The Wilding of Midlife: Rage, Gaslighting, and Following Your Path of Desire
by Holly Holt
photo by Getty Images
“Midlife is a portal, an invitation to connect more deeply to your desires, to build a relationship with your body that is more about what it’s trying to tell you than how it looks, and to stand firmly in your own truth.”
Every woman I know would have been burned as a witch 300 years ago. Why? Because these women in midlife have become powerful. They are at home within themselves. They trust their gut instincts and intuition, and they follow the path of their desires. S-c-a-r-y, right?
This isn’t true for every woman over 40. As my friend, Shannon, said, “I don’t think just aging tunes you into your intuition. Growing old doesn’t mean growing up.”
But this isn’t surprising, is it? It can feel safe to conform and “be good.” Historically, women who tried to break through society's conditioning were punished. Inventors were not given credit for their brilliance. Artists never saw their paintings shown in galleries. Writers often chose male pen names to get published. Female musicians and actors were called whores; healers and midwives burned.
When I grew up in the 1970s and 80s, my little girl self was told to listen to the “experts” and “behave.” I remember that women’s feelings, bodies, and intuitive strengths were both mocked and feared on TV, in movies, everywhere. When it came to intuition, the message was that women had a spooky sixth sense, but it was dangerous and unwanted. Trusting your gut instincts was to be left in the capable hands of the cowboys and spaceship captains. You know, the “heroes.”
Some girls were spared to a degree. My friend, Heather said, “My mom always told me to trust my gut, and she used to pause movies and mute commercials so I wouldn’t buy what they were selling.” But this wasn’t the case for any of my other friends.
The funny thing is that when I decided I wanted to write about self-trust, the first thing that came to mind was, “Don’t ask people for their advice.” What I forgot was that I’m no cowboy. I believe in the interconnectedness of all people. I believe in the power of other women’s stories. The truth is: sometimes, you just need to ask your girlfriends.
“I think there was too much gaslighting for me to trust my gut. If anything, it made me doubt myself all the time.””
I asked them this question: “Were you taught to trust your gut when you were growing up?”
The answer was a resounding, “No!”
Catherine said, “I think there was too much gaslighting for me to trust my gut. If anything, it made me doubt myself all the time.”
More than one friend talked about the gaslighting and deeply-rooted self-doubt. The emotional responses that they had to the pain and injustices of life as girls and young women were completely dismissed and rejected. Angela said, “It was like. . .if a woman has a ‘gut feeling’ about something and that feeling is different from what everyone else thinks, she’s labeled as ‘crazy’ or ‘hysterical.’” Sound familiar?
So what’s a woman to do? How do we trust our guts when we are branded “too emotional”? How do we begin to listen to our bodies when all we’ve ever been told is how we need to change them, shrink them, control them? How do we find our way back home to our own innate wisdom?
My own answer has taken me much trial and error, lots of pain and heartache, and tons of practice, but perhaps the most powerful way I’ve learned to trust my instincts is to let myself feel my feelings. And when I say feelings, I mean all the feelings: everything from the sensations in my body that tell me something is not right to the tears that I used to repress. My biggest breakthroughs came when I devoted myself to my yoga, meditation, and writing practices. These practices led to the biggest breakthrough of all: the word No.
As expected, my friends have similar stories. In full transparency, most of my friends are yoga teachers, creative artists, writers, coaches, and healers, so it’s not surprising that they have lots to say about trusting their gut instincts. The ways that they have accessed that trust varies, but the pattern that I saw when I asked them, “do you trust your gut now?” has two similarities: retreat and practice.
When I say retreat, I don’t mean hiding. I’m talking about the profound transformation that happens when you choose to retreat from the influence of the outside world and enter your own inner sanctuary, the place where you can find your own answers. In this world that rewards the busy and over-productive, slowing down and saying NO to all that is one of the most radical choices we can make. And there are many ways to do this.
Daneille explored Shamanic practices, reiki, and art therapy. Maureen found yoga, meditation, and therapy. Deb said, “Only meditation brought me truly to my soul.”
Not one of these women could have experienced that connection with their inner spirit without making the conscious choice to slow down and actually pay attention. And all of it takes practice. And bravery.
Awareness practices like these wake us up to some hard truths about how we’ve absorbed the often-destructive patterns and conditioning passed down from our families and our culture. And they aren’t about bypassing pain to get to peace. They are about walking through it, which sometimes brings up long-repressed anger.
As Serena said, “I am more keenly aware of it and the profound impact of misogyny on my psyche and intuition. And with that comes acknowledgment of the intense knowing I have of this experience on a gut level, on an intuitive level, and a reckoning with how internalized that is and how terrible it is to do to myself.”
Perhaps it’s the years of trying to fit into this world that has informed our midlife awakening the most. For many of us, the cost is eventually too high. We finally feel the rage. Something deep inside us cries out, “It’s my turn!”
As Jeannie said, “Perhaps it has taken all the gaslighting, all the times I dismissed [my instinct], and the many years of putting others' opinions before my own gut to finally own it.”
Final thought: Midlife is a portal, an invitation to connect more deeply to your desires, to build a relationship with your body that is more about what it’s trying to tell you than how it looks, and to stand firmly in your own truth.
Getting to a place where you confidently trust your gut, your intuition, your inner resources (whatever you want to call this super power) can bring you to a place of relative peace like it did for Carol who expressed it so clearly:
“The sweet thing for me is that I care so much less about what’s going on out there. It’s so much more about what’s going on with me.”
Read more:
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It’s time to get naked, my friend!
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