Be Your Own Change Guru: The Ultimate Women's Guide for Thriving at Midlife. Susan Paget

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СКАЧАТЬ moving into television as a researcher and eventually a producer.

      While television producing can seem like a glamorous job (and admittedly, it did have its perks), I constantly found myself feeling unsatisfied and uncomfortable in the role. It seemed like I could never get into the perfect situation – either the people I worked with weren’t a match for me or the type of programs and work I had to do would make me question my ethics. It was like I was walking around in a suit that didn’t quite fit but it kind of looked okay so I just had to put up with it.

      The dream that I had of one day doing something that made a difference hung over my head. My logic about it at the time was that something would happen. Some cool job would eventually come my way in the television industry that would really be my opportunity to do something special. But as time went on, the jobs I began taking seemed to completely contradict my core beliefs. The possibilities of doing something important with my vocation began to fade into the background. I’d all but given up.

      To be honest, by the time I was in my mid 40s, I was too busy to even remember I had a dream. My three kids had turned into teenagers – and like most mothers who are working full time, even with the support of my husband, I was exhausted, burnt out and felt stretched to the limit.

      But something else was happening.

      I noticed I was feeling completely angry. And on edge. And anxious. I started to feel the physical signs of mini panic attacks. I went to my doctor for a check-up and she told me that everything was fine. None of it made sense. I had a regular yoga practice. I walked regularly. I ate well. But here I was, with my emotions starting to turn on me. I didn’t know what was going on!

      So on one day off, when the house was quiet, I plopped on the couch and turned on Oprah Winfrey’s daytime talk show. The theme of Oprah’s show was something along the lines of “IF YOU’RE A WOMAN OVER 35, YOU MUST WATCH THIS SHOW”.

      Oprah’s program was dedicated to perimenopause, the hormonal transition that eventually leads to menopause. Her guest was Dr. Christiane Northrup, one of the pioneers of women’s health who explained that from as early as the late 30s on, but most commonly around the mid 40s, women begin to experience a host of symptoms that could range from the typical aspects we associate with menopause (hot flashes, night sweats, etc.) to mood swings, anxiety issues and dark nights of the soul that revolve around your self esteem, your relationships and your higher purpose.

      To say that it seemed like this show was aimed straight at me was an understatement. And while I was intrigued, I was also stunned. Why didn’t I know this? Why did I have to learn about it from a TV talk show? How could it be that I was in the middle of a pretty profound biological stage of life that I clearly knew nothing about?

      So while I sat watching the program, trying to take in the science of it all, the one thing that Dr. Northrup mentioned that took most of my attention was the metaphysical aspects of midlife.

      She said something along the lines of “Anything from your past that you haven’t dealt with will absolutely make itself known during this time.”

      For me this was what Oprah would call an “A ha” moment. I live in Australia and down here, they like to say, “the penny dropped.” I thought deeply about Dr. Northrup’s words, and it didn’t take long for me to get that there was a reason for the anger and the edge I’d been feeling.

      It was that “purpose” thing.

      That belief in myself that I had pushed aside now was knocking on my door, letting me know that it was time for me to make some changes. It was time to face the hard cold facts that the career I was devoting all my time and energy to was not going to give me what I needed and that now was the time to start paying attention to that.

      But where to start?

      Where do you begin when you have to make a really crazy change? And I say crazy because how nuts does “ I want to find my purpose,” sound? To me, getting close to 50, wanting to find my purpose not only felt crazy, it felt scary.

      Why scary?

      Well I realized that I was in unknown territory. No one had warned me about this time in life and how it brought up intense feelings. My friends who were about the same age didn’t talk about it. My sisters didn’t talk about it. My mother certainly never spoke about her experience with perimenopause.

      For me, the mere knowledge that I was going through a stage of life that I knew nothing about but could see that I really needed to get a handle on was a confronting time for me. It was a wake up call. What was happening to me at this time is what I’ll share with you later in a chapter called Awareness. It’s the first step towards making lasting change at midlife.

      The first thing that I did with the awareness that I was in the middle of perimenopause was to get knowledged up. I read Dr. Northrup’s books and everything else she created (and you should too, visit her site at www.drnorthrup.com). I was absolutely intrigued by the key insight she had shared on the Oprah Show and that was that any issue, be it physical, psychological or metaphysical that hasn’t been dealt in the past, would really come to the surface at midlife. That fascinated me. Little did I know that this impact would actually result in a passion to help empower women at midlife and to show them all the possibilities. In going through this challenging time and by getting to the heart of what my body was trying to tell me, I had stumbled upon the elusive purpose I had been so desperate to find.

      And as I began to dig for information about perimenopause, I discovered this was a far more complex stage of life than I first thought, affecting more women than I could ever have imagined. I began confiding in my close circle and hearing their stories. I spoke about it with strangers. As I listened, it was like some strange veil was being lifted and I began to realize that my big thing, the dilemma of finding my purpose was just the tip of an iceberg of issues that surfaced for women at midlife.

      Here were some of the things that I learned:

      Relationship Issues - Divorce rates soar after 50. In fact, it’s a phenomenon that’s been given its own name, “Gray Divorce”. And forget the cliché image of men with toupees buying red convertibles and ditching their wives for their 20 something secretaries. The latest statistics reveal that women are the primary instigators of divorce. Something clearly was happening that was causing women to leave their marriages or to consider it. And this got me noticing that relationships on a whole were at a tipping point for many women at this age, not just the married ones. For my single family members and friends in their late 40s, this was a time of having to come to terms with dating people with “baggage” and that finding and keeping relationships at midlife had a new level of complications.

      Empty Nest Syndrome - Women who had devoted their whole lives to being mothers were now starting to feel lost in their surroundings as their kids were growing up and gaining independence. It’s no wonder that full time mothers get nervous about the future because where empty nest used to mean a time that coincided with retirement, it now means having almost a whole other lifetime to live. And that means trying to work out what to do with that time. What do you do when you think that all you know is being a mother? What do you do when you feel like you don’t have the skills or the confidence to get a job?

      I’m Sick of Being A Mother Syndrome - Maybe it is has to do with age and 20ish years of being a mother and all the traditional things that go along with it, but I can count myself as one of those who was over having to continue a caretaking role for my young adult kids СКАЧАТЬ