You are not alone (but it sure can feel like it sometimes)

One of the things I'm personally passionate about is removing the stigma, confusion, and even shame many of us experience around the ages of 35-50.

Midlife crisis, midlife transition, and all the glories brought on by perimenopause – whatever you want to call it, this is real sh*t we go through.

In today's Thursday Thread episode, I give my take on unveiling midlife transformations for exactly what they are: normal.

This episode isn't just about navigating transitions; it's about normalizing and unshaming this experience we are all having in our 40s and 50s and  finding connection and community through our common experiences. So take this journey with me, feel the solidarity in our shared stories, and perhaps, pass this conversation along to someone who, like you, is seeking companionship on this midlife adventure.

As we always do on Thursdays, I close the episode with a meditative breathwork exercise that bridges the gap between us, even as we listen from different corners of the world. Join me in reflecting on the invisible threads that knit our lives together, emphasizing the magic in each present moment.

*This episode (and many upcoming episodes) reflects some audio grumbles from a time period when we were experiencing poor wifi connection in our area of Portland.

Chapters

• 0:05 Navigating the Midlife Crisis Journey
• 10:44 Finding Connection Through Shared Experiences

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:05

Hi and welcome to Untethered with Jen Liss, a podcast that's here to help you break free, be you and unleash your inner brilliance. I am your host, jen, and in this episode we're going to talk about why you are not alone, but it sure can feel like it sometimes. Let's dive in. Hey there, unicorn, it's Jen. Welcome back to the podcast for this Thursday thread. It's a Thursday thread.

Speaker 1: 0:40

This Thursday thread, we are pulling out a little piece from the episode with Stephanie McLaughlin from Tuesday. So on Tuesday we talked to Stephanie about her project that she has been on a mission with for a number of years, the 40 drinks project. What she did when she turned 40, she went and had 40 drinks with 40 friends, people, throughout her life. And then her project has continued into a podcast and speaking with tons of people who are going through that transitionary period, the developmental stage that we might call the mid life crisis, and one of the things that Stephanie said at the very end of the episode that she wanted to make sure that everybody knows, and really her big mission that has come through this project is that you are not alone. You're not alone on this journey, and so many of us, especially at this age. At this point, when we wake up and we look around and we see, oh my gosh, like I'm stressed out, I'm burnt out, I'm working too hard or I'm not where I thought that I would be, or I'm not living the life that I really wanted to live All of these things that can happen to people at this stage in life and maybe you're not having that experience, but many of us are and even just the most micro of ways at this point in our lives, she's like this is normal. She just wants people to know it's normal. There is a reason that we called it the midlife crisis, and that term has kind of gone away or kind of gone under the rug, and some of us just don't even like to say it or think it, or think that we're experiencing it, but by not acknowledging it, her point is that we're probably causing ourselves to feel shame about something that is incredibly normal and a hugely normal part of life.

Speaker 1: 2:30

Now I still have my own questions that are still circling, and she and I were kind of questioning this. Could we, should we, might we go through this earlier? Do we have to tether as much as we do throughout our lives? That's the question that I personally have, that I'm constantly just wondering about. Do we have to tether as much as we do throughout our lives? That's the question that I personally have that I'm constantly just wondering about. Do we have to become so tethered? Could we start living a life more true to ourselves sooner? Or do we have to go through this kind of hero's journey that we're on in life, where at about 40 years old, we suddenly wake up and we're like shit, what the hell is this? Does it have to be this way? Maybe it does, but her mission is to help more people see and feel and know that it's normal.

Speaker 1: 3:16

It's normal and one of the things when I worked in the corporate world, some of my colleagues and I were putting together this program to support employees in career development. One of the phrases that we came up with that really has stayed with me this entire time, and it was really at the very beginning of my own journey with this. I was around what was I? 34, 35 years old, and we came up with this phrase your journey is your journey, but you are not alone. I'm sure we're not the first people to have ever said that, but it's true. You are indeed on your unique journey. There is nobody else who has had the experiences that you have had, and I think that's incredibly important to not forget that. Because you have unique experiences, which means that you have unique gifts. You have unique magic that you can serve to the world, because you are the only person on this planet that has had the exact recipe of experiences that you have had your midlife crisis, your midlife moment, your developmental stage that you're in right now. Whatever that is, wherever you are, nobody else has experienced it the same way that you are, and you're not alone. There's other people who are going through it too, and a lot of our human things that we very human things that we go through are very human things that every very human human is going through. How much human can a human experience? If a human could experience humanity? We're all going through the same mud.

