What if your life ended at midlife but you found yourself still alive?
Most of us know that writing can be therapeutic – especially someone like me, a psychotherapist who holds free weekly silent Journalling sessions due to the belief that it changes the individual’s day (ergo life).
I’ve had an unusual decade. Ten years ago I was not well. I was spending time every six weeks or so at a form of urgent care and being sent home with a variety of diagnoses and beginning to fit the profile of opioid seeking due to pain meds required! I was also living in a friend’s attic, funding that and the family home and in the process of a divorce.
A year later I closed my therapy practice, ending my career, for what I believed was forever.
I was 51. Statistically I had a 15% chance of being alive at age 56.
Setting my sights on being one of the 15% I had the idea that I’d get better. And on my own in the middle of the night I’d have the idea that I would die. I didn’t have a concept of the third option which is of neither but a middle option of chronic illness – now applied to cancer.
Fast forward to ten years later and I’ve just finished the writing part of my book. Rewriting – I believed it was ready a year ago.
There is a shift this week that I have to describe as momentous and is somehow associated with the book.
I describe the book as the one I needed a decade ago, the book that was not available, not written.
In some respects many things died back in 2016 and 2017. It can feel as if I’ve been reincarnated – my body, my location, my family and friends all reconstructed, I’ve even a different name.
What if your life ended at midlife but you found yourself still alive?
If all you’d built in terms of home, family and career had gone? If you felt like you but in an unrecognisable form? What if you began to build but without the physical and financial assets you had before?
It might take a decade. It might take some journalling…
Do I date my rebirth from now? When I submit on 31st of August? Or at some point during the struggle of the last ten years?
The second chance of a life is here.
Like the first time round I don’t get to choose many elements. This time however I have wisdom and maturity which compensates for the adjustments I need to make with my chronically-iconic body!
I’m lucky. My first life was rich in learning, and living for a couple of decades with my children was a wonderful experience.
My second life is rich in love and wisdom. The joys of post-menopause and discovering the quirky people I will be alongside for this life.
Jung writes about death being the goal of life, the next achievement on the horizon. Long ago I wrote about a conscious life review before we die and living an awakened life. I even had a book of the worksheets and meditations I developed.
Jungian thinking is that life is a curve not a straight line, and that death is not illustrated by us being a machine that breaks down and stops, but is the fulfilment of life, the final chapter of a book where everything makes sense.
While I’ve been writing about a niche area – coming out as lesbian midlife – the book is really the fulfilment of that PhD I began in 2015 but discontinued when I was ill, it’s about the psychology of the menopause.
Menopause isn’t the end, yet many things do end and die. Psychotherapy has been slow to pick this up and psychological needs of women at this stage in life have been underserved.
While I’m no more certain about my life details to come than I was ten years ago or 40 years ago. I feel new: free, light, confident. The goal is to die, Jung would say. Living therefore begins to take on increased meaning as I am understanding it as the chapters leading to the big fulfilling conclusion.
Notes:
Healing has taken a decade and much of that took place listening to audio books and reading – the photos above were taken on better days when I could read outside with a coffee. These two books photographed are by Pema Chodron and Phil Greenfield and the quote below is from Richard Rhor.
A nice slim and insightful book that’s accessible is THE MIDDLE PASSAGE: FROM MISERY TO MEANING IN MIDLIFE by JAMES HOLLIS I’ve always loved this book and hoped to begin to offer a more woman centred perspective on this.
STELLA DUFFY’s new book BEING THE CHANGE: THRIVING IN POST MENOPAUSE promises to be a fascinating read and is available for pre-orders.
MID-LIFE LESBIAN: THE COMING OUT COMPANION by Miriam Grace will be published by JKP/Hachette in 2027 please sign up to my newsletter for sneak previews, news and events (some free) which will begin shortly.
