The Siren, the Queen Bee and the Journey back to Self

It was my birthday last week, I had a really great week. As I move further into my fifties I have to say I love this time in life so much. I remember one of my coach colleagues, who is ten years older than me, saying to me about 5 years ago, “Oh the fifties are the best”. I have to say that so far, I whole heartedly agree. There is something really great about not having your life run by estrogen and knowing yourself so well - and being more than happy to explore the deep and dark places when they come up. It is liberating. This is the thing about midlife, we talk about it being empowering and it definitely is. But it is more than that. It is liberation. It is not reinvention but remembering.

Midlife is the moment we stop performing. We descent, we grieve. And, we rise knowing who we are.

Over the weekend, I watched the Netflix series Sirens. I went in expecting dark comedy and fantasy. It was all that but there was also a lot of the cultural underbelly on display. And yes, there were nods to the mythical Sirens—those seductive, powerful figures feared for luring men to their doom—and to Persephone, who descends to the underworld and rises as Queen.

But what stayed with me was something more subtle. More familiar.

The story centred around women who contort themselves—twist their truth, their instincts, their bodies, their very being—to belong. And what shook me was how often I see this in the real world, especially in the women I work with. I see it on social media all the the time. I find it bizarre that there is a whole fashion trend of people dressing in a way that makes them look wealthy. The whole anti-ageing story crafted by the skincare industry; it is really insane. Why does a 65 year old woman have to have skin the looks like a 25 year old’s?

After watching, I turned to my husband and said something about how heartbreaking it was, but also how powerful it is to have a television show that cleverly shows us the mirror on the collective unconscious. He looked at me and said, “This is your work. You help people come back to their authentic selves, their essence.”

He was right.

So many of the people I work with—especially women in midlife—come to me having spent years (even decades) twisting themselves into shapes they were told would bring them love, safety, or acceptance. They’ve played the roles: the good daughter, the accommodating partner, the high-achieving professional, the one who keeps the peace. But beneath all that performance is often a profound grief: the grief of self-abandonment.

That shows up in many different ways, it can be anger, deep sadness and grief, and also a deep searching for something different or more.

Mythology offers us maps for these kinds of journeys. The Siren is often seen as dangerous, but perhaps she’s just a woman who refused to stay quiet. And Persephone? She was taken underground, but she didn’t just return—she rose transformed, a ruler in her own right. Stripped of her ego and connected to her core self.

There’s another layer to the story that cut even deeper. One of the central characters—the so-called “queen bee”—is replaced. (sorry for the spoiler if you haven’t watched it yet) She’s ousted by a younger, much less confident version of herself. At first, we’re led to believe, the Queen Bee is the villain; she was behaving pretty badly. Then we think the younger replacement maybe is, but we soon see the truth. It was her billionaire ex-husband, who represents the culture of patriarchy, who had the real power all along. A cultural narrative, that builds women up, shapes them to a particular taste, then discards them when it gets bored or their behaviour no longer suits.

And what struck me most is this:
She had contorted herself to make him/them happy.
She had shaped her power around what he wanted, not what was true for her.

I see this in so many women in midlife. They realise, often with some pain, that the power they thought was theirs… wasn’t. It was bestowed—by a relationship, a career, a title, a system. It could be taken away. And often, it is. They don’t know who they are without it.

That’s the heartbreak. But it’s also the turning point.

Because when a woman realises she’s been performing power rather than embodying it, she can begin a different journey. One that doesn’t require contortion. One that descends into grief, yes—but also into truth. Into agency. Into the kind of power that can’t be stripped away. She becomes authoring and starts to write her own story.

These stories speak to the deeper truth: that reclaiming your voice, your instincts, your knowing, often requires going into the underworld of your own psyche. It means feeling the grief of the parts you've left behind. It means listening to the song of the Siren—not the one the world fears, but the one that sings from within your own bones.

This is the kind of healing work I guide people through. It’s somatic. It’s slow. It’s deep. We listen to the body, not just the mind. We notice the nervous system patterns shaped by a lifetime of contorting. And over time, a different kind of belonging emerges—one that doesn’t require performance, one that comes from being rooted in your own truth.

