Such sage words this young bear spoke into our tiny hearts and souls when we were young and continues to speak into the hearts and souls of children even now. Poor little Piglet. A bit of an anxious fellow, always fussing on something. Pooh, however, aside from the occasional emotional eating binge on honey…Pooh was much more in the present moment.
During the first phase of the Learn to Love Your Story Personal Development Program, we talk about staying in the present moment through mindfulness practices and how our worth is not based on what we do. Even if that has what we’ve been conditioned to think by society, culture, family, and religion. My programs teach that we are worthy just because we exist. So, what’s LOVE got to do with it? Ah my friends. This is truly one of my favorite parts of personal growth.
Love is not something we do (or spell), it is something we feel as a result of a whole host of things. Do you feel love? Really? Do you FEEL it? Or, are you, like our fettered friend Piglet more worried about how you define it or how it performs? If so, listen to Pooh. Love does not do, love is not a word or an action. It’s much more than that.
Sometimes when we get in touch with what we feel, it transcends words and moves beyond a place of articulation. Instead it moves into incarnation. It is an ethereal and some would say divine force that transforms into our behaviors, thoughts, and emotions. Stay present. Stay in tune with your feeling. Experience love in all its fascinating forms. It doesn’t always present as joyful, because it is more soulful.
And not only that, Love is an anchor for us. It is a way for us to come back to ourselves. Our love of others, places, things, activities are our anchors to the feeling of being safe, secure, and connected in this world. Love helps us to know there are things that are so much bigger than this moment we find ourselves suffering through.
When we are feeling overwhelmed with stress or negative emotions, it can be really hard to shift perspectives. One way I am teaching how to do this in the Learn to Love Your Story Personal Development Course is by anchoring. I have my coaching groups work on making a list of those people, places, and things that help them feel the most grounded in the feeling of being loved. Merely bringing these items to mind can help anchor us back to the present moment.
Try it sometime…bring to mind an event when you felt loved. Make it as real as possible in your minds eye. Use all five of your senses as you bring up the image in your head. It is amazing how quickly your emotions can shift, just by re-experiencing the feeling of being loved and of loving. It’s a neat trick to have up your sleeve.
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When I started LearnToLoveYourStory.com I had an idea of what I was trying to accomplish, yet it wasn’t fully formulated in my mind yet. I knew that there were ways I have helped people through counseling and helped myself in my own life transitions that over and over again worked well to help people pivot out of any painful experience. What an amazing super power!!! An amazing resiliency skill!!! And what better time to share such knowledge than after a worldwide pandemic that has caused a sister pandemic…a mental health crisis.
I knew there was a thread that goes right to the heart of why any of us struggle. Why any of us feel human suffering. Why any of us ever doubt ourselves or our capability to handle a situation. In the beginning I struggled to put my finger on what it was exactly.
So I just kept following my intuition on this journey of creating content to help people pivot out of any life transition, any need for a change in their life, and any human suffering of which they are a part. As I sit back and reflect and look at all of what I have created as a whole, it becomes clear that this resiliency skill of growth mindset really is a super power. If one is always ready for change, then no major harm will come from any life transitions. In a way, you are always ready.
That said, it kept bugging me that right under the surface there had to be a reason why all of us experience some suffering during change, or at least are very uncomfortable. What is it? Why do we continue to repeat old behavior patterns even when they don’t work? And why do we cling to them so much, even when we know they no longer serve us? I know how to work with people individually in therapy when these patterns show up in their lives. I do this by helping them unearth their own participation in their suffering and make the changes they want, in order to change this pattern. But why is it that we all suffer in the same patterns over and over, generation after generation, transmitting intergenerational traumas to one another? There had to be an answer to this…right?
Well here is something you should know about me, if you haven’t taken the time to read the About the Author page. At a very young age, living in an alcoholic family home, walking on the eggshells of when the next shoe would drop from which parent for what issue, I created my own super power. I see patterns. Seems simple I know, yet it has come in handy in more ways than I can count. I can see patterns in individuals. I can see patterns in systems. I can see patterns in all of us. So this puzzle, was just another challenge for me.
What is the common thread in the pattern of continuing to participate in our own suffering?
And then it hit me. Constructs. Definitions. Roles. Scripts. Rules. What is hurting us the most is our own making. This is not surprising to me, because when I help people to pivot out of their own pain during life transitions, it generally is because we discover how they’ve participated in their own suffering by clinging to old ways of thinking what they “should be” like instead of loving who they are now.
Why is it that we cling so heavily to pre-fabricated ideas of who, what, how, when, and why we “should be” who we are? Our suffering is born out of our own discomfort that we aren’t exactly like we think we “should be”. It is nourished by the shame we inflict on ourselves and towards others, judging how much we miss the mark and aren’t afforded the privileges of being who we think we “should be”. And it damns us to an eternal repetition of these destructive patterns, when we weave into the fabric of our families, societies, and cultures these definitions of who, what, how, when, and why we “should be” a certain way.
