What To Do When Your Kids Leave Home

Crisis Point And Lost Identity

But when you get to a crisis point, as I do in my book Boundless, I had a crisis point where I am really losing my whole sense of self. I had two core identities. They were mother of twins and they were journalists. And because they were twins, they were leaving for college all at once. So I say I was losing two-thirds of my family.

Welcome to the Midlife Rebel Podcast. It's time to rewrite the midlife story for women who refuse to be put in a box. Because maybe midlife isn't a crisis. Maybe it's an awakening. And I was like, oh my god, this is so good. So cool. So much in there that um is like when I think of you as a writer, it was so relevant to people who were writing, like if you were talking to people who were on their journey as writers to inspire them and to keep them going. But the parallels with like just life in general and and especially for women, I feel, um, yeah, it was just like, oh, this is so cool and so, yeah, just so super inspiring. And feels like um a philosophy for life.

I think so. I think it's really about really taking charge of your own narrative, right? Um, and realizing that you you are telling a narrative to yourself, and that is really informing your actions and your outcomes. But if you change the narrative that you're telling yourself, it starts to change the outcomes. And I think, yes, particularly for women, because to telling the narrative from the viewpoint of being the hero of your own life, being the protagonist of your own life. We are used to, and we don't even almost anyone know we're doing this because it's like cultural conditioning. We're used to being the object of someone else's life, you know, the object of the sentence, the thing that something happens to. And then all of a sudden, that's one of the lines I really love in a TED Talk, if I'm allowed to love it myself, is when you say, um, when you start getting kind of this negative stuff, it feels like criticism or it feels like an obstacle, that that is not a big no. And women tend to hear no when they meet those things. But um, one of my lines is no, that is not a no, that is a big yes, get ready. That means that you're being tested, you're getting better at what you're doing. And if you just let it be a test so that you can do that thing, you're just gonna be stronger at doing that thing, you're just gonna be stronger and clearer. So I'm glad you listened to that.

It's all like that, it's that idea of being outside of your comfort zone, isn't it? Oh gosh, yes. But we do we do need the support of others, and you talk about that as well. Um, because if we just have that internal dialogue and that self-doubt, and I'd love for you to talk a little bit to this if you could. Yeah, if we have that self-doubt, but we don't have other people that are lifting us up, then we can easily fall into that the comfort zone. It's not necessarily comfortable, but it's the zone of like staying the same, isn't it?

Yes. Okay. Hendricks calls it um the zone of competence or the excellent. Maybe you're doing it your comfortable area quite excellently, and it's you're probably thriving and making money and doing so. So there's like you know, some rewards there, but he talks about the zone of genius, like to do that, and I do think we need mentors and allies in order to do that, and your own best mentor. You're your own best mentor? Did you say be your best mentor and and be good at finding mentors? I yeah, that's something that as um I you know get along in life and I look back at the things I've done and the sort of leaps and changes I've made. Um, and some of them seem like I didn't

Becoming The Hero Of Your Life

think that was going to be possible, but it was. It's all about the mentors, mentors and allies. Because um, and I apparently I'm really good at choosing mentors and really, really good ones, but also I've sort of made the most of the bad mentors that came my way, too. They teach you.

So they're not necessarily ones that you've chosen, just ones that kind of show up. Most of them might try and chosen that might try and tell you you're not good enough.

Those, yes, the ones that fire you up, okay and it because they there's something like maybe they're even telling you, oh, I totally believe in you, but then they're undermining it. Oh to detect it, or maybe they're just out and out telling you now. I mean, I'm a writer. This is my eighth book. Boundless is my eighth book. It's my first literary book of the eight books. The other are self-help transfer transformative nonfiction, but this is my eighth book, and I think writers, creatives get more, maybe more than their fair share of like, well, you can't do that, that doesn't pay money.

Totally. I trained in theater, so back in the day, and so I got a lot of that as well. And my parents, my dad, especially, definitely didn't want me to go to college, so I did it, but there was always that I I think I was very heavily, heavily influenced on what other people thought I was capable of, rather than believing in what I was actually capable of. And like I don't want to play the blame game, but I definitely think that that contributed to me giving it up, saying I can't do it. I really think that that that made a massive difference.

