Oh, to be brave again - Regaining courage, resilience and relevance in midlife

We are all brave. And our personal brand of courage shows up in different ways at different times in our lives. Think about it. When you were a toddler it took determination and tenacity to learn to walk, to enter new spaces, to separate from the safety of mother. That was courage. You were so incredibly brave as you crossed the many thresholds of young life. And, when you were older, it took courage to engage in new things, to put yourself out there, navigating the obstacles between who you were and who you were becoming. Trying out for the class play, joining a sports team, meeting new friends, applying for your first job, getting your first job, telling your first love how you felt, moving away from home to go to college. All those firsts required courage. You had to be brave.

The thing is, at that time you probably didn’t even know you were being brave. You had a motivation that was bigger than your fears. You wanted to be a part of something, to have a new adventure, to take the next step toward your destiny. I know it sounds romantic, and I do love a bit of the dramatic, but the truth is, earlier in life, many of us felt we had a destiny. We had dreams and goals for our lives. And, that sense of destiny influenced our resiliency. When we tried and failed, we pivoted, tried again and something else emerged. We needed to be brave in order to take the first steps toward making those dreams a reality and we needed to be resilient when things did not always go according to plan. It is as though we had a hidden reservoir of resilience and over the course of our lives we were able to draw on that well, well pretty much whenever we needed it.

Resilience and courage are beautiful bedmates. I have been thinking a lot about courage, about being brave. About accessing bravery at different times in our lives and why it becomes harder as we age. And, I think it has something to do with our reservoir of resiliency along with our sense of relevance.

Take me. I have lived a brave life. I believe we all have, just in different ways. My childhood was unconventional, to say the least. There was a fair amount poverty and normalized trauma, both intentional and unintentional.

I won’t go into all of that, it’s a book for another time, but suffice to say, as a very young person I experienced a lot of survival-based fear. And, simultaneously, I had a dream for who I could be. I was repeatedly told that I couldn’t dream, to get my head out of that book, to stop daydreaming. The message was that I could not do or be what I wanted for myself. Incidentally, I wanted to be Carol Burnett. Of course, there already was a Carol Burnett. But you get my meaning. I wanted to entertain and delight people. Very early on, I was told that my dreams were for other people, like Carol B. Quite a bit of that indoctrination came from the church, and the rest from family. As a woman-child of the sixties options were limited, externally and internally.

That indoctrination never fully leaves. Over time it takes up far less space but it still shows up in the obstacles I continue to encounter internally. Like many, I have to do the internal work in order to align and access my gumption to get to the to-do list and then I can just bang it off. Once we all get on the same page, it takes no time to actually write the story.

So when I think about these physically and psychologically limited beginnings I believe that being brave helped me find the strength to make a plan, to actually strike out when there didn’t seem to be much for me to explore. It gave me the strength to leave my family and religion at age 21 and start over completely on my own. It gave me the courage to go back to school, take chances, move sight unseen for a job in another province, move across Canada by myself, travel alone to Europe and see places I had always wanted to see, to work in different industries, to reinvent, marry, have children, be a single mom, run my own businesses, keep putting one step in front of the other, to want so much more and to give more to my sons, to keep living creatively and in a way that holds meaning for me and offers encouragement to others.

My ability to pull up courage, dream biggish and access resiliency when needed led me to believe that there was an unlimited reservoir available whenever needed. Maybe it was arrogance. I had been a force in the creation of my life. Because I had studied positive psychology and was a certified individual and systems coach I believed I had access to tools and skills whenever and however needed. When faced with a hardship or a new and challenging choice I could draw from my well of resiliency. I could and would simply, pivot. There would always be time and energy to reinvent as needed.

And, then something stranger happened. Shortly, before my 50th birthday I had a quick succession of life-altering experiences. I was forced out of my business partnership and cut off from my established source of income. I lost my small but self-owned home. The shame I experienced at having this happen at my age and stage of life was debilitating. I completely lost my sense of self. Everything I had believed in, had consulted and coached others toward had been shattered. I struggled. And as I struggled to pull everything back together, to pivot again, as I trained and entered another self-employed profession, the father of my two sons died suddenly. The shock to our family system was overwhelming. I was flattened in a way I have never experienced in my adult life. Even though I understood from a meta view what was happening, I couldn’t maintain that perspective. I simply could not find my way out of the maze of minutiae I had landed in. I felt such shame, I was such a failure. I had not seen it all coming and I couldn’t make anything right.

Wow, that was a lot to share. And, you might be asking yourself at this moment why read anything written by a self-proclaimed failure. Clearly, this is not an expert voice telling you how to navigate midlife with courage and resilience. Really? This sounds more like the story of the poster child for what not to do in your 50’s. A failure to remain launched. Ahhhh…..Well, I would ask that you give it a chance. I believe that life gives us more than it denies. And, hopefully you agree it takes courage and just a little bit of crazy to tell the whole truth; the good, the bad, the ugly and the sublime. All of it.

And just to be even a bit pushy, I challenge you to find out if this story could be incredibly relevant to you. Relevance is a recurring theme of aging. We have to acknowledge and explore the ways in which we struggle to maintain relevance, our voice in a world that values new, young and fresh. But then again, what about Jamie Lee Curtis? And Michelle Yeoh? and….and well, all the everything, everywhere all at once messages of our capacity to grow and reinvent and expand our worlds, at any age. That our eldership is not only a next rite of passage, but needed in the world. It fills a gap. That in fact, we are here to fall, crash and burn and rise from the ashes, again and again. This is why our stories matter. They provide a testament to resilience and courage, a way to encourage others to keep going.

But in midlife we too want and need to feel inspired. To take chances again as we did when we were younger. But in order to do that we have to acknowledge and address the reservoir. Through life’s many challenges and setbacks have we depleted it? And if so, how do we fill it back up? How do we manage the limited energy resources we have while still staying open, curious and yes, courageous. How do we avoid becoming complacent, comfortable and slightly bored or dissatisfied? How do we challenge ourselves to get brave again, to get uncomfortable and excited?

It’s a fact. We do not have the same physical energy levels but that does not mean we are done and now just sitting in some sort of self-imposed bardo. We are not a dried up watering hole without the means to replenish. It is true, we may need to approach this stage of life in a more mindful and intentional way. Perhaps the invitation is to take time to evaluate, examine and celebrate all the ways we have been courageous in our life. And then to find new ways to be brave, to find accountability buddies to witness and support us as we reinvent in new and relevant ways. Maybe we need to find new dreams and then gently approach them as an opportunity to pivot, slowly and steadily. To exercise more ease and grace and to inspire confidence in those around us to do the same.