So in case I’ve lost you, let me slow down a bit. Let me give you an example of what I’m talking about. A common midlife issue is the impact of aging on the body. Men and women both have their own versions of discomfort with this. There are wrinkles, weight gain, and aches and pains. Not to mention things like menopause, heart disease, metabolic disease, and respiratory disease. Need I say more? These illnesses start to plague this midlife group at a higher rate than they did when this group of people was younger. Now, why is it that we complain about these changes to our bodies in midlife? Seems like a weird question I know, but go with me. We complain about these changes because we have a definition of what our bodies “should be“. We have an ideal of what a beautiful body looks like…young, healthy, athletic, attractive.
Yet all of these descriptors are subjective. It’s in the eye of the beholder or or in this case, in the hands of those who make and uphold the definitions. So when I’m talking to a client who is struggling with how she looks because she is aging, and this causes her feelings of depression, it is not the depression that is the problem. It is the definition of what she “should” look like. The depression is the symptom of the real problem…that she is holding herself to an unattainable, unfair, and harmful standard of what her body “should be”. Who made up this definition? And why in the hell are we following it so rigidly that we would create depression over it?
And there it is my friends. Hidden in plain sight. Right in front of our noses. The reason we suffer is that we cannot attain all of these definitions of who we “should be”. It is humanly impossible to be young and aged at the same time. It is possible however, to have different definitions of beauty for different ages. And yet, we stay stuck. We do what we’ve always done. We still believe the unsaid rules that tell us that aged bodies aren’t as beautiful and vibrant as young bodies, and this reinforces the belief that aged bodies are somehow lesser. And this is just one example. And it’s just one layer. You can layer suffering on suffering. What if your in midlife, divorced twice, and a single mom (for the second time). I am. And our world has lots of ideas and definitions about what that means about me. None of them are flattering.
What if we changed the game? What if instead of engaging in the hustle for our worthiness or the rat race towards trying to meet as many of these standards of how we “should be” as we can at the same time, what if we break all the rules and rewrite the rulebook? And even more than that, what if we give license to all of us to have our own rulebook that applies to us individually? What if we stop judging one another, shaming one another, against ideals that we never created for ourselves in the first place? It’s an interesting proposal isn’t it?
The long and the short of it…LearnToLoveYourStory.com is here to help you do this. That’s what I’ve been successfully teaching people to do for two decades. I would love to help more than the very few that I can sit across the couch from offering therapy. I would love to open more eyes in a compassionate lens to see the fact that it is the definitions of how you “should be” that are killing you. It’s not the anxiety. It’s not the depression. It’s not the midlife crisis. Those are symptomatic of what the real problem is underneath. And my friends the problem underneath, hidden in plain sight, is that we are all holding ourselves accountable to definitions of how we “should be”, when we never had a chance to decide what those definitions are. When you work with me I will give you the tools to change that. Wouldn’t it feel better to Learn to Love Your Story? Click the links below to learn more about how to work with me.
Do any of these sound like you?
Feel a sense of lack, despite success in life or having done everything “right”
Struggle to articulate how you feel to others
Experience guilt about how you’re feeling
Have lost your way
Are struggling to overcome turmoil in your life
Have become resigned to accepting a life you don’t love
Many of us are suffering like this — daily life has become an ordeal, and we don’t know where or how to find help.
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Disclaimer
The content in this blog is not a replacement for therapy and is not clinical, medical, or mental health treatment. Dr. Natalie Marr is a Licensed Psychologist in the state of Minnesota. Her work with LearnToLoveYourStory.com and all affiliate social media entities is educational and coaching based ONLY. She IS NOT offering therapeutic services of any kind on these mediums.
If you or someone you know is having a mental health crisis or having thoughts of suicide, please use the following crisis resources (this is not an exhaustive list of available resources):
Come on. You know that you are. We ALL are irritated when people break the rules! And Dr. Natalie is here to help you with some tips today about this very thing.
“But WHAT is the thing Dr. Natalie?“
The thing is called programming and conditioning. The concept being there is a “Book of Rules” in our lives that shapes how we live. And when we bump up against these rules, because they are not working for us or others are stepping outside the bounds, we get irritated. And we bump up a lot. For instance when you notice you are struggling with what you want to do, feeling pressured, or are just over saturated with what your goals in life should be to name a few examples.
Take a look at this video and see how Dr. Natalie breaks it down and then gives you a tip on what to do next.
FREE Group Coaching For a Year – Join ANYTIME!
Join us monthly as we work together to help you design the life you have always wanted for yourself. No gimmicks! Just results! Dr. Natalie has nearly two decades of experience as a Clinical Psychologist and she is ready to help women in midlife break the chains of living in constant survival mode.
Please be sure to sign up. Even if you can’t join every month, you will also have access to online courses, workbooks, guided meditations, and get the video highlights sent out after each months group coaching event. It is well worth it!!! Make 2023 your year!!!
Did you know that you can book a call and talk to Dr. Natalie directly! She would love to help you personally and answer any questions you have about her offerings. Sign up for her complimentary DEEP DIVE CALL now. No charge. No obligation. Just 30 minutes 1:1 with Dr. Natalie herself.