Well, I think parents are very well-meaning when they creative child to not go into a creative profession. I understand whether they're most of the time they're coming from love, some of them maybe coming from bitterness on their own creative and practicality. Practicality, but at the same time, what if you were in a family where you had someone showing you how to be a thriving creative person? You know, that's why I use this phrase on my website, creative inheritance. And I feel like my parents weren't rich. In fact, my parents had a huge financial setback when I was in my teens, and it built a lot of resilience, let's just say. But one of the things that I got from both parents was just believe in your creativity, just how art feeds your soul. And um, in the case of my mother, she was a classical pianist and um piano teacher and violin teacher loved music. So I had this deep love of music. In the case of my father, he did what men do in the practical world. He became the provider for the family and got a business major and did all those things, but he also really believed in all the humanities and just being a man of letters and somebody who knew Shakespeare and somebody who understood the symphony music his wife was playing. And then when I said I wanted to be a writer, he understood. He just understood. And then later in life, after all these years of just supporting me and helping me just believe I was going to be a writer, he decided to write his own novel.

Did he? Yes. Oh, that's so cool.

And did he publish it? No, no, um, it's a tragic story. He actually died shortly after typing the end. Um, but at the same time, what a triumph to finish a novel from beginning, middle, and end. He has a whole whole collection of his, he had little short stories and that kind of thing. So I had this creative inheritance that kind of loops back over on itself. Because what the father was motivating the daughter to do, the daughter does. Um, and then the and the father loops back and he sees that it's his own dream and he does it.

That's so cool. My dad's actually um written a book and self-published it. He's a he's a baker in our local town in the UK where I grew up, and he's got loads of stories, and it he he just has and he goes and gives talks to you know local community groups and that sort of thing. And so he's written a book to to to um, I don't know, he had a stroke when he was 65, and I feel like he wanted to remember, make sure that he remembered everything that had happened to him in his life as kind of like proof that he was I don't know still alive or like recovered, that his brain still worked, though he hasn't ever said that to me. Um, but I think that that's part of it. Um but yeah, he's committed that to paper and and um he's had yeah, really enjoyed that process as well.

Yeah, yeah. Well um so and how this all connects to midlife and being a rebel about midlife is I think when you have some kind of dream in you that you haven't quite uh midlife. I love that you call it midlife rebel. Thank you because I've been thinking about that, like, yeah, I get kind of stubborn at midlife.

And there's these things, well, the the rebel for me, and I think now there's a little bit of rebel in all of us where we kind of go, is this really

Turning Setbacks Into A Big Yes

it? Like, is that story about being in midlife true? Like, who actually am I? Um beyond all of those stories, right? The stories that we tell. Um, and you actually speak about this as well, don't you? Our essence.

Oh gosh, yes, the essence.

Oh, what's your experience of that?

Oh, I I think when you do hit a crisis point in life, and that could be midlife, it could be later. I'm I'm I'm getting into the this next little part that sort of I still want to call midlife, but I'm realizing like it's you know that you have that too. You have crisis point, it just it doesn't stop. But when you get to a crisis point, as I do in my book Boundless, I had a crisis point where I am really losing my whole sense of self. I had two core identities. They were mother of twins, and they were journalists. And because they were twins, they were leaving for college all at once. So I say I was losing two-thirds of my family, you know. I was a single mother, you know, so I'm losing two-thirds of my family. And then, you know, the newspaper journalism industry had been in decline for quite some time. I call it the death spiral because why not be dramatic? It turns out actually, I was being dramatic, and it turns out it's true. But I think when you get to a crisis point, and for me, that is those were my two core identities, uh, and it was happening all at once, that I had to figure out well, what is the self then? Who is this person who has been here all along? And one of the things in Boundless is my sister points me to our essence of you photos. So she has an essence of Linda photo, and I have an essence of Carolyn photo. And I go back to that photo, she goes back to hers to remember that for me, it's when I was five. For her, it's when she was two. She's got this cute little contact on, and she keeps it up like right by her piano. And so in me, I'm five, and I'm like so fully me. No one has told me yet not to be me. And I feel like that was a really good practice to return to it. Was beginning of me rediscovering what was that gonna, what was the next part of life gonna be?

Yeah, wow, that's yeah, really interesting. Because I was thinking about that only this week myself as well. Like I did um a session with someone, I was the the person, she was the she was the coach. Um, with emotional freedom technique. Have you done that? It's tapping. And it took me back to a childhood experience and and that yeah, that innocence and that um compassion I felt for that small girl. Yeah, yeah. And she knew. Yeah, yes, yeah.