The journey isn't linear. Like Persephone, we may descend many times in our lives. But each time, we bring back more of ourselves. And eventually, we stop contorting to fit the world—and start shaping a world that fits us.

It’s not about becoming someone new. It’s about remembering who you are when you stop performing. When you stop shaping yourself around what others want and start listening to your own body, your own knowing, your own nervous system.

If you're in that moment of reckoning…
If you're realising the version of power you held was conditional…
If you’re longing to come back to the essence of who you are—
I’d love to walk with you.

If this resonates with you—if you feel like you’ve been contorting for too long, or if you’re longing to find your way back to your own voice and centre—I’d love to support you. I offer one-on-one coaching and somatic work for women navigating life transitions, grief, and the reclamation of self. You can learn more about working with me or reach out to talk about coaching.

Your real power is not out there.
It’s in you.
And it’s waiting to be reclaimed.

Your journey home to yourself is sacred. You don’t have to do it alone.

The energetics of betrayal

Betrayal is one of the deepest wounds a human can carry — not just because of what happened, but because of the energetic imprint it leaves behind.

When betrayal comes early, it doesn't just teach the mind something — it teaches the body, the heart, and the nervous system. When the betrayal has come from our caregivers the very people who were supposed to love us, keep us safe, and foster our sense of belonging in the world, it teaches that connection isn’t safe, that trusting others is dangerous and that perhaps maybe, trusting myself is dangerous.

The very parts of us that long for closeness are forced to adapt. They learn to duck, weave, armour up, or disappear. They do whatever it takes to avoid feeling that devastating rupture again.

The Energetic Imprint of Early Betrayal

Betrayal creates a deep rupture in the fabric of trust and it doesn’t go away. For many people, the pain of betrayal doesn’t start in adult relationships. It begins much earlier, in the formative years of childhood or adolescence, when someone they relied on — a parent, caregiver, or close friend — didn’t show up in a way that felt safe or consistent.

When betrayal happens early, it etches a kind of template into the nervous system. One that says: “People can’t be trusted.” Or “I have to protect myself because no one else will.” These imprints often live just beneath the surface subtly shaping how we engage, withdraw, or defend ourselves in relationships.

In human terms, that energetic scar can show up as:

• Hypervigilance, constantly scanning for signs of disloyalty or danger.

• Emotional ducking and weaving , avoiding directness for fear of being hurt.

• Self-sabotage, abandoning ourselves or others before they can abandon us.

• Self-betrayal , silencing our needs and instincts in an effort to stay “safe.”

• Avoidance of connection, having relationships that are light or transactional to avoid getting hurt.

• Constant fawning an over-functioning to stay safe within relationships, over attaching, ignoring our own boundaries to avoid further harm.

At a body level, betrayal activates the primal fear of annihilation: "If the people I'm attached to hurt or abandon me, I might not survive." Many people with this wound feel misunderstood and lonely in relationships.

Early friendships and our first lessons in trust

While early caregiver betrayal leaves a profound mark, it's important to recognise that peer relationships — especially in late childhood and early adolescence — can also create powerful energetic imprints.

Many years ago, I was at a Trauma conference lead by Bessel van der Kolk. We were talking about how tween years developmentally, are important when it comes to relationships because they are the first experience we have with betrayal. He explained that the 9–12 year-old stage for kids and girls in particular, is a crucial time for learning about trust, loyalty, honesty, and boundaries. During this time, friendships often become intense and emotionally charged. Young people are testing the waters of emotional intimacy, authority, and social belonging outside of their families for the first time.

He said, ‘12 year old girls are the meanest people on the planet’, we all giggled because we could all relate at some level. This is not because they are inherently cruel, but because they are instinctively testing how far loyalty stretches, what betrayal feels like, and where their own boundaries begin and end.

These early friendship betrayals — being excluded, gossiped about, shamed, or losing a "best friend", can leave scars just as deep as familial betrayals. You may be thinking is there any way we can prevent this? Developmentally, these early close friendships give tweens practice for navigating their first intimate relationships in their teenage years. What is important as parents, is that we offer containment for our teenagers during these years so they are able to process these emotional experiences in a healthy way and they do this through our co-regulation. When you parent teenagers, you will find that what they need is a lot of containment to help them feel all the big feelings they are having which are often overwhelming because of their hormonal surges.