Remember when you were a young adult. You had enough experience under your belt to feel in control but not enough to feel the pull of “being comfortable”, taking the “predictable job”, or heaven forbid “settling down”. What happened to that part of you? Where is she now? I think for many of us we willingly set these hopes and dreams aside to start families, pursue careers we weren’t afraid to take risks in, and just because the societal conditioning we were raised in told us “it’s time”.
Now we are entering our midlife and some of the very roles we chose to settle into are changing or even ending. We aren’t raising little kids, but young adults now. And those children are starting their own lives outside of us. Not only that, but about 15% of adult women in the United States are divorced or separated and by midlife that statistic becomes even more haunting. Our lives are different. And we are feeling the stress of this transition. We aren’t sure we are ready to go into the next phase. And we certainly don’t even remember how to have hopes and dreams for ourselves outside of those we serve.
There is a way to take your life back. To return to that risk taking young adult you once were with lofty ideas of what your life would be. It is not too late…in fact this is just the right time. Take a listen to Dr. Natalie’s Vlog on the matter.
FREE Group Coaching For a Year – Join ANYTIME!
Join us monthly as we work together to help you design the life you have always wanted for yourself. No gimmicks! Just results! Dr. Natalie has nearly two decades of experience as a Clinical Psychologist and she is ready to help women in midlife break the chains of living in constant survival mode.
Please be sure to sign up. Even if you can’t join every month, you will also have access to online courses, workbooks, guided meditations, and get the video highlights sent out after each months group coaching event. It is well worth it!!! Make 2023 your year!!!
Did you know that you can book a call and talk to Dr. Natalie directly! She would love to help you personally and answer any questions you have about her offerings. Sign up for her complimentary DEEP DIVE CALL now. No charge. No obligation. Just 30 minutes 1:1 with Dr. Natalie herself.
I know this is a funny picture but it is so representative of what risk looks like in midlife. A carry on bag and a borrowed neck pillow from my elementary school kid. Yup. That’s what risk looks like right now.
I preach a lot on here about stepping into doing what is authentic to you. Pushing aside the social conditioning of the world and saying yes to that inner voice. Well guess what? One of the things I always try to do is practice what I preach and share how it went. So what you see here is my carry on bag. In this picture, I am at the airport after a full day of work, waiting for a plane to take off at 9pm towards the next big thing in my life.
Sometime in my youth I started writing books in my head. I started making ideas for how I wanted to change my little corner of the world. And my little corner felt really bleak. It had one actively alcoholic parent and one that was sober, yet ever so invested in the co-dependent cycle of accepting her alcoholic husband as he was and the “life” they had promised to one another, with five kids in tow. That’s right! It was in that place where these ideas of mine were in their infancy.
Natalie – Age 2(ish)
And people I wanted to sing it, say it, write it, orate it, teach it, and preach it (that last one pissed me off because as a girl I was not given that chance in my family of origin’s religious affiliation to be a preacher). In my youth, my mind started to run. And I have done a million marathons in my mind since then. So many books, short stories, lyrics written within the boundaries of my intellect. And this quiet Voice inside me has beckoned me for so long.
In my teenage years the voice started to kick up. It told me you are not the wisdom of just you, but generations. You guys!?!? This was decades before I knew about intergenerational transmission of trauma, legacies, or our ability to tap into a collective unconscious that gives us the wisdom of many. I barely had my driver’s license and I distinctly remember a conversation with my girlfriends when I told them I would write a book someday about “All the women in me”. No lie! This actually happened!
Natalie – Age 16
Then there was my twenties. The voice was never dormant. Always narrating for me in the background how I would someday write books, help people journey through their suffering like mine, and of course all while I felt my chief job in the world was to rescue my mother and placate my father. My mom finally and officially left him for the last time, during this decade of my life. I mean people…this story doesn’t get more real. Here I am, barely figuring out how to ride a plane, graduate college, and God forbid find a career and someone to have a family with. But I did it. All of it. Don’t tell ANY member of my family that they can’t deliver. You will lose. EVERY DAMN TIME!!! Yet, my family role was still to be a third parent, the third adult in the household with my two younger siblings, and take care of all the adults and any kids in need. The inner Voice turned soft over this time. Not gone…just very hushed.
Natalie Age 22
Then my thirties came roaring in. I was 29 when my mom was diagnosed with cancer. I was her primary caretaker for a good portion of her three year battle. I entered into my 30th year on this earth knowing that I wouldn’t make it out of this decade in tact. My mom would not make it with me. And I didn’t understand that. Why her? Why the one that I called my best friend (which by the way my psychologist self now knows was enmeshment and not healthy, but my thirty-some year old self didn’t realize that)? Why wasn’t it my dad? He was the alcoholic. He was the one that made bad choices. Well the Universe…she heard me. And at 31 I watched my mom take her last breath. Then 9 months later, when I was just 32, my Dad’s alcoholism had finally caught up with him and he passed away as well. And my inner Voice? She felt broken by all this. She knew it would take a minute to come back from all of it. I mean, I had a kiddo, a divorce, another marriage, and a new kiddo under my belt too during this same decade. It was a rocky road.