And I've I've used that with my twins too. Like my daughter, for instance, a couple of years ago, she was having a crisis, and I said, Let's go back to your nine-year-old genius. I don't know, I just picked the number out of the blue. I realized that's when we were in Spain, and we started a little scrapbook. So um she was she's in Denver, and I'm in Albuquerque. So we did this over the phone, but when she came back to Albuquerque the next time we did it in person, we looked at that scrapbook, and she was completely being herself, collecting all these tickets to the museums and writing little notes about the architecture, all through the lens of a nine-year-old girl.

That's lovely. Yeah, that's a that's such a great reminder,

Mentors Allies And The Zone Of Genius

and it's a journey, isn't it? And it's yeah, interesting that you were talking about identity because that also comes with story, doesn't it? I um we're here to talk about you, but I'm gonna tell you another little big thing that happened to me and and which has sort of led me to where I am with exploring who I am, is I used to um fully enjoy regularly red wine specifically, and to the point where it was part of my identity, you know, that's just who I am. It's I you know have a drink in the evenings, and um, four years ago I stopped drinking, and it wasn't and it was always like this kind of you just need to stop drinking. It was like this little tap or big tap got bigger, louder, you know, you need to stop drinking, you need to stop drinking. I was doing all of my everyday things and you know, seemingly going okay, but it was part of yeah, part of my identity. So it was kind of scary. Like, who am I if I don't drink? But it when I stopped, it opened up a massive can of worms, not necessarily externally, but in the internal dialogue, the recognition of like I don't actually know who I am, and I've probably never given myself the opportunity to find out who I am because it's you know been masked with this um with alcohol. Um yeah, so it's huge.

I I yes, these things can be so integrated or almost grafted into your identity of yourself that it's hard to imagine yourself beyond them. So what but one of the things that I talk about in my book Boundless is Thomas Burton's teaching that you can do the true self no harm. And I'm like, okay, I gotta look at that because, like, here are the two biggest parts of me. What else could there be? Is there anything gonna be left in there if those things go away or they morph dramatically? I mean, obviously, I'm still a mom, I'm just an active mom, I'm a mentor mom. I didn't know that at the time, it just felt like death. Um, but yeah, this idea that you can do the true self, no harm. There's a chapter in my book on spiritual chemo where I really go all the way to the bottom and I realize there's not a bottom. Oh wow, you're held. Something's always been holding you. Um, I think one of my favorite passages in the book is when I go, I start going to the wall, and I really I feel like I got nothing here. And I put post-it notes up on the wall, and I start mapping out the novel that's just been quite tangled up for years, and I start mapping it out, and I finally land on um, could I read that passage?

Oh, yes, please. Yeah, do so. This is from bound, this is from Boundless.

Yes. So I start mapping out my novel on the um wall. I have just met William Kennedy, who won the Pulitzer Prize for Ironweed. I was at this writer thing, and we walk out of this event, and I just sort of comment to him, Oh, yeah, I had a novel, I sent it out. Many agents requested a full, but I never followed up on it. He goes, just keep sending it out. And I'm like, that's such perfectly simple advice, and that's what encourages me to just go to the wall when I'm really in this all is lost moment.

So can you explain that a little bit when you say go to the wall? Is it like push the edges, like get out of your comfort zone? Oh, you're literally your wall with the posters.

I'm writing on the posts. Okay, okay. And I'm going like, well, um, this needs to happen over here. Like this, yeah, I'm not a little bit.

Because it sounds like a metaphor, doesn't it? Going to the wall.

Probably, yes. Here it is, it's just one little passage. Slivers of me were everywhere, but I was nowhere, except he standing at this pearl gray wall in the loft, staring at sticky notes for my novel. Here, the days in Saratoga dwindling to countable, still no destination known. I really don't know where I'm going next. I read my writing on the wall. Here it seemed every atom of blue light from the donut store, every leathery grain of dirt kicked up from the track, every leaf and every swatch of the blue sky, every bit of stardust that spun in the galaxy, all of it had collected in and around these boxes, my writing desk. The light that fell here at all times of the day, where the words were. All of it seemed to reverberate from this center, this place that greeted me every morning, where the dead and the living seemed to find me, but not one of them knew my name. I was reduced to this words and paper.

That's beautiful.

Yeah. Well to me that this is really about home the idea. You can do the true self-no harm. If you went to create them when all is lost, then you're probably a writer.

Where do we go next?

Yeah, okay. Well, I'll maybe I just might talk about for particularly for women, this pressure at midlife to just actually be quieter and leave the stage and be a little less visible, right?

Yeah. Is that a is that such a deep like subliminal message that we don't even like no one even has to say that out loud for it to feel true?

