of the armor they’re working with. Or it can be triggered sooner by a major life event or trauma. We realize in an instant we can’t mess around anymore, this is the only life we get.
My own unraveling started at 36 with the onset of divorce. It first started as a quiet rumble deep down, a little stirring of something shifting. I stayed curious and it got louder and louder, until one day it felt like a chair to the face. WAKE UP! You’re wasting it all!
My therapist, Anne, recommended a book to me in a session one day. She said this book had changed her life ten years prior. Big words for a therapist! The book is Broken Open, by Elizabeth Lesser.
This book was one of a few paper companions I brought with me on a solo two-month trip to Indonesia. I devoured the entire book within the first few days, like a wounded animal desperate for a soothing balm.
In one chapter Elizabeth talks about “Sleeping Giants and Strange Angels”. She starts the chapter with a D.H. Lawrence quote:
What is the knocking at the door in the night?
It is somebody wants to do us harm.
No, no, it is the three strange angels.
Admit them, admit them.
If we’ve spent a great deal of our lives living on the surface, we will begin to feel the stirrings of the Sleeping Giants in the “basement” of our lives. We’re terrified these Sleeping Giants are going to blow up our lives so we do everything to silence and bury them.
Elizabeth writes:
The soul’s knock in the night can take many forms. You may experience it as a deep sense of longing… It’s the kind of longing that leads you to ask, “Is this all there is to my life? Is this what I am supposed to be doing, feeling, giving, getting?” This kind of longing can feel threatening. And so you silence its rumblings over and over until it demands to be heard – until it morphs into something else: a crisis or an illness or an addiction or some other Strange Angel.
She goes on to say:
When you feel chronically confused, or stuck, or enraged, or afraid, you can be sure that Sleeping Giants are rumbling under the surface of your life. They want to awaken. Soon they’ll be knocking at the door. You are welcome to turn them away. You can spend a lifetime turning them away and going back to sleep. Or you can open the door and admit them. The Sleeping Giants and Strange Angels may bring with them risky advice. If you listen, your life may change; you will certainly change. If you turn a deaf ear, you’ll stay the same. It’s up to you.
We can stay unhealthy.
We can stay unhappy.
We can stay unloved.
We can stay unworthy.
We can stay uninspired.
We can stay unseen and unheard.
Or we say f*ck that! We’re not going to waste any more time. WE CANNOT GET TIME BACK.
We can continue to eat food that drains our energy and takes years off our lives, or we can learn how to nourish and maintain our temples.
We can stay hung up on the memory of our toxic relationship and the trauma of the separation, or we can choose to love ourselves first and divert all of that energy into the life that awaits us.
If you do one act of kindness today, let it be that you choose yourself.