So when my forties came I thought for sure it was time to listen. Time to lean into the Voice that wanted me so badly to give the wisdom and gifts bestowed on me to all those women who had set aside their goals and dreams for the safe life of doing what was expected of them. But I had married again in my thirties, subconsciously seeking to fix the wounds of my parents. And that was nagging at me. Don’t worry…at age 43 that endeavor had also blown up in my face and this time the Universe was not playing. She left me a new child to help me stay focused on what was important to me, knowing my mothering was a life vest for me. Yet, my son moved in with his dad in this time. And honestly rightly so! He did not need to witness his mother’s life burning to the ground. But he does get to see the Phoenix of the new version that has arisen. So yet again, another marriage failed, another kid to be a single parent to. People…I let that life of old burn. I let the ideas that were assigned to me of what my life “should” look like, crumble. I let that old story end…and the Voice got louder and more insistent. She was urging me in my growth to start sharing. Not when a book was ready. She wanted me to share now…share raw…and share authentically. So I listened and followed suit.
By my mid-forties I was ready for change in my life. I was ready to take back all the things I had pushed aside for so long, in an effort to live others’ versions of what they thought my life should be. I laughed, I cried, and felt my anger, so that I could start to write, record, and share my wisdom and the generations of wisdom of those before me with the world.
Fast forward to a carry on bag and borrowed neck pillow in the Minneapolis Airport. I have taken some major leaps these past years. Investing time, money, and good old sweat into LearnToLoveYourStory.com. I am finally giving an outer voice to the inner Voice who has been with me all these decades. It has been a transformational experience for me to invest in myself this way.
So what does risk look like in midlife? It looks like this. It looks like a middle aged woman, with a tired old story, who transcended her lived experience to help you transcend yours. It looks like putting my hard earned money where my mouth is and putting together a website, courses, and new business line to bring this knowledge to more people than just the hundreds I can see across the couch in my therapy office. It looks like putting my face online every week, week after week, to tell you this wisdom that lives in my soul. It looks like bloopers and swearing, because I am authentic and want to show you that even a messed up old lady like me has something to share with the world.
I am not perfect. I am not the only authority on middle age. I am not an expert in all things. What I am is myself. And what I have to tell you is my story is your story. I want to share with you what I have experienced, learned, studied, and practiced in the past two decades to help shave some years off of your suffering through living a life you think you “should”…that’s “safe” and inauthentic to the Voice inside you. I am willing to take the risk with you…are you ready to join me?
If so, sign up for FREE Group Coaching For a Year. You won’t regret it. This is step one on your journey to Learn To Love Your Story.
FREE Group Coaching For a Year – Join ANYTIME!
Join us monthly as we work together to help you design the life you have always wanted for yourself. No gimmicks! Just results! Dr. Natalie has nearly two decades of experience as a Clinical Psychologist and she is ready to help women in midlife break the chains of living in constant survival mode.
Please be sure to sign up. Even if you can’t join every month, you will also have access to online courses, workbooks, guided meditations, and get the video highlights sent out after each months group coaching event. It is well worth it!!! Make 2023 your year!!!
Did you know that you can book a call and talk to Dr. Natalie directly! She would love to help you personally and answer any questions you have about her offerings. Sign up for her complimentary DEEP DIVE CALL now. No charge. No obligation. Just 30 minutes 1:1 with Dr. Natalie herself.
Let’s be blunt…holidays are the MOST COMMERCIALIZEDtime of the year. And not only that, they become the dreaded list of extra items on an already full “To Do” list for most women. So what we really start feeling is EXHAUSTED. Dr. Natalie explains in this video how we find ourselves in this quandary and offers us some insight on how to start the new year right!
Join us monthly as we work together to help you design the life you have always wanted for yourself. No gimmicks! Just results! Dr. Natalie has nearly two decades of experience as a Clinical Psychologist and she is ready to help women in midlife break the chains of living in constant survival mode.
Please be sure to sign up. Even if you can’t join every month, you will also have access to online courses, workbooks, guided meditations, and get the video highlights sent out after each months group coaching event. It is well worth it!!! Make 2023 your year!!!
Did you know that you can book a call and talk to Dr. Natalie directly! She would love to help you personally and answer any questions you have about her offerings. Sign up for her complimentary DEEP DIVE CALL now. No charge. No obligation. Just 30 minutes 1:1 with Dr. Natalie herself.
Are you a woman in midlife who feels complacent in a life you don’t feel excited about anymore? What if I told you that I could help you rediscover JOY in your life and help you to DESIGN A LIFE that you’ve only dreamed about? I assure you I can. Don’t think this can be true? Ask me your questions and I will show you how midlife can be your BEST LIFE!