Because we're saying the opposite all the time, right? That's no one has to say it out loud, but I think, I mean, obviously our bodies are changing. Yes. You know, we're sort of fading back a little bit, although, you know, some of that's welcome because all of a sudden you don't get as much unwanted attention. Some of us will, right?

Yeah.

Um, you know, but really from a very young age, a woman is always dealing with unwanted attention. Then all of a sudden, about 40

Creative Inheritance And Family Permission

years later, you go like, what a relief. Exactly. It's the invisible years. I don't have to constantly be managing that. So there's that. I mean, you know, so, but I think part of it is particularly for women to think of all the generations that have come before. Us their purpose was to bear children. And if that, then you know what else is there? And we don't, and we didn't know the answer to that question because women, some women weren't even making it out of childbirth. You know, there was a lot of maternal death going on. And if they did make it out of childbirth, you know, they weren't having long lives after the children were adults. And now of a sudden we are, and we're changing all the frontiers. You know, I just remember the way I thought about 40 when I looked at my mom being 40 is not the way it felt when I was 40.

Right.

It it is just keep it's keep on on happening. Every little milestone I hit, we're redefining it. So if we're redefining it, the culture or the way we talk about in common culture, I think we are smarter than the common culture. We know, but in the common culture, it's like, well, wind it down, just start heading into retirement, start thinking about what you know, silly little hobby you're gonna take up in retirement. But okay, so I was the editor of a women's magazine for many, many years in that journalism piece of my life, and I was often interviewing women who were older than me, role models, yeah, and what I noticed is that they were not leaving the stage. They in fact just actually really hit their stride at 50, about 50, about menopause. Um, I think menopause kind of frees you up a little bit, more energy and other energy, more balanced, consistent, yeah, with being comfortable with owned skin. I mean, that's gold. So, how are you gonna use your gold? Well, they were doing things like I want to start a school, I'm gonna run for governor. So I was like, Oh, okay. I said, Well, you know, that last decade, that decade, not even the last decade, but the decade from 50 to 60, I was going like, they're just telling it up. And I said, That's how I'm gonna be when I when I get there. That's how I'm gonna be.

That's so cool. Did but then you had your experience of your two kids leaving home, which you had it was difficult for you, right? So, how did that play out? Because you had that kind of drive in the beginning, but you're were your kids still at home at that point when you're in your 40s looking up to these older women.

Yeah, I had my kids a little bit later in life.

Yeah, me too.

Um, and I I I'm I you know, I I am appreciative of any kind of experience, but this that was my particular experience. It was really nice to have this cohort of other older moms, you know. Um, so yeah, um, yeah, so I I I did sort of laugh that I was in the middle of raising young children at the same time I was having perimenopause. I was like, exactly that.

Right.

But yeah, so by the time that they are about to spring from the nest, I'm mid-50s.

Okay, yeah, yeah. That will be me.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, yeah, and again, menopause starts doing things where you just you're going, like, I don't think I granted permission to my body to do that. Where why wasn't I in the room? Yes, is it okay if your body does this? And you're like, uh no, because I don't recognize myself. But I I I will honestly say though, I feel younger now than when I was going through menopause.

Wow.

And I think it's because of emotional agility. So the um thing that I really gained as out of the experience of my book Boundless at the end of that journey was just this ability to regain my emotional agility. Um, we get to the point where we think about things in the same old way. We're very rigid. If this happens, then that happens. And sometimes that's wisdom, and sometimes it's you know, can we can we think of some other answers here? One thing that I saw um in Banless a talk about this idea of like the experience of becoming is happening right in front of my face. I've got two 17-year-olds who are about to go out into the world, they're about to make biggest transition from childhood to adulthood. And they are they're you know, they're writing college essays that are describing their lives ahead of actually living them. Um, but they're so full of this exuberance and at the same time, terror because you don't know. But in the I just love there were all these raw ingredients of becoming right around me. And so I kind of at some moment I go, I'm having a colossal failure of the imagination as to what my life will be after they leave. But the answer is right here. They are teaching me right now. Because when you're when you go on to college and you're in your 20s, you're experimenting, you're taking risks, you're trying new things, and you're not even going like I can't take that risk, because if it doesn't work out, very bad, very bad. Um, they're just like, I can recover.

Um one oh sorry, keep going, keep going.

Oh, I just took a hue from them. Your turn.