Speaker 1: 4:57

She called it the ick. It's the ick and it can feel icky Because it feels like we have all these questions. Here's all the questions that we have during the stage. It's like who am I? Who have I been being? Why have I been being? That person Like we can really like point and be like why that person, who was that person to say that I needed to be this way, we can start to really question a lot of things Like who is this person, who I have been being?

Speaker 1: 5:24

And then, when we start looking, people are saying things that don't feel congruent with the person that we thought we were, or recognizing that we're being somebody who it doesn't feel good to be, or seeing that people are seeing things in us that we never knew for 40 years. What, what you see that in me? It's confusing. It is really fucking confusing when you start to have that experience and when you start to see this and kind of peel back the layers and start to let go of some of the tethers. Actually, before we can even let go of the tethers, we have to recognize that they're even there. So that's part of that process is just seeing them and seeing them for what they are.

Speaker 1: 6:06

So first stage is generally seeing them and kind of judging them and kind of like feeling bad about it and being in the ick. And then there's this recognition of oh okay, can I blamelessly, can I shamelessly, can I judgment-free recognize what is here? Okay, and then when we see them and we recognize them, that's when letting go happens, that's when release happens, that's when it's like, oh, I can find safety in myself, in my body. I can feel that true safety in the recognition of what is and I can let it go. That's what I do, that's what I do in my work, in breath work. That's what I do is to help people recognize what is here, judgment free. And that's when we have choice, when you have safety, you have awareness. Then you have choice and then you get to choose what you want to choose. You can choose the tethers, you can choose what's true to you. You can choose your brilliant, sparkly magic. You get to choose. We have choice. We don't feel like we have choice when we're shaming and blaming and confused and in that, and that's okay, that's also okay. We all have that experience and we get to choose. We could stay there, we could stay there.

Speaker 1: 7:18

Maybe you'll come back in another lifetime and you're probably not listening to this podcast if you're not somewhat interested in letting go of some of the tethers. You're not going to listen to a podcast called Untethered. You're like I'm tethered and I'm cool, I'm good, I'm just like wrapped up like a ball and it's great. This is great, everybody's great, I'm great, I'm fine, I'm great. It's how a lot of us are living in those last couple of years before you might start listening to this podcast. Right, feathered, feathered, it's normal, it's normal. It's so good when we can just see that and own that and be like, oh God, okay, yeah, right, yes, yes, it sucks. It sucks to wake up and have that thought.

Speaker 1: 8:05

I shared with Stephanie that I had that recognition Like I don't know who I am. I'm confused. I woke up on one day and I was just very confused. I was trying to figure it out and the more I tried to figure it out, the more frustrated I got. And we go through that too.

Speaker 1: 8:25

So, just normal, mostly, this episode is normalizing the shit out of that and what we can do about it is talk about it more. That's all that Stephanie is here for. She's like I just want people to be talking about it, because when we talk about it, then we are automatically unshaming it because we're normalizing it. And when we normalize something, then we all feel safe to be experiencing it. And there's a lot of people that don't feel safe to be experiencing the thing that they're very viscerally experiencing.

Speaker 1: 8:59

And how much harder is something to experience when you don't understand or recognize or acknowledge or feel safe, to acknowledge what is going on. That's hard, that's when life gets really really hard. That's called suffering, and pain is optional, but suffering is a choice. You don't have to suffer. You can find community. There's so many other people.

Speaker 1: 9:24

Go follow Stephanie's podcast. You're listening to this podcast find other places, join my community, join some community where you're being supported through this, because and in this it's not even through this, it's in this this is part of life, this is part of the magical experience that is life. That's something that I have realized more and more. It's actually really cool. It's really cool to get to experience this, to get to see life as it is, to get to step back and really witness the magic and to see that everything has led you to this point that you're at. Every single thing has led you to the point that you're at the recognition of the things that hardened you, the recognition of the things that softened you, or the things that are now possibly actively softening. You, in my case, lived a lot of my life very hard and now, as an active softening, maybe you're going through a little bit more of a hardening, a little bit more boundaries. Whatever that process is. It's, it's all just magical.