One of the main reasons women in midlife come to my programs is to find a sense of self again. I know that sounds strange, yet the truth is these women have no idea who they really are or what they really want in life. They know what they do, they know who they care for, and they may even know what they are good at. What they don’t know is who they really are. The real version of them. The one that has been locked away inside. Why is this? Because early in our childhood the social conditioning begins. “Be a nice girl” we are told. “Shouldn’t you share that with your friend?” we are asked. We are even likely to hear, “you’re a natural at being a little mom for everyone” or “You are so good at knowing what others need.”
And then we are off to the races. Once we are conditioned to find our worth in how we codependently take care of others, we are hooked. Like a drug, we seek more and more and more. We want to be that friend, that sibling, that spouse, that parent, who against all understanding can hold it all together. Can take care of all the things and still look good doing it. Because don’t forget our looks are our other form of social currency as women. It has to look easy and we must look beautiful doing it, in order to fully gain our worth. And we hustle for our worth in this madness for a long while. Many of us keep hustling, until we can’t anymore. And when the last of our roles has ended and our beauty’s shiny luster wears off with age, where does that leave us? It leaves us to our own devices. It leaves us with ourselves. Only the woman who we now inhabit has been a human doer for so long, she is a stranger to us. Who is she at all? What are her wants and desires? We sometimes have no idea where to even start.
That is usually where I come in. A woman will come into my office for therapy or join one of my programs for coaching and we will start to unravel the layers of social conditioning that has told her who she is. We are seeking to help her find who she actually is. Underneath all the tasks she had and roles she played is an actual person. However, it is a person that often times has been so horribly neglected for years there is no recognizable aspect to this person. This self (inside the socially conditioned woman/human doer) is a stranger to the women who work with me. This is where the work begins.
Learning to Love Our Stories is a journey of self love, self exploration, and self empowerment. Yet not one of those things is attainable without true self awareness. If we do not know the person we truly are we cannot love them, we cannot help them explore, and we certainly cannot help them make empowered choices to create the life they want to live. And that is where all stories begin really…they start with meeting the main character. So what happens when you are the main character and you don’t know yourself? Answer…you start to know yourself by listening. You are listening for what it is you truly want. That is usually a wonderful indication of who you really are.
So here is the catch. If a woman has been conditioned most of her life to look out in her world and identify what is wanted of her by others and meet those needs, she has atrophied the cognitive muscles to look inside and see what she wants and needs for herself. And when these women are finally sitting with me trying to learn these new skills it is an effortful process. It is like an adult trying to pick up a new language. Let me explain. Speaking fluently in a new language is never going to happen overnight. There will need to be repetition. Tons and tons of repetition. And even then we initially learn a new language by translating it through our native tongue. So you hear a phrase in the foreign language and you think through the lens of your current language to know what that means. Then you decide in your current language what you want to say back and you translate that back into the foreign language. It takes a LONG time to really get the hang of this. A LONG TIME and A LOT OF PRACTICE.
So how does this match up with what women are trying to do when they are learning to know the real version of themselves? Let me give you an example. Once I helped a mother at the start of her empty nesting, who was really struggling to know what she wanted in her life. She had spent the better part of nearly three decades taking care of her kids and her spouse, making sure that their every need was met. So now as she was looking at retirement from those roles she was really shook up. She didn’t have a purpose. She didn’t see a meaning to her existence any longer. Her depression was entrenched in this understanding that she had worth as a mother and a wife, yet the circumstances of her life were no longer providing her opportunity to express this worth. This was her native tongue. To be a human giver in a family setting.
Here is where the new language starts. We talked at length about self care…a totally foreign concept and one that was saturated with this idea that she was selfish if she did anything for herself. She wanted to start being better about self care, but she wasn’t quite sure how to do that when it always felt so uncomfortable. I would suggest starting with easy things that she already wants. She then asked me, “Do I get to want things?” She was seeing the idea of self care (the new language) through the translation of her old life, which told her doing something for yourself is selfish and childish. What happens is the ideas are lost in the translation. “Doing for yourself” or “self care” has different cultural meanings when translated literally. In the language of a therapist it is a form of general hygiene, like brushing your teeth every day, eating nutritious meals, and getting enough sleep. In my client’s language, “doing for yourself” meant she was choosing herself above others and in so doing disrespecting those she loved.
Any good teacher knows that when there is a meaning breakdown, it is helpful to bring in a metaphor that makes sense to someone given their cultural conditioning. So one of the ways I helped this woman to see what self care meant, was by translating it through the idea of caring for others. She needed to see herself as one of the “others” she was caring for in her life. For years, her spouse and children had wanted for nothing as she had dutifully served them. Now she needed to turn her attention to the one that was neglected all that time…herself. This was still uncomfortable for her, so we took the metaphor a bit further. I asked her what she would think if her youngest child came home and told her that they had felt ignored their whole lives in the family home. That all the other siblings had more needs than this child did, so this child learned to be quiet and not make a fuss. And if this child told my client that they had watched as she poured herself into the other siblings and now this child was feeling neglected and somehow jilted as a result of this inequity, I asked my client, “What would you do for this child?” My client had a TON of answers for that and a reinvigorated purpose as she spoke about what she could do for this child in a scenario like this. When she was done telling me what she would do for that child, I told her to think of herself as this neglected child and to apply those same ideas to herself. That is the true meaning of the translating the meaning of self care into her native language.