I was just um thinking about that as you were talking, and and it's being held, isn't it? And it goes back to that mentoring because they're being held, they're still being held by you, even though they're stepping out into something new. They've got you and you had your parents as well, backing you up, saying you can do it, holding the space, being there if they fall, like even though sometimes probably our kids won't want that as they get older, but they've got that, they know it's there, and then as you uh mentioned before, you have mentors, and that's what that's probably why we need them as well. So we have someone who is there to catch us when we fall, or not or guide us, push us in the right direction.

You're never too late for a mentor. A new one will show up. Yeah, absolutely.

How do you find a mentor? Well, I think we need one. You think every we everyone needs one? A coach, a guide. I mean, I speak to a lot of coaches, life coaches, and yeah, guides.

Yes. Um, for me, because I write books and I am a book coach and developmental, I'm in that mentor role. And um, what I love about being in that mentor role, and what I encourage people to think about is just how like having someone hold your vision with you and work with you to give you the skills and shape it, that's gold. I have seen so

Midlife Visibility Menopause And Power

many transformations in my clients' books from I, you know, information, idea, hook, outline, uh, full draft of manuscript and path to publishing, all along those ways. That mentor, and but even though I do that for other people, I found mentors too. When I knew I had a book in Boundless, I said, okay, so who's my mentor gonna be? I'm not writing this book for long. So I put I found Erica Krause, who just won the Joyce Carroll Oates Short Story Award. That is huge. So I'm like, I was in good hands. And then I found Emily Rat Black, who has, I mean, she's really known for her spiritual memoirs, and she could really kind of hold her hand over the spiritual pulse of Boundless. And her book, her one of her memoirs is about losing her son at age three to tay sex. This is called Still Point of the Turning World. I needed someone who would understand that deep loss of a child. For me, um, in the opening of Boundless, I have my two babies in my arms. They're like not even 18 months old, and we're in an ambulance going to the hospital. And I'm looking at like maybe they I lose them both on the same day, and I lose them right here in my arms, you know. So um I needed a mentor who would really understand how to the brink that was and kind of walk me through how to tell that story in a you know um a way that brings it home to people, but also is compassionate. Um so those two mentors were key in shaping that story.

I I did um read your the sample of your book on Amazon. So yeah, I'm familiar with that that the way that you open the book. And um yeah, yeah, quite a journey that would have been, no doubt. Gosh.

Yes.

Yeah.

Well, and why did I start my memoir about the emptiness there? Because that had happened 17 years before they're about to empty the nest. Um, and I kind of wrestled this with my mentor, like especially the second one. Um, I said, I just really feel like this is the way the story needs to be told. And part of it was the fragility of life.

Yeah.

Jump cuts from one moment they're in your arms and they may die, and the next moment they're leaving home. Because life's that fast. And I wanted to really look at the fragility of life and how do we choose to live if we know that life is fragile? One of my favorite bands, Lord Hero, has a little thing that they always say, May you live until you die. And it just it just sounds so it almost sounds almost Star Treking, right? But what it means is, are you really truly living? Yeah, always be asking yourself, Am I fully alive right now? Because that's your job to live until you die. So yeah.

Well, I've got a friend in the UK who I've been um speaking with every week, and we've been talking about this particularly, and just sort of reflecting on you know who we want to be or um our values and how we want to live and how we might not currently be living up to that. Um and yeah, um that's uh because one of the what is it, one of the um final things of the dying is regret. Regret that they haven't fulfilled that, they haven't been present in their own lives and that they wish they'd done the thing.

Yes. That's why I got those two mentors so quickly, because I was just sort of like, well, this could take 10 years, or it could take two, you know, and and I didn't want to have that regret. I mentioned my father writing a novel and typing the end, and then he turns to my mother and he says, Bonnie, I think we need to call an ambulance. I'm in so much pain. Take have them take me now. It was literally that close, and he goes in for back surgery to the hospital and he never comes out. He ends up having a heart attack after the surgery, but he's in intensive care for a few days, but you know what he's doing? He's pulling this folder, holding it up to my sister, and saying to my sister, my writing group is meeting on Tuesday. Please bring my stories to me. Oh my god, I want them to read my stories because he was just that was just really coming for him. And he died on Tuesday morning, but the pages still got there Tuesday night. Um, so yes, this is a tragic story. Father guys, but it's also he didn't have regrets, he finished a novel and he got those stories there, and that really mattered to him. It probably informs a lot of what I do, right?

Wow, yeah, that's yeah, kind of yeah, a very good example of um trying to live your life right now, isn't it?

Yes.

So you're I was I'm kind of wondering about writing a memoir because there's obviously something cathartic about it, like going through that, but you've mentioned that it was that there's there are some spiritual lessons in there, and that you've written um, did you refer to them as self-help books previously?

