When Rewilding author Jane Green hit her fifties, the fabulous life that she had created started to fall apart, leaving her feeling totally and utterly lost.
She had the big house, the perfect marriage and all the kudos from being a global bestselling author. So when the ‘glamorous, bestselling author persona’ she had created for herself was stripped away it was ‘completely terrifying.’
“I was left as the inadequate little girl I felt in my childhood, but in her 50s, figuring out who and what I am and how do I rebuild myself?,” she tells Ateh Jewel in this week’s Hello! Second Act podcast.
“Who am I, if not a bestselling author? Because that's who I'd been for 30 years and I had no idea who I was. It was overwhelming. I ended up leaving my marriage, and running away to Marrakech by myself, knowing no one.”
While this was an earth shattering moment for Jane, losing your identity in midlife can actually be the best thing that can happen to women, says life coach Mhairi Todd.
“When something terrible happens such as relationships ending, a career falls apart, fertility struggles emerge, redundancy, what we thought was solid and set suddenly isn't.
“It's painful and destabilising but it also pulls your head above the water long enough to look around. And for the first time, you might realise you've been swimming in circles.
“What we often call a breakdown is actually the moment we stop living quite so subconsciously,” says Mhairi, whose job it is to help people discover how to navigate these traumatic crossroads in life.
“In our twenties we're learning how the world works. Building careers. Falling in love. Making mistakes. Chasing opportunities. Trying things on for size.
“But we're often doing all of that through the lens of what we've been taught success looks like. We're driven by our upbringing, our experiences, the beliefs of the people around us, societal expectations, capitalism, the patriarchy, all these invisible forces that shape our choices without us even realising it.
“I often hear the term existential crisis being used in a mocking fashion, but for me, that's where many of us need to get to! Why would you question what you believe is keeping you safe unless something forces you to see that it isn't?”
For Mhairi, a lot of the midlife women she speaks to have reached a point in midlife where they have lost themselves. They walked blindly into careers, marriages, relationships, family life and remained in that cosy space without questioning what it is they really want.
Until one day, just as Jane experienced, a life-bomb goes off and it all falls apart. They are forced to face looking in the mirror and often don’t like what they see.
This can actually be the start of the best part of your second act discovery and finding your authentic self, something Jane explores in her new book Rewilding.
Liberating
“In my experience with clients, it is often more that they are realising the identity they've clung to for years actually isn't serving them anymore,” Mhairi says. “The woman who got her worth from achievement might now be burnt out and pretty mad about it. The self-sacrificing mother may find she's completely lost touch with her own needs and values.
“I refer to this period, where you are shedding the old but not quite found the new, as the identity tax. We have to let go of the person who made sense of the world in the old way. And that letting go has a cost.
“So though often painful, this period is often the first time that women start to choose the life they want to be living. They stop asking, "What should I do?" and start asking, "What do I actually want?"
“And whilst that's discombobulating, it's also incredibly liberating. Because for the first time, the life you're building gets to be your choice."
This is where the help of a life coach such as Mhairi can be invaluable to help navigate the overwhelming feelings you may be experiencing and start to build the life you really want.
“Every year spent feeling unfulfilled, disconnected from yourself or trapped in a life that doesn't fit is precious time you'll never get back. I think everyone deserves the support that's right for them.
“I'd love to say everyone eventually figures this stuff out, I don't think that's true. We only have to look at the generations before us to see how many people spent decades living lives that didn't quite fit. How many never really recovered from their heartbreaks, disappointments or losses? How many never gave themselves permission to become who they truly were? I find that heartbreaking.
“For me, my humbling experience came in the form of divorce at a relatively young age. It cracked open things I'd spent years avoiding. I ended up in therapy and spent around three years and £15,000 doing that work and it's still the best investment I've ever made.
“The work I do today is trauma informed because, whether we like it or not, we are shaped by what we've lived through. I don't believe it's possible to create a deeply fulfilling future without at least acknowledging the experiences that brought you here.
“For many women, having life coaching is the first space they've ever had where they can tell the truth. And instead of being judged, they're heard and seen, challenged and supported.
3 Expert Life Coaching Tips to figure out 'who am I?'
For anyone feeling stuck in the wheels of change right now and wondering what’s next here's some simple exercises I'd suggest.
Exercise 1
Write down the six areas of your life that immediately come to mind when you think, "Something needs to change."
Career.
Relationships.
Health.
Confidence.
Money.
Purpose.
Whatever comes up for you.
Then write down what a genuine 10 out of 10 would look like in each area. What would actually make you happy? We're often very good at describing what's wrong. We're much less practised at describing what good looks like. And you can't hit a target you can't see. If that exercise feels overwhelming, that's useful information too. It usually means everything feels important and like it should have happened yesterday.
Exercise 2
Focus on identifying the area that would create the biggest ripple effect if it improved.
You can take my free roadblock quiz Here to help you identify this.
This will reduce the overwhelm and start to simplify next steps.
Exercise 3
Then begin feeding your mind evidence of what's possible. I'd start by listening to daily affirmations connected to your core area. There are thousands of free resources on YouTube. The key is to listen right when you wake up or just before you fall asleep as this is when your mind is more receptive.
"When you choose to wake up, you will rise like a phoenix from the ashes into into a life that is so much more glorious than it was before," says Jane.
"Because you're intentional. Everything comes from you. You are choosing every minute of every day how you want to live your life, who you want to be surrounded with, what social events you actually want to go to. Nothing is about should any more. It is about trusting yourself and living a life that is completely authentic to yourself."
Reinvention can feel daunting, but it actually begins with simply paying attention. And sometimes that's all a second act really is. Finally paying attention to yourself.