Women often have no idea that they don’t know themselves and almost never have a language for this experience. What they know is they are sad, irritable, aimless in their purpose and function in life, complacent, and not sure where to start to try and fix any of this. I tell them that they are right where they need to start. In their discomfort. As I teach them a new language for how to know themselves and articulate their needs and wants, I ask that they sit in their discomfort and listen. Listen to what the discomfort tells you. If you are worried whether you did enough for your children, maybe what you are hearing is that not enough was done for you. You can’t literally translate what you hear into your native tongue. Your body mind doesn’t speak that way. If you hear yourself filled with resentment that your partner has an entire life with their work, hobbies and friends, maybe what your body mind is telling you is that you want a life too and its urging you to go out and find that. If you notice yourself feeling lonely, maybe what you’re hearing is that you need to expand your tribe and find new connections. Piece by piece, thought by thought, worry by worry, I help these women translate what their body minds are telling them and help them to create new self empowered choices to design a life the meets these new insights.
What can be really neat about my work is that it is a lot like a treasure hunt. There are treasures hidden under the sea of emotions that we are having as we transition in midlife. Our job is to learn the movements of the sea and the storms, in order to understand where those treasures may have drifted off to on the seafloor. It is always an adventure. And it is not for the faint of heart. We must prepare ourselves for storms as we set sail to find ourselves. Treasure is there to be sure, but so are dangers. A trusty navigator and a crew are always helpful additions to this journey. If you think you are in this boat on your own, take a listen to what a recent group cohort said about their journeys in the Learn to Love Your Story program. You may find that having someone like myself on your side, who has the navigational tools to manage the sea and storms, as well as a group of women that are in this with you to discover their own treasures, is just the right fit for what you need to weather your midlife storm.
I know we are all very different in our experiences in life, yet there are some very universal aspects to our lived experiences that I think we overlook. We think that we are “all alone” in our experience, when in fact we are not alone. In fact, we may all of been there in one capacity or another. So today’s blog is really about helping us to explore this concept and maybe save ourselves from the collective illusion that we are alone in our suffering.
When I was in my thirties, I found myself in a management position on a large scale for the first time. I had supervised and managed prior to this, but during this particular stint in my career I found myself in boardrooms with individuals (mostly male and mostly white), whom had been doing these jobs for decades. I was definitely the lowest on the totem pole as far as seniority and gender role, and most definitely was seen as green. This lead me into a continual battle of trying to prove my worth in this environment. I was working harder and longer hours than anyone else in this level of management and getting less recognition than all of them. It came to a head for me towards the end of my work with this agency, when I joined a coalition within the agency that was looking at making some modifications across disciplines and the CEO of one of those disciplinary areas took credit for not just part, but all of what I did. ALL OF IT. I am certain that my name never even came up in the rooms where this man pitched these ideas. He later was promoted and then found employment outside the agency entirely, and you better bet that this interdisciplinary project was part of the wave he was riding as he did so.
This was a major learning moment for me. I had the fortune of also working under a manager that was a woman, who had experienced many similar instances in her longer career with this organization. We commiserated some about this, yet that wasn’t enough to satisfy me. I was really upset by the feeling that there was a setup that I wasn’t going to be able to break working within this kind of a hierarchy. It was one of the factors that lead to my looking for other employment and moving on in my career. What I discovered is that once you are in the unenviable position of hustling for your worth and proving yourself, that energy takes over completely. Its lonely at the bottom. And if you don’t stop this pattern yourself there is no one else that will come to save you. You have to be your own hero. Others will always benefit from your assuming the myth that your worthiness must be proven. Others can (and many unfortunately will) capitalize on your courageous efforts to prove yourself by taking credit for your work, your credibility, and your value. Not everyone is trying to do this as an intentional and manipulative ploy. It is just that the system of “haves” and “have nots” will always result in more “haves” and “have nots”. If you assume the role of a “have not”, trying to always prove yourself to the “haves”, then you are perpetually within that energy.
This is not to say you can’t liberate yourself from this. You can, but you must remember that you will not liberate yourself within the context of this system. You will have to leave the system behind completely. Sometimes this happens in the literal sense, as it did for me when I left this position; and sometimes it is in a more figurative sense, when we leave behind the unspoken rules of “haves” and “have nots”, and dance to a different drummer right within the context we are stuck in. I’ve tried it both ways…and in both contexts I have learned another valuable lesson. It is always lonely at the bottom. Meaning…when we get started with a venture like this, we feel like we are on our own. We are fighting the fight, yet we are depleting our own stored energy because we have no back up.
I want to explore this part of the journey a little further. I see this “loneliness” factor as a rumble strip (for more explanation on what I mean by this, feel free to read another blog where I explain this metaphor in more detail). Loneliness tells us that we are slipping back into the “have” and “have not” paradigm again. We feel alone, because we are still indoctrinated in the illusion that we are fighting to prove our worth. When you notice that you have a case of the “I’m all alone in this”, stop. Here is where you need to change your tactics. The truth REALLY IS that we are NEVER ALONE. NEVER! In fact there is always people suffering in these same ways we are. We are not unique in these experiences.
