“Midlife is not a crisis. Midlife is an unraveling.” ~Brené Brown
I recently read this brilliant post by Brené Brown about what she describes as a “mid-life unraveling” and something struck me. Just as Brené shares that her “mid-life unraveling” hit her during her forty-first year, for me, my forty-third year has been a sort of unraveling. In fact, I think I’m still in it. I’m not sure how long it’s supposed to last or if there is a prescription for how an “unraveling” is experienced, but Brené Brown nails it with this essay. She describes her own battling it out with the Universe. Her resistance and her armor, which she’s built up over decades, is fierce and it has served her well. But at 41, she surrenders and accepts (eventually) that it’s time to let go… to let the layers shed. The layers of insanely strong and professionally manicured armor that she didn’t even realize she was wearing began to burst at the seams and prevent her from living.
I don’t think anyone has ever described this concept of a “mid-life/mid-love” chapter that I now find myself in so beautifully and yet so adjacent to fear at the same time.
In my experience, I learned at a young age, probably around 12 or 13 years old that I couldn’t share my fears. Not all of them anyways. I became astute around this time at playing into other’s vision of “cool,” what I would later look back at and see as a straight, white, cis-gendered femininity and popular girl culture that I needed to blend into in order to survive. I remember masterfully doing a sort of “code-switching,” acting one way when I was with one group of friends and then another way when I ebbed and flowed into other social spaces. For example, I remember starting 8th grade and laughing along with the “popular” kids on the bus, even when their use of the term “gay” was directed at others in a derogatory way. I just wanted to be liked. I wanted to play into the image of cool that I instinctively knew was my best shot at “survival of the fittest” and so that year I began pushing down, really far down, my own doubts, insecurities and vulnerabilities around my own sense of self and identity. My superb skills at “fitting in,” being likable and even becoming known as a sort of “peacemaker/negotiator” among friends have carried me through decades of living and growing and wandering.
I believe on many levels that I am brave and courageous and am worthy of being loved, which Brené professes so beautifully, are all of our birthrights. But until very recently I didn’t know how to shed the armor that has been covering up my ability to see that I don’t need to keep pretending and performing in order to be liked or likable.
The coping mechanisms that so many of us have developed to protect ourselves from getting hurt are keeping us small and stuck in the mud, even when we reach mid-life.
Mid-life is a scary thought. I fight like hell most days to control my surroundings so as to be able to put my feet up at the end of the day and smoke a proverbial cigar and say, “great job,” “bravo,” “you deserve to rest now…” Only to realize as I put my head on my pillow that I never actually put my feet up that day. In fact, I never stopped. Most days I am fighting an uphill battle with the Universe and I don’t think I’m winning. Instead, I am often working myself into a state of burnout, only to get up and keep fighting the same fight the next day.
For those of us who are caregivers (for children or parents, pets or neighbors, for the planet,) how do we wake up each morning and live into our most sacred truths while still making a living and playing this critical care-taker role? How do we allow ourselves to shed our armor and bask in what we really want to be doing without turning our backs on responsibility?
If I could, I would retire now and enroll in a creative writing program. Wake up and write, paint, take photos and live in nature. But alas, I can’t. I must take my dog out, feed my daughter, take her to school, rush to work and make sure bills are paid in order to wake up and do it all over again the next day. All this in a world that feels very, very fragile and chaotic and frankly scary these days.
Brené Brown shares that, “courage and daring are coursing through your veins.* You were made to live and love with your whole heart. It’s time to show up and be seen.”
*I want to know how to do this and make sure I’m not late for my 10am meeting.
I guess for now, I will just keep writing, keep asking questions and try not to be afraid of this unraveling that I find myself wanting to speak more truth to. Perhaps as Brené illustrates so well, this unraveling is a sort of re-awakening/re-birth that will hopefully allow all of us to build a new type of armor (regardless of where we are in life), an armor of courage, bravery and risk-taking that we didn’t ingest enough when we were young…When I was that 12 year old girl hiding behind myself. Instead, I will try to live into these questions and be less afraid of not being liked. I think I’ll still always be a peacemaker at heart, but I will also try to stay open to some natural conflict and internal dissent along the way. After all, humanity is imperfection. Humanity is messy.
So as we kick off the summer and celebrate Pride month, may we all wake up a bit and concoct a medicine that gets infused into the water of our young. A medicine that allows bravery, vulnerability and courage to become seeped into our bones. Perhaps armor will eventually become a thing of the past, both physical and virtual. And perhaps we will realize that love and kindness, freedom and truth are ours for the taking.
Excerpt from “The Midlife Unraveling“: “I’m not screwing around. 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. You were born worthy of love and belonging. Courage and daring are coursing through your veins. You were made to live and love with your whole heart. It’s time to show up and be seen.”
— Brené Brown (2018)
Taking a Pause at 40 