Tending to Midlife: Why Hope Needs Habit, Heart and Action
Photo by Hush Naidoo Jade Photography
Whenever I’ve lost hope, especially during midlife transitions, life has felt stark, depressing, and fearful. I’m grateful that it has only happened a handful of times throughout my lifetime.
For the most part, I’ve more often than not felt the opposite – hopeful, a glass half-full kind of person, even when navigating midlife change, and even when the outcomes weren’t what I’d hoped they’d be.
It’s occurred to me that hope is often paired with something else. I think about my hope of eventually reaching a weight that feels comfortable, or the hope that I’ll be able to offer Tap and Write retreats for women over 40 in a beautiful setting where we connect and grow, or the hope that at some point in the future I’ll have a warm, cuddly puppy to care for.
I think Rebecca Solnit was right when she said:
“I still value hope, but I see it as only part of what’s required, a starting point. Think of it as the match but not the tinder or the blaze. To matter, to change the world, you also need devotion and will and you need to act. Hope is only where it begins.”
Devotion, will and the need to act.
I’m experiencing these as I put into place the practices and consistent, daily habits that help me lose weight sustainably, one step at a time with the motto “something not nothing”.
Hope continues to inspire me during this midlife transformation as I build the evidence I need to continue this journey.
Tap and Write retreats for mid-life discovery won’t happen on hope alone. As I gain more experience with this unique process, I’m creating a vision, allowing the idea to percolate, feeling into whether it’s something I truly want to achieve or not at this stage in my life. If it is, hope will have to support my actions, hold hands with devotion to make it happen, and tap into my will to keep going and navigate the unknowns.
(Imagine writing here: St. Andrews by-the-Sea, New Brunswick, hosted by Go and Write: Writing Retreats for the Wandering Soul)
And, a warm, cuddly puppy will remain a hope, a desire, a thought without any move to make it happen until travel and other projects have been realized.
I think a lot about what’s happening in the world and hope that leaders keep their heads about them in response to the chaos and destruction that one of them has unleashed on us.
But hope alone is not enough to affect change – voices must be heard, people must gather, voters must exercise their right to vote when they can, and fact checking must be a priority in today’s crazy-making climate of bots and technology.
And then I wonder:
Have you ever found yourself “knowing” that something hopeful will come to fruition or work out? Or, that no amount of hope will change the course of history?
I “knew”, despite hoping that my brother would live to tell his story of kidnapping and rescue, that I’d never see him again. I also “knew” that my husband’s 8-10 hour heart and lung surgery would be successful in spite of the risks and saying goodbye, just in case, before he was wheeled into the OR.
Hope and intuition
Sometimes, hope and intuition walk side by side as if preparing you for the best or the worst of what’s to come. My hope was always that I’d have a stronger connection with my intuition, and as I’m aging, I value the guidance of this “knowing”, this part that I believe is the combined workings of body, mind and spirit.
It’s an experiment
In the last year I’ve adopted a new perspective, seeing life through the lens of “it’s an experiment”, an approach to midlife reinvention that helps me shift from long-held fears of failure, allowing me to focus on the process and not the outcome.
Take Tap and Write as an example: I began with the question “What would happen if I paired EFT and therapeutic/reflective writing?” with the hope that this combination of tools would be powerful enough to support participants in gaining a new perspective or transforming a sticky issue.
To have the courage to put Tap and Write into the world, however, I needed to temper high hopes with a new, midlife mindset shift that didn’t feed into good/bad, success/failure thinking.
Instead, my hope for Tap and Write shifted to a focus on “how can I make the process work?” Hope in this situation was “the match, but not the tinder or the blaze”.
And finally:
“Hope. I see you. I feel you, opening us to possibilities and options. I can’t imagine a world without you challenging our thoughts, helping us begin, moving us towards change, guiding us forward.
Hope. You allow us to dream, to walk side by side with parts of us that need your voice, your vision, your spark that lights up the path ahead, helping us land with ease and grace.
Hope. I need you. I search for you amongst the rubble of despair and uncertainty, lost without you, afraid of the darkness that seeps into our brains and nests in our bodies.
Hope. I find you deep within, ready to emerge, soft with a strength to rise above the noise tethered to a “knowing” that finds us ready, ready to begin, and begin again. ”
Thank you for reading! I’m grateful!
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Joan
Whenever you are ready, there are three ways I can support you:
1. Empowerment Coaching 1-1 with Joan
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