In fact, the illusion that we are alone is a function of the “have/have not” system of oppression. Except, instead of others oppressing us, we are doing the work for them. This feature of how systems sustain inequalities is called internalized oppression. The things we were taught and learned we are now enforcing on ourselves. In this case, believing we are alone in this suffering keeps us locked in the energy of trying to prove ourselves over and over again. There is nothing to prove. We already have worth. Yet, if we keep trying to prove that worth, there is an implicit bias that we may not have that worth in the first place or we wouldn’t have to prove ourselves. As we continue to pursue proving ourselves we are keeping ourselves oppressed on autopilot, without anyone else having to do anything.
The remedy to this is to get connected to others. To build ourselves a community of people that let us know this is not the case. In the story I’ve shared here, my community started with someone else who had the same experience and was willing to help me see I was not alone. This connection started to build a community of other supporters in my career that were there when I felt stuck in the spiral of “have” and “have not”, and would challenge me to break the the cycle by not participating in my own suffering. I would stop trying to prove myself and would honor my worth. If those who I worked with didn’t honor that worth too, I would leave. They did not deserve my service if they could not honor the worth it brought to their organization. Ultimately that has lead to my working for myself. I said NO liberally. Said NO without abandon in these organizations when they were not honoring what I brought to the table. And eventually I said NO as many times as I needed and disappointed as many people as I needed, so as NEVER to disappoint myself again.
That is, until I realized I had become both my “have” and my “have not”. I had started to hustle for my worth in my worth again, even though I was working for myself. I wanted to prove myself to myself, that I could have my own practice and start a new business venture simultaneously. And when the math didn’t work, because there were not enough hours in the day, I doubled down and kept killing myself trying to make both work. I was going to prove it to myself that this could be done. But then I realized that insidious “have” and “have not” system had seeped into me again. I was feeling alone in my battle. I was noticing that I wasn’t feeling appreciated. I recognized that even without another person to prove myself to, I could get caught in the grips of proving myself and hustling for my worth. As I noted in my first blog in the “Mumblings of a Midlife Mess” series, I was going back to an old and familiar pattern and oppressing myself without even noticing.
The antidote…community. And you, my story lovers, are a part of that for me. I need to surround myself in the truth that I already have the worth and no hustling is necessary. I don’t need to prove that the side hustle can out-do the day job. It already has that worth. I just have to have faith in that truth and act accordingly. So, I share this with you to help you see that even we can be our own oppressors. Even with the best of intentions, we can fall into old patterns. And one of the ways that we can stop this in its tracks, is to share it with others. To out it. To say aloud, this system is not serving me and is not true.
I am not lonely at the bottom, fighting for my worth. I am in good company all around. We have all done this to ourselves and we will all continue to fall into these old patterns. Yet, if we come together and gain the support of one another when we recognize this, we can and will transcend this.
I wish I had a penny for every time I felt rushed when they were young, or wanted to get through a frustrating time, or I just wanted some rest. How many of those times were there? Countless. Countless times when I was rushing to get to a game, to pick up a kid, rushing to get to the next thing that I needed to do as their parent. And yet, if I had all that money those pennies add up to right now, I would spend it all for just one more moment with that kid curled up next to me. Just one more moment. There just weren’t enough. Even though there seemed to be so many that I was just struggling to get through at the time.
Parenting a child is a funny thing. No one tells us when we have these children that a little fractal of our hearts break off to become this wonderful little person. In the beginning, this fractal is fragile and it is our job to protect it. And then as this fractal of our heart grows it is our job to shape it, to teach it, and to make sure that it has the values we want it to. And then as this fractal of our heart becomes its own person and grows away from us, we are left here watching a part of us and having almost no ability to do the protecting and shaping that we once did. It leaves us feeling raw. It leaves us wondering what next. It leaves us with a hole in our hearts, but not one that was put there against our will…one that was left there by our choice.
I’m sure you feel this too, as you watch this beautiful young soul that you have cared for graduate and start a new phase of their life. It just doesn’t seem imaginable. Yet it is. And you are at these graduation ceremonies and parties, just standing in disbelief next to this person that looks like an adult, while all you can see is the small child you still adore. Who told them they could grow up so fast? Who said that was ok? It certainly wasn’t you. You are left with just the notion that your job is now done. But what next?
I know your grief. I am experiencing it too. And it’s so weird how we moved from wanting to just get past the monotony of it all, into longing for even one day of the worst of it again. And that’s where we find ourselves in times like these. With a whole mixed bag of emotions that we’re just not quite sure how to handle. We want to cry, because we know that we will miss it all so much. We know that we’re also so proud of them that it seems almost impossible to contain all of this love and admiration inside of us. We can’t tell enough people how wonderful they are and how we would be their biggest fan even if we hadn’t raised them. They are just so amazing to us.
