Midlife Soul Reclamation
I looked around my office, the highly coveted corner office that towered above 6th Avenue in New York’s bustling Manhattan. The lacquered furniture with brass trim glistened as the sun streamed in across my desk over piles of memoranda, research, and unanswered telephone messages. The sun warmed me. I leaned back in my executive chair.
And wondered why I was there . . .
Drifting back in memory, I could remember another day years ago. I’d been walking down Avenue of the Americas. It was a crystal clear autumn morning, and I was with my love. The whole world seemed to be before us. We strolled down the street sharing our dreams. I pointed to the top of a cluster of skyscrapers—that bastion of big business—and I proclaimed, “One day I will have an office up there, and I’ll be making a six-figure income!”
But the view from the top was a lot different in the living than it had been in the dreaming.
My door was closed, but I could hear the familiar sounds: the chatter, the laughter, the phones ringing, the keyboards tapping. I’d gotten what I wanted, but at what cost?
I thought of the abusive, driven bosses I had to put up with along the way—the turfing, the one-upmanship. The vice president was dying of cancer, living his last days raging at all around him, bitterly trying to bring his colleagues down into his place of despair. And what about when they crucified Rachel? She was so dear to me, a role model of true femininity: power, vulnerability, and compassion. She was a real woman who was out-maneuvered by her most trusted allies. The glass ceiling was unveiled.
The sunlight continued to stream through my window, but I felt cold. What had happened to my aliveness, my juicy passions, the freshness I had ten years earlier when I first started out on the path to fame and fortune?
And what about “customer caring” at home? My daughter was home living with me again. But did I ever see her? My autumn lover was now my second husband: he was there for me, making the kids his own, but where was I? I was always at the office, working late, going in early. Weekends, I’d drag an enormous briefcase home with me . . . and fall asleep over it most of the time.
I was in a hurry, but where was I going? Where had the time gone? My two “little ones” would be graduating soon. I loved them, but I was missing out on most of their everyday lives. I was charging ahead to prove what? To whom? I had the corner office. I was at the helm as a boss, the leader.
I’m walking down a path, but I don’t know where to. It feels unreal. I recall images of people I’ve known, as if they were alongside the path. They’re waving at me, beckoning to me, smiling in recognition. Where am I going? Why are they here? I see my grandmother’s petite and wrinkled face. She’s not saying words, but I can feel her communication. She’s saying, “Remember where you came from, then you’ll know where you are going!”
That day in my office marked the beginning of a new passage for me. Going through it, I called it “menopause.” Looking back, I’d call it “midlife reclamation.” It was a four-year descent into darkness—a return to the inner sacred, pulled by the ancient spiral dance.
Those questions that day pursued me all the ensuing days, pushing me to set aside my earlier aspirations and plan my departure from those hallowed halls and from all that I had dreamed I wanted. I was moving down a path without a known destination. A great inner force urged me toward something that was not yet apparent. On the surface, I thought it was the warmth of my family. A respite. A drink of rejuvenation. I sought healing waters from their loving embraces.
Phase one seemed innocent enough. I’d take a short sabbatical, 6 months to a year, I told myself, my family, and anyone else who asked . . . and especially the head hunters! It felt so good to turn down opportunities I would have danced in the street for before.
Ah delicious! Ah delirious! Travel with my husband, play time with my wonderful teenagers. Doing what I wanted, when I wanted to do it. It was all a reverie until my pre-determined deadline came and went. It dawned on me that I didn’t know what I wanted to go back to. What was worth leaving my family for? What were my real desires? What was I striving toward?
Suddenly I had no goals. I had nothing to prove. But if I had no goals, what was I? Who was I? The not knowing was sheer torture! I fought with it. I wrestled with it. I wasn’t a somebody anymore! I had no title. I belonged nowhere. I had no place to go anymore. I no longer had a suitable answer to “And what do you do?” Uneasy, I quickly made up business cards with my name. God forbid I should say, “I’m in between.” I clearly had to be a this or a that. My kids would be leaving home soon. I was not a corporate something, not a mother, certainly not a full-time wife. But what was I? I was desperate to be doing something. But I’d wake up each morning wanting to sleep longer. I would say to my husband, “I’m so tired.” Not the “ole gal” who used to bound out of bed to catch up with the sun!
As I tried to force myself into high gear, to go out and get myself going again, I felt the spirit drain out of me. I can remember lying on my living room couch wanting to get up to go across the room but unable to summon the energy. My mind and body were not communicating. Some connectors had just burned out. I had no choice: I had to stop and be still. I had to listen to my inner cries. I had to surrender. In some deep recess of my soul, I knew that I was going through a death that had to happen. I had to trust that a rebirth would come.
Like so many people, I sought traditional career counseling, then spiritual guidance, and finally, the help of transformational therapy, all of which I was well trained in myself—but it was my turn . . . again. My purpose was to discover what I was to do this go round. The work was not easy, and it would not get easier. I knew deep within me there was no turning back. I had spent my time in the light. I had to have great courage because now I was moving into darkness. In my own recesses, facing my inner shadows: that’s where I would reclaim my inner feminine.