Or transformation, some of it's self-action, there's some meditation, a creative action, those kinds of things.

Yeah. So there's obviously a connection with that, like even though it's your own personal journey, that there's um something that you feel as a human that you can offer from your experience to others. Can you talk to that a little

Emotional Agility And Learning From Kids

more? I mean, we've been talking about that.

I think I you know, I have a few scenes in Bramless about meditation. That spiritual chemo section is one that's about meditation. There's some also failed meditation scenes when I kind of get fired for the first time in my life as a straight A student and an overachiever. Hard for me. It was it's the devil wears Prada section of the book. Um, it was it was doomed, you know. Um, but that happens, and um, I think, oh my gosh, well, I gotta draw in my meditation techniques, that'll help. And so I try to do a welcoming prayer where you welcome the discomfort and you welcome the loss of security. And that scene does not go well because I'm just as physically agitated as anybody in that kind of situation might be. And I just jump out and I get my card keys and I go to Irish Trad night instead. What's up? What's Irish Trad night? Oh, what's what it's it's where all these Irish musicians just randomly come and they sit and they just jam together.

Okay, okay.

Um believe me, that was a lot of fun. But where seriously does meditation come in? I think that it's it's really in that moment where you you lengthen the time between reaction and response. You when you take that even just one deep breath, you don't just react, react, react. You open up that pause. Things are going on in your brain neurologically, where you're activating your parasympathetic nervous system. And then instead of react, react, you respond, or you even recognize that you don't even need to respond. One of the meditations I use meditations to teach writers how to write. Because the what happens when you start to write? Your little monkey brain to start talking to you, your inner critic comes alive. It says, Don't write that, don't write that, don't write that. No, don't stop, stop, stop. Now, no, if you don't you need to do the laundry, you know, that's what it does. So the other the other benefit of meditation is knowing what your brain does. But one of the meditations I teach is the warrior sits. Just the warrior sits. The warrior does not have to rise up into battle right now. The warrior sits. You're still a warrior, even if you're sitting, you're waiting for the right moment, you're waiting to give the right response, you're waiting to gain the wisdom of whether you need to respond at all. So I think I've found that writing books on mindfulness informed how to write books, because it's really about um, I think I I think of writing as really just the most the most the asset that you have there is is your beautiful mind. And doing meditation is a way of protecting your beautiful mind, training your beautiful mind. The world wants to chatter at your beautiful mind, it wants to distract you, and it does that quite well. Um, but the one thing you have that AI doesn't have is your original beautiful mind. And if you're always going, like, yeah, I know that she chatters and says nonsense all the time, but you know what, occasionally she says something something brilliant. If you're noticing how the mind moves, I think that's well it's it's a way to live, most importantly, yeah, but it's also a way to write. Because then you can mentor others, you can lead others, you can you you have walked through the things, you've done the dark night of the soul, you know the dark depths of your mind, and because you know them, you can offer something to someone, a little light just to shed on the path for the next little part for them to go.

Yeah.

Yeah, I just find it so interesting. I mean, everything that you're saying is just uh gold. I find it really interesting how you can you can you're able to use this in your work as a writer and as a coach, but that how these principles, again, as I said right at the beginning of our conversation when I was talking about your TED talk, how these principles really transfer over into everyone's life and the yeah, the philosophies around how to how to live. Um I I definitely even

Living Without Regret When Life Is Fragile

with meditation, so I've I meditate. I'm not gonna say I try to meditate, I meditate and I make it uh a practice to meditate for 10 minutes every night before I go to bed. And as soon as I close my eyes, the chatter starts, and it's just the witnessing of okay, the chatter's there.

Yes, there you are.

What's beyond the chatter, um, and like thanking the chatter. I don't need you right now, like we're just trying to do this thing, and like there might be two breaths, and then the chatter comes back, but it's a practice of of um yeah, training that experience and witnessing it and accepting it, not trying to avoid it, but there's also that kind of oh that and it could be related to the negative self-talk or the that safety of being in your comfort zone where there's that there's that kind of you don't need to do it tonight, don't meditate, you know, it will be okay if you skip an arm like aha you don't get away with it that easily anymore. But that I guess again that comes back to story, doesn't it? And proving, you know, if it with even a phrase that we might say, like, I'm no good at meditating, how then we look for the proof? Yeah, can you talk about reframing story? Because in your TEDx talk, you talk about that beautifully, and I love that right at the the introduction of the talk.