When they don’t receive that co-regulation and containment, they are left out on a limb to navigate this on their own and their nervous system will most likely be quite overwhelmed by this. They may develop unhealthy adaptive strategies to cope and what they will learn is that trust can be dangerous, speaking the truth gets you abandoned and ignored, and your vulnerability can be used against you.

For many women especially, these early relational wounds create an energetic template that later influences teenage romances, adult friendships, and even professional relationships.

Unless tended to, these imprints can quietly guide our choices, our trust levels, and our capacity for authentic connection, long into adulthood.

What happens when betrayal wounds show up at work?

Betrayal doesn’t just haunt our intimate relationships — it shows up everyday in our professional lives too. Most organisations lack any psychological safety and one of the reasons for this (there are many more) is that many people carry an unconscious expectation that colleagues, bosses, or teams will betray them.

As a result, they hold back: not speaking up in meetings, withholding ideas, disengaging from group dynamics, or interpreting neutral interactions through a lens of mistrust. Some may skip meetings or avoid collaborative projects altogether — not out of laziness, but because their nervous system is protecting them from what it perceives as a relational threat. The workplace becomes a battleground of unhealed childhood and teenage wounds, silently shaping how we show up or don’t.

What is the impact of our younger parts taking the lead in our adult relationships?

When betrayal wounds go unhealed, younger parts of ourselves — child parts, teenage parts — often step in to lead adult relationships.

These parts don’t have the skills for mature communication. They know how to survive, but not how to thrive. They know how to protect, but not how to open.

So we might find ourselves communicating indirectly, lashing out, withdrawing without explanation, testing others unconsciously, or assuming we’ll be misunderstood before we’ve even spoken. Our inner child has no place running our adult relationships and when it dominates our behaviour and decisions it often leads to poor choices and outcomes.

Poor communication is not just a skill gap; it's often a symptom of an unhealed betrayal wound.

How betrayal wounds shape who we draw in

One of the most painful patterns is that unhealed betrayal often pulls us toward people who cannot meet us, as friends, lovers or partners, unless they’ve done their own deep healing work.

Without realising it, we may magnetise:

• People who are unavailable, distracted, or unreliable.

• People who cannot understand or hold our unspoken pain.

• People who, energetically, mirror the early betrayals we experienced.

It's as if the energetic wound keeps echoing outward, unconsciously seeking resolution, while simultaneously protecting itself from getting too close. This will keep happening until we do our own healing, the pattern tends to repeat.

What most people find when they do the healing work on these relational wounds, is that they charge they felt when connecting with people who couldn’t meet their needs goes away. They start being attracted to a different type of person.

Image- Kellie Stirling

Healing the energetics of betrayal

Healing betrayal isn’t about telling yourself to "just trust people" again. It's about repairing the energetic fractures in your system, slowly, gently, consistently.

Here’s how it often begins:

1. Rebuilding Trust with Yourself

Betrayal healing involves learning to stay with yourself rather than abandoning your truth to stay safe. Tiny, consistent acts of self-loyalty rebuild trust from the inside out. Keeping promises to yourself. Honouring your needs. Setting boundaries by learning what a Yes, No and Maybe feels like in your body and then learning to listen to that in your body will help to build this skills. Each act sends a signal to your system: I am safe with myself now.

2. Listening to the Younger Parts

Instead of shaming the child or teenage parts for their survival strategies, we acknowledge them and we listen to them. We learn how to reparent them. We show up as the adult they needed but didn't have.

3. Creating Repair Experiences

In safe, steady relationships — whether with a friend, therapist, coach, or partner — you practice staying present through small ruptures and repairs. Many of us haven’t learn how to have a repair conversation when we have a relational rupture. This is an incredibly important relating skill to learn and it is something our children learn through our role modelling of it. Each moment of being seen, heard, and stayed-with, rewires the nervous system’s expectation that betrayal is inevitable.