It was like peeling off the outer layers of a head of lettuce. First, I had to remove the dirt and debris. Then the real work would begin.
My therapist suggested I read Descent to the Goddess, by Sylvia Pererra. This was my first journey into mythology, and I resonated with the retelling of Inanna’s descent from the overworld to the underworld domain of the dead. That realm was ruled by her dark sister, Queen Ereshkigal. This myth gave me a glimpse of what was ahead. I, like Inanna, would have to disrobe my persona and prick the balloon of my inflated self concepts. Then I could meet and reclaim my authentic self.
There is a figure emerging from the shadows. It is draped in layers of black and is menacing. I am terrified. As the figure turns, I recognize it: a female, with flaming red hair. My beloved aunt, long since dead, but now alive, apparently. Or come back to haunt me. She throws her head back and lets out a cackle that brings chills up and down my body. Her eyes pierce through me with an underwordly glare.
I awaken in a cold sweat.
They asked, “What do you want?” I couldn’t answer. They asked, “What do you feel?” I didn’t know. I was as removed from my deepest feelings as I could be. And now, incredibly, two years had passed since I’d left on my sabbatical. I felt despair, shame. Still lost, still nowhere to go. My daughter had left home for college, our son would soon follow, my husband was involved in his business, and me, I was sinking deeper and deeper. It was like gravity pulling me down, down, down into the farthest reaches of my psyche. I’d pull off one layer, only to find another. Still I had no idea of who I really was.
Slowly, I began to see and feel the patterns, the repeated ways I interacted with life. I began to uncover the trail of ancestral coding played out from generation to generation. Sometimes in reaction, I would attempt escape by choosing the opposite. Or, in continuance, I would repeat the family responses ad infinitum. Some I relished, and others I knew I must break. It was my choice.
My choice. I could break these destructive repetitions in my generation. I could prevent them from flowing on into my own children’s lives. It was up to me. I made the commitment to re-member all my dis-membered selves. I would choose to express myself to my fullest.
I would choose to make this midlife crossing. How was I going to experience menopause? How would I age? How would I choose to live my third life? Almost all the women in my maternal tree had chosen a path of madness and death. Could I choose rebirth?
An eerie experience turned into a harbinger of my future. My husband and I were out of town for a friend’s wedding. In the midst of readying for it, I was in the suite’s powder room. He was in the adjoining bedroom. I walked from the powder room into the sitting area, passing a large gilded mirror. As we do when we pass a mirror, without really thinking about it, I casually glanced at myself. The reflection was me, but with the skin of an elderly woman. An ancient woman. Eyes seeing, yet seeing forever. Those eyes spoke to me. There were no words forming on her lips, but I could feel her message. The continuum of woman. My ancestral line. Our collective heritage. I tried to shake my head, to clear the image. My husband, a few steps away, reached out, touched my shoulder . . . he’d seen her too.
It was then that I realized: in order to pass through to the other side, I had to confront my own demons. I would have to face my own Medusa, Kali, Lilith . . . Sophia. The dark feminine Goddess inside me was calling me with her passionate fires. If I would dare to dig deeply into the cellars of my psyche, I would find a treasure. There lived my authentic creativity. Or so my dreams suggested.
I am in a very expansive, very beautiful house. We live there, Mark and I. The furnishings are exquisite. I decide to go down to the basement alone. There is an opening in the floor, exposing the sand blocks below. I start to dig into the sand blocks with my fingers. I find incredible hand-painted stones. They’re artifacts from a time past. It is getting late, so I must hurry. The stones tell a story, I know that, but I must go. I don’t know the meaning of the patterns inscribed on the delicately painted stones, yet I must come back. I go upstairs. I worry that the workmen might find the opening and damage the precious stones. I return, bringing rubber bands and baggies with me to protect my treasure, throwing them down through the opening. To my astonishment, a hand rises out, takes the baggies, then moves away. The hands are familiar. I know the hands. They will guard my newfound treasure.
Something was happening. It was all nonverbal. I couldn’t put into words these vague feelings: like the collages I began to make, my feelings were fragmented. They didn’t form a whole experience. But I sensed somehow the deepest truth of my soul. A lost connection to my own inner knowing began to emerge. I saw that for so many years, I had stepped on the pipeline to my soul. I had stopped the flow of my passion. I had almost completely extinguished my spirit-fire. Somehow I’d done that, perhaps many times. Over the years of my climb up the ladder of success, I had prided myself on being a business visionary, an agent of change. I’d been outspoken, I’d been a risk-taker, but I had cheated myself of my greatest gift: my authenticity. I became one of them. I fit in. I was accepted. I thought I had wanted that, as an activist and feminist of the ’60s & ’70s. But what of me, the whole of me?
And then: my turning point. The beginning phase of my ascent, back up from the pit of darkness.
I was standing in the center of a circle of women. It was a group I had convened; we were all in search of wholeness. These women cared about me, so I felt safe in their presence. I’d brought music to play, and as it wafted over me and around the circle, I started to dance, to move from within. The stirring came not from my head but from deep inside me, from my pelvis. It spread through my limbs, swirling me in its tones. I moved fluidly. The words to the song (“Real Woman,” by Roseanne Cash) began to form in my mouth. My voice was emerging from deep within.