Speaker 1: 10:44

Just take a deep breath and recognize this experience that you're having right now, today. This moment is magic. It truly, truly is, and you're not alone. And please find other people who are breathing in the magic with you, because that's such an important thing, whether you find it virtually, whether you find it in person, whether it's both, the more we can open up to that and have the courage to be talking about it and have the courage to be one of the people if that feels like your calling, to be one of the people to stand and say hey guys, this is normal guys, hey gals, hey everyone, hey y'all. My Midwestern just it still comes out and I love it. That's a huge part of who I am. This is your journey. You are not alone. As we do every Thursday, we're going to take a moment to breathe and we're going to breathe into this community.

Speaker 1: 11:56

Now, podcasting is so interesting because I'm in your ear and I am also in the ear of a bunch of other people and I get to hear individually from some of those people. Some of you reach out to me, and so I know that you're listening, and other people you know. I just wonder it's you know who is it that is listening? And so we're all connected, though by the same thread, and this is true of so many things in life. We're connected to other human beings, whether it's the strawberry that you ate was planted by somebody and that seed was rinsed by somebody else and somebody else harvested the strawberry, and then somebody else washed it and somebody else put it in the grocery store. It's like these threads that are connecting us, by all of these things that we're experiencing, and this podcast is one of them. There is a huge community of us who is connected, huge community of us who is connected, all of the people who come on the podcast. You're connected to them, like I am connected to them, and we're all connected in this just beautiful community. So, taking a moment with me to breathe into this beautiful community that you are a part of, that you are actively creating, simply by being here, simply by being present, simply by listening to this message right now.

Speaker 1: 13:18

So pause thing. If you are able to be seated, if you're able to close down your eyes, joining me. If you're walking, that's beautiful. Keep your eyes open with a nice soft gaze. If you're driving, please be attentive, or come back to this later. Keep your eyes open with a nice soft gaze. If you're driving, please be attentive. Or come back to this later.

Speaker 1: 13:38

Getting comfy in your seat, taking a deep breath into the nose, sighing it out through the mouth, taking another deep breath in and, as you do, raising your shoulders to your ears and, on your exhale, lowering your shoulders, feeling into your sit bones on the seat beneath you, allowing yourself to be held by that support, feeling your feet on the ground and, when you're ready, drawing your breath into the nose and out through the mouth, into the nose, out through the mouth. Just breathing in that sense of connectedness, on each inhale, recognizing that this air that you are breathing, this oxygen, is the same air that is being shared between yourself, others who may enter your home. That air is being exhaled when you or others leave the house. Others are sharing it. We're all sharing the same space, the same air.

Speaker 1: 15:27

We're all out there in the world sharing experiences, this collective experience of being a human, maybe now with your eyes closed, envisioning yourself in community with others, maybe the other listeners of this podcast, even if you can't see their faces, knowing that they are there, that you are indeed on this journey alongside others, into the nose, out through the nose, out through the mouth. You are not alone. Your journey is your journey. You are going through this unique experience alongside so many other people, feeling the connection of those others right here with you, through your breath, each of us breathing moment by moment by breath, part of the whole. When you're ready, taking one last big inhale into your nose, maybe placing a hand on your heart, maybe both hands, feeling your heartbeat. When you're ready, exhaling Beautiful Feeling back into the ground beneath you, your sit bones on the seat beneath you, maybe bringing gentle movement into your fingertips, into your toes, fluttering your eyes open when, and only when, you are ready.

Speaker 1: 18:01

Thank you so much for listening to this episode, for listening to this podcast. It means the world to me that you would take the time to hear this very important message me, that you would take the time to hear this very important message. You are not alone on your very beautiful, unique journey. If something in this podcast episode connected with you, I encourage you to share it with somebody who might need to hear it. You can also share it with lots of somebodies who might need to hear it If you take a screenshot of this episode and share it on social media. Tag me my name is untethered Jen on Instagram. I will always reshare your posts. Thank you once again for listening. You just keep shining your magical unicorn light out there for all to see. I'll see you next time, bye.