4. Tending the Nervous System

Betrayal activates primal states of fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. Through somatic practices — grounding, orienting, gentle self-touch, breathwork — we teach the body that it is no longer trapped in the past.

Healing betrayal is like tending a storm-battered tree. We don't expect it to "get over" the damage overnight. This is slow, long and steady work. We nurture its roots, protect its tender branches, and trust that over time, it will grow stronger — not despite the scars, but through them.

Building a new kind of loyalty to yourself

When we heal the energetic imprints of betrayal — whether they originated from family or early friendships — we become fiercely loyal to ourselves. Not in a hardened, guarded, self-centred way, but in a rooted, emotionally mature, self-authoring way.

From there, we begin to choose relationships differently. We communicate more cleanly. We are able to ask for our desires and we learn to recognise when someone cannot meet us — and we no longer abandon ourselves trying to make them.

And most importantly, we remember: Betrayal does not define us.

The way we choose to heal, love, and live — that’s what shapes who we become.

If you need some support with betrayal wounds so that you can thrive in your relationships, come talk to me about relationship coaching or somatic experiencing.

Healing Our Trauma: Reclaiming Our Connection with Nature

For me, there is nothing better than walking barefoot in the sand on the beach, then having a dip in the sea. I love floating in sea water and the rocking that comes with floating on top of waves as they ebb and flow. It is highly restorative. It grounds me and brings me back into my body. I can feel my nervous system coming into my zone of resilience.

In the quiet of a forest, the crash of ocean waves, or the vast openness of a starlit sky, many of us feel something stir within—a longing, a recognition, a sense of home, a feeling of belonging. But for many, that connection feels distant, as if nature is something separate from us rather than a living web in which we belong.

Much of this disconnection stems not just from modern life but from unhealed trauma—both personal and collective. Our nervous systems, shaped by past wounds, can keep us in states of hypervigilance or numbness, making it difficult to truly be present with the natural world. However, as we heal, something shifts. We begin to experience nature not just as scenery but as an extension of ourselves, rich with wisdom and reciprocity.

So how does trauma disconnect us from nature?

When we experience trauma, our nervous system adapts to keep us safe. If safety was scarce, our body may have learned to stay on high alert, scanning for danger even in peaceful settings. If overwhelming experiences left us feeling powerless, we may have learned to disconnect, numbing ourselves to sensations—including the subtle, grounding presence of nature.

Maybe you are thinking but I haven’t really experienced trauma why do I feel disconnected from my body. Well, modern life is very challenging and often it is the micro-aggressions of daily life that overwhelm us and this stacks up in our nervous system. All of these moments of overwhelm sometimes hit us when we least expect it and we experience pain, illness or relational rupture.

Many of us also carry inherited trauma, passed down through generations. Our ancestors may have lived through displacement, war, colonisation, or environmental destruction, severing their relationship with the land. That rupture doesn’t just exist in history books—it lives in our bodies, shaping how we relate to the earth. The study of epigenetics has explained this to us, so we can see how this unhealed trauma is passed down through generations in both cell expression but also in the attachment system in each of us, that is formed through the maternal bond between an baby and their caregivers.

In modern life, this disconnection manifests in subtle ways as we project our internal disconnection outwards and this shapes how we relate to ourselves, others, the world and life itself. We may find it hard to slow down enough to notice the intricate beauty of a leaf, the rhythmic cycles of the seasons, or the deep nourishment that comes from being immersed in nature. We are stuck on the hamster wheel of flight and fight. Instead of feeling like we belong to the land, we often treat it as a resource to be extracted and used, a background to our human-centered world.

How does healing our trauma restore our sense of belonging within us and also to something greater than us?

The good news is that healing our trauma—whether through somatic work, deep nervous system repair, or ancestral healing—opens the door to a profound reconnection with nature. As we learn to regulate our nervous system, we develop the capacity to be present, to notice, and to receive. The very same skills that allow us to process and release trauma—slowing down, attuning to our sensations, and cultivating safety—are the ones that allow us to feel at home in the natural world.

When we heal, we begin to:

Feel the land as alive – Instead of seeing nature as an object, we start to sense its intelligence, its rhythms, and its ability to communicate. We might begin to feel the energy of trees, the presence of the wind, or the way a particular landscape holds us.