Those first sounds were so raw. As I moved to the music, I began to recite a poem I had brought: “The Fire,” by David Whyte. I swayed back and forth, back and forth, into the music, into the song’s verses, into the poem . . . back and forth. Back and forth.
Those were the first steps up the slope of reclamation. That night I found my inner Passion Woman! I began physically to experience my inner Passion Woman. I began to know, with time, what it means to choose life. To disarm the darker sinister forces. To celebrate my juicy fullness as a woman.
From that time on, conscious choice-making became my battle cry. I had the response-ability to myself to create the rest of my life in every choice I made. I would have to “unhook” from my inner tyrants and terrorists. Perhaps you know them within yourself? They’re our inner perfectionist and inner critic, the most pervasive of the bunch. They are our worst enemies. It is they who are the masters of our inner patriarchy, a far greater nemesis than any outer patriarchy could ever be. It is here, within, where we must confront our true abusers. Disarm those victimizers before they bring us down.
To me, this is the real battleground for women. Here, we must transform our negative Animus into a supportive male aspect, which will lead to the sacred marriage of our feminine and masculine energies. Committed to conscious choice making, I will always choose to follow my passion and express my creativity. I will release myself from these ancient patterns that my ancestral foremothers unknowingly foisted off on me.
Of course, it takes practice to reprogram the circuitry of a lifetime. I know that this is the gift of the midlife crossing. In menopause, each of us is called inward to pause. We are urged to take time out. To return to the inner spiral to our soul. To reclaim our selves. Hot flashes? It was the burning heat surging inside me as new connections, new circuitry were being laid in place. Fatigue? An enforced quiet which helped me surrender to an energy level more appropriate to this new life phase. Fuzz Brain? Loss of focus? A trick of the feminine, forcing me to move down from my head to connect back into the richness of my soul’s resting place.
Native Americans use the spiral to symbolize the continuum of life. The early years they picture as a going out from the center of the spiral, into the external world. Later years, we go inward along the spiral. Menopause is the internal wake-up call. If heard, it beckons us to move toward wholeness by going within.
When I finally allowed my spiral to happen, I was guided on my life’s path to my renewed work…
I am in my cellar workroom, a place where I come to translate my unconscious into collages—to move with the new pulsing within me. I am engrossed in this artistic endeavor. I pause, look to the window . . . light is streaming. Flowers in the field outside are vibrant with color. I smile to feel so alive! Looking behind, I see a green sprout push through the cellar floor. It unfolds before my eyes! Such a beautiful sight, this new life. It emerges with vigor and grace. I move toward the plant, and it wraps its tender leaves ever so gently around me. Then I hear something metallic fall to the floor, as if falling from the plant’s unfurled leaves. I pick it up, hold it in my hand: it is a coin, a very old coin. On one side there is the face of a midlife woman. On the other, a woman’s very ancient face.
I am Ancient Future Woman. She will teach, heal, and guide from within me. Having come through this passage, my new work is to guide other “accomplished women” through their passage into the mysteries of womanhood. That’s how my renewed professional life began again.
“Write your truth,” my dreams began to say. “Write the truth of what’s so for women, even if it appears outrageous. Go for it. Tell what blocks soul expression, passion, and creativity.”
I began sharing my new found-wisdom. My early workshops, counseling, coaching, and lectures have expanded, and now I’m researching the stages of a woman’s life, how to age consciously, successfully. It’s phase two of the Women’s Movement that began in the ’60s.
In phase one, we were driven to be heard, to be seen, to make our mark. We wanted change. We wanted to be treated as equals. But we lost touch with something vital: our womansouls. Phase two is about reclaiming the fullness of being a woman. It encompasses the full range of our growth from maiden, through adult procreative woman, to the celebrated creativity of the Wise Woman Crone.
Now, years later, I lean back in my chair. I look not at some corporate office, but at my own home, filled with symbols of a woman’s life. I rejoice in who I am and extend my vision outward to our world. I see that it, too, is in the same dark descent that marked the beginning of my midlife transition.
We live in a time of discontinuous change and chaos. Our systems have broken down; our infrastructure is in disrepair. The homeless are on every corner. Our youth are distraught, lost, suicidal. Our elderly are ignored or forgotten. Our middle-aged are out of work in record numbers.
We are besieged with plagues and natural disasters. Substance abuse is rampant. Crime threatens.
This too is “menopause.” This is “midlife passage” on a societal level. As a society, we can move into the next phase awake, alert, responsible for what we are creating. But first we must heed the passwords: time-out, reflection, awareness. We must be willing to take responsibility for our lives, confront our collective demons, mourn, then let go.
And it is we women who will change the tides of our times. We will acknowledge, individually, the onset of our midlife and by so doing, collectively, we will create a space for a long overdue social acknowledgement: our country’s midlife is here. We must spiral down and inward so that the wisdom of Ancient Future Woman will be available to all who follow us.