Reframing is everything, yeah. Yeah, in the talk, I say, well, you know, uh Princess Leia has a choice. She could say, My father was a bad guy, I was doomed, or she could say, Hey, I ended up in the Senate, I ended up meeting Han Solo, and we fought the Empire. And my brother got healed because he had a sword fight with the father. And that all worked out, you know, the umpire, yeah. So that that's sort of a different reframe. Like, how does Princess Leia see it? Um, so it it did triumph in the end. And if you see yourself as triumphant, I think you create the triumphant outcome. Um but also I think you know, meditation teaches you to honestly look at things and build up your tolerance for them, um, and to notice what aversions you have, which thoughts get you more agitated, which ones catch your attention, and you just want to trail right along with them and go everywhere with them, which ones actually do you grasp at because you're like, oh, that's a good one, that's a sexy idea. Um, but really it's about creating that um the just being the witness and then understanding that there's a witness witnessing the mind. You if you are able to thought have the thought, I'm having that thought about that argument I had again. You know, oh, here's a good argument that I should have said in that argument, you know, you and you go, No, I'm noticing I'm having that fight all over again, and I'm not even with that person now. I haven't even seen that person for 20 years, but I'm still arguing with that person. If you notice that your mind is doing things like that, then you're noticing that there's a witness of the thoughts parading by you are not your thoughts. Um so yeah, and I think that recognize you're not your thoughts gives the opening for the reframe. Um, I love Michael Singer's book, The Untethered Soul. Do you know that book?

No, The Untethered Soul.

Yes. Um, I've read a lot of meditation books, okay, as you might imagine. Having written one, worked with lots of clients who, you know, they they're blending meditation in their practice and the way that they're approaching their books. So there's just a lot. Um, and yeah, that book I read and I've read, reread, and reread it, because it really does open up something new. Because then he also says, and there's something else beyond the witness to the thoughts. You are not your mind, and you are the witness to your thought, but there's something else that's taking care of you. Um, and that is a really powerful chapter. It's also profound to explain it, but you're nodding. So it sounds like you know what I mean when you sort

Meditation As Training For Mind And Craft

of discover there's I just I do discover this in Boundless, there's something holding me that wants me to be a self here with my name, my hair, my weird things that I write, the musings that I have. There's there's something that is really wanting that human expression to be here now on this planet now. So that was a profound turning point for me.

And it's building the trust with that, isn't it? And the reminder, because we we often fall back into the old pattern. Um, we can have and yeah, we can have those moments of like clarity, but life, if we don't make the room for meditation or mindfulness, or just giving ourselves that little bit of space, we don't have we we can't pull ourselves back into that clarity. We get caught up in the everyday stuff and the stories of the everyday stuff.

Yeah, well, Thomas Smart would call that the false self.

Uh-huh.

The true self is the one you know, I just described, and we're like having this deep knowing when we when we know it. But I'd say it's so easy to fall back into the false self. Yeah, because it seemed so comfortable. Six months after Belmas, I I had um some friends over, I think it was um one of my author clients had her book signing, and I had all these friends over at my house, and one of my um other author clients comes up to me, she goes, I want your life. You just have the coolest friends, and they're all creative, and I'm just having such a good time talking to all of you the people who are here tonight, and you know what you went through six months ago, and um, but now look at this, this is all restored, your house, even same furniture, same view, and everything. And I should have just been jumping for joy to hear such words. But what I was actually doing is like, oh no, that's the trap. I have created recreated the life that everybody and everybody's going, like, oh, we don't have to worry about Carolyn anymore. She's got she's got she's got all the things, and I'm over here going like those aren't the things, they're not real. I'm glad you're happy for me, but those aren't the things.

I don't know where I was gonna go. I was thinking of something, and yeah, the trap, the comfort trap. That's where we were at, right? Comfort trap. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

I had a little I have a little passage I could read as a little transition. Okay, it comes toward the end after I've really earned this sort of true self-teaching, but I it's hard. You just fall right back into all the temptations of the false self. Yeah, so this is late, late, late in the book. No one sees the change, it is invisible. I continue to do the work of being me, emptiness of mom, journalism professor, book cut author. I graded young journalists on AP style and inspired them to probe for the truth. I described narrative arc to emerging authors. I kept telling the same story on social media because I was still living in a body. I limited my carbs and never got on the sugar train. I craved roasted green chili and smothered burritos, and when balloon fiesta came, I craved them more. I notched on manchengo cheese, stuffed green olives, and quince paste. I drank Rioja and listened to live flamenco guitar. I hiked the foothills and I went to sacred hot yoga. I still applied mascara to my non-existent eyelashes, hoping they'd be. But that was not because I believed these preferences were still me. It was because I understood that a functioning ego was a necessary vessel for an incarnate soul. I accepted the terms. I believe that God chose this particular functioning ego for a purpose, though I'll devote the rest of my days to standing in the presence of the Holy One and asking what that is. I hiked into Domingo Baca Canyon and a pounding storm rolled in. When I turned back to look at the city, a rainbow had formed out of the mists from the foothills. I was in the rainbow, looking out to the ragged ashen clowns over the city. Here, it said, you are the person who is here.