Yet, what are we going to do with the space…the void that shows up in the wake of their growing up and moving on with their lives? What will we do with all the time, with all the love, with all that we still want to give them? What will we do? We have spent the better part of two decades or more taking care of them. We know how it is to be in the role of their parents and caregivers, yet we’re not so certain what our role is now. Not to mention it doesn’t seem fair that a part of our heart is just walking around in the world without us. How is it even possible that we will survive not knowing all the time what’s happening? Not being able to save them from all of the bad that we can see in the world? Not sharing in all of their joy going forward? It just doesn’t seem fair that a part of our heart is in their‘s, yet we will never have the intimate front row seat to their life in the way we have up until now.
There’s really only one thing that we can do. And that is to take care of the heart that fractal left. It may not seem like what we think we should do, yet it is the only thing within our power to do. We must take care of our own hearts. We must grieve and then we must keep moving forward and enjoying this beautiful life that is still connected to ours. If we stay too long in our longing, in our regret, in our missing what once was, we risk missing the enjoyment of the person they are now. This young adult that we are growing to love. Just remember that neither of us know how this works. We are all on the growth edge of a new relationship with one another.
Here’s the truth of it. Since we cannot go with them and will not be in their lives the way that we have up until now, we must learn to take care of the heart where that fractal left. It is our job to take care of ourselves. To learn what it’s like to be the parent or caregiver of this young adult. It is our job to find our way in this new world that we find ourselves in. It is our job to love ourselves and in so doing transmit the love in our heart to that fractal, however far away it may be.
So take care of yourselves, my story lovers. Take care of the one that took care of them for this long. Take care.
Come on ladies…aren’t you sick of being told your age and hormones are the culprit for your low sex drive? Guess what…THAT WAS A LIE (I had to do a little Maury Povich for you there). The real truth is that if your body is the culprit, it isn’t in the way you have been told.
Our beliefs about our body and its attractiveness to our partners is much more likely the issue at hand. We are terribly self critical about our bodies…we were socially conditioned to be. And all of it is a load of crap!!! Ideal beauty is defined by culture, media, family, etc. It is not a gene in our DNA. And since we have been sold on the idea that we are never going to be good enough, we are continually buying the next product to correct that. Capitalism is built on this principle. Psychologists like myself, HATE THIS for you.
Watch this video and learn some tips on how to change your mindset about your body. Because if you start loving your body again, you may just find your sex drive going up too.
Do any of these sound like you?
Feel a sense of lack, despite success in life or having done everything “right”
Struggle to articulate how you feel to others
Experience guilt about how you’re feeling
Have lost your way
Are struggling to overcome turmoil in your life
Have become resigned to accepting a life you don’t love
Many of us are suffering like this — daily life has become an ordeal, and we don’t know where or how to find help.
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Disclaimer
The content in this podcast and video is not a replacement for therapy and is not clinical, medical, or mental health treatment. Dr. Natalie Marr is a Licensed Psychologist in the state of Minnesota. Her work with LearnToLoveYourStory.com and all affiliate social media entities is educational and coaching based ONLY. She IS NOT offering therapeutic services of any kind on these mediums.
If you or someone you know is having a mental health crisis or having thoughts of suicide, please use the following crisis resources (this is not an exhaustive list of available resources):
Sexual desire and pleasure are things that seem to reportedly decline for women in midlife. Such BS! That is not what is really going on. It is not our age that dictates the decline in our enjoyment and desire of sex…it is our context that is crippling us.
Listen ladies. I get it. We have a lot on our plates. We are exhausted and yet driven, so we keep on the hamster wheel of life doing ALL THE THINGS, hoping that someday we will arrive at the end of our “To Do” list and finally be able to take that deep breath.
Why do we do this to ourselves? We know that there is no end to the responsibilities, yet we keep illuding ourselves into believing there will be an end and at that end we will finally feel better. Sorry sisters…there is no end.
What there IS, are empowered choices we can be making to step into a life of our choosing. I know it seems like this cannot be the case. That we simply could never pick ourselves over the many duties we have. And yet, if we do not pick ourselves…what do you think happens to all the people we do things for? They get less! Less quality from us. Less quantity from us! Less us! I know this is not what you are aiming for, so come join me February 13 and 20, 2022 to hear more about how to fix this with regard to your sex life.
The other day I was talking to a friend about how things are going lately. She says, “I just wish I had been able to get more done over the holidays.” She went on to tell me about three projects in her house, how she hadn’t started putting together the pictures for the poster board she is making for her son who is a senior in High School, and then added how she just started dating again and it’s quite the ordeal to learn these new dating apps. I stopped her and said, “So let me get this straight. You have three home projects, extra stuff you’re doing for your kid, and you are dating actively, yet you’re upset you didn’t get more done over the time you had specifically set aside for the holidays?” She recognized my therapizing ways and told me to shut my pie hole, but she got my point.
What in the actual HELL?!? Why do we expect this much of ourselves? And why don’t we get it when we are on the verge of burnout, that our continued choice to go at life at 100 MPH is the reason we are dragging so much? I’ll tell you why…take a listen this Vlog and learn more.
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