That really sums up exactly it. I've

True Self False Self And Everyday Courage

been playing with this idea idea experience of my own in my talking chat chats with my friends that we've been having every week about being present and about appreciating the things that are in our regular lives. But there's um I guess the journey into spirituality and into you know using meditation and um knowing that there's something bigger that's beyond us, but within us. Um it's the it's the the contract, I guess, of being human, isn't it? That we need to go, well, this is cool. All of this normal everyday stuff is cool, but yeah, there's a there's a deepening of of what it all means. Yes, and that other people might not see it. I think that that's yeah, a real key. What you wrote there is like and that and the important thing is that you've been through that process and that you are that new person, but that and it doesn't necessarily need or won't get recognition for it.

You might not, yeah. Part of writing a memoir is you're vulnerable.

Yeah.

One of the things I posted on social media is like, this book is about the seven years ago me. And so I'm able to really it back to midlife rebel changing your life. Um when I look back at who that what person was, and I see who I am now, and I'm kind of like, oh yeah, that it's almost like it's the it's just a movie about somebody else. Okay, but that just tells that just shows me how much change we're capable of. Yeah, that we can be many, many selves in a lifetime.

We we're coming to the end of our hour. Um, and I this is a word that comes up for me a lot. And you talked about the um the sitting warrior. I think you referred to the sitting or the peaceful or the quiet warrior. Courage. Can you talk about courage? Can you talk about courage? Yeah, and maybe I guess as we come to a close, like how that plays into this journey that we might be experiencing in the you know, stepping out of the comfort zone.

I think it's the courage to just look and witness. You know, it's like that's the city warrior. That's what the city warrior does, is you just you don't yeah, to look. And that to but to look means to include everything that you might have to look at. Yeah. Um, and I think probably with writing, that's my way in to look at things, examine things, be with things. Um, I did keep asking myself as I was writing boundless, why does this unstitch me? And it could, and I think a lot of a lot of writers' faces, but specifically memoir writers, because you are, you know, you're digging down deep. You know, if it's gonna be a memoir, you're digging down deep. So I asked that question and I could have shied away from it. But instead, I would just go meta and I would go like, Well, I don't know if I'm writing the next scene today, but I am gonna write, why does this um stitch me? And I just kept writing until I got an answer. And if the question came up again, I asked the question again, and I went into it. And um, so courage, yeah, courage is partly that staying and looking at it, but I also think sometimes it's just you keep doing, you just keep taking the steps. It's not gonna feel right or easy, but if you just keep taking the steps, it's going to feel different.

And I guess courage, you we think of it being scary and uncomfortable. And I guess um, with small steps, uh there's that proof each time you take that small step, nothing bad happened. Yeah, and that can be the story. Nothing bad happens when I am courageous, when I do things that frighten me.

Yes, nothing bad happens. Or I mean, hopefully, at a certain point in life, you've got an accumulation of resilient stories. I went through a little, I guess it was a rough spot last year, striking it, you know. We all have certain fears that, like, that's the one that always gets your attention. And I had that one. And I just remembered because um well, so part of the events in Bamless is I end up in Saratoga Springs, New York, and I'm in Albuquerque, then I'm in Saratoga Springs, and I'm back in Albuquerque. So my sister, the same one, the essence sister, um, have come to refer to my Saratoga as our shorthand. She'll say, I'm having a Saratoga right now, and I and we'll know what. Yeah. So I last year I had a Saratoga, and I was like, I got through the real one, I can get through the next Saratoga.

Yeah, love that. Carolyn, thank you so much for joining us. Um I just, yeah, I'm very inspired by your wisdom um and the inspiration that you provide for women in midlife.

Final Takeaways And Support The Show

Hey there, Rebel. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Midlife Rebel Podcast. If you'd like to support the show, you can buy me a coffee by going to Buy MeACoffee forward slash Midlife Rebel Podcast. Thanks for listening.