Move beyond fear and control – Trauma often teaches us to control our environment for safety. As we heal, we can interact with nature in a more reciprocal way—learning from it rather than trying to dominate it. When we feel safe in our own bodies, we can soften into a sense of safety in the world.

Trust the body’s belonging – Nature is not something we visit; it is something we are. As we learn to listen to and trust our body and appreciate its deep wisdom, we also learn to trust the wisdom of the earth. We develop a deep understanding of the rhythms of nature and the rhythms in our body. Our understanding of one pattern helps us see this replicated through our own body and other systems we interact within.

Feel the cycles of life more deeply – Instead of fearing endings and beginnings, we start to embrace the cycles of nature as part of us. We see death, decay, rebirth, and renewal not just in the world around us but in our own emotional and spiritual journeys.

Increased self-awareness and environmental awareness - When we tend to our inner landscapes, we become more attuned to the landscapes around us.

Healing give us a new way of relating to each other and a new way of orienting ourselves in the world.

As we heal, we begin to walk through the world differently. We no longer see ourselves as separate from nature but as part of an ongoing conversation with it. We listen more deeply, honour its gifts, and recognise that the earth, like us, holds both wounds and the capacity for regeneration.

Our personal healing ripples outward. When we feel connected to the land, we are more likely to protect it, not from a place of fear or guilt but from love and reverence. Our actions shift from extraction to reciprocity, from dominance to stewardship.

Healing trauma is not just personal work—it is planetary work. As we reconnect with ourselves, we reconnect with the earth. And as we learn to belong to our own bodies, we remember that we have always belonged to the web of life.

Digital Art - Kellie Stirling

What if healing is not just about feeling better, but about remembering our place in the great unfolding story of the earth?

Perhaps the most radical thing we can do is to slow down, place our hands on the earth, and listen.

Healing happens in community and when we connect with something bigger than us. There are many ways we can look at nature and draw a comparison with our body and its innate intelligence and understanding of how to heal.

Just as nature moves through seasons of growth, rest, decay, and renewal, our nervous system cycles through activation, integration, and restoration. Honouring these natural rhythms supports long-term well-being. Here are some other comparisons that might deepen you understanding of both our body and nature’s capacity to generate healing and growth through the building of virtuous cycles and coherence.

Roots & Grounding – Trees grow strong by sending their roots deep into the earth. Similarly, we cultivate resilience by grounding ourselves in connection—whether to our breath, body, relationships, or a sense of purpose.

Storms & Emotional Intensity – A thunderstorm may feel chaotic, but it brings necessary rain and clears the air. Intense emotions may feel overwhelming, but when we allow them to move through us, they can bring clarity and transformation. Emotions like natures storms pass through us when we let them be expressed. When we allow ourselves to feel emotions fully, we become more open to experiencing the depth of nature.

Ebb & Flow of the Ocean – The tides rise and fall in a constant dance with the moon, just as our emotions and energy levels naturally fluctuate. Trying to force constant calmness is like trying to stop the ocean’s waves—it’s unnatural.

Symbiosis & Co-Regulation – Ecosystems thrive through interdependence; plants, animals, fungi, and microbes all support each other. Likewise, humans regulate best in connection—our nervous systems co-regulate through relationships, just as trees share nutrients through their roots.

Fire & Transformation – I have always been fascinated by the dual nature of fire. It can be a force for regeneration and a force of destruction. Wildfires, though destructive, create space for new growth by clearing out the old. In our nervous system, moments of challenge or breakdown can lead to profound transformation when we move through them with support.

Where do we start?

Of course you can start with the simple connections you can make with nature around you. Even if it is taking a walk on the grass in your bare feet start there. Do it with a friend or your partner, take a walk together. Trauma occurs in the absence of a compassionate witness, so healing happens in the connection with one and in the presence of community. We are wired for social connection, we are not meant to do life on on our own.

Shame and our bodies

Shame has a huge influence over how we perceive and see our bodies. Many people have been strongly influenced culturally to compare our bodies to others, particularly those others we see in the media and popular culture. These are impossible standards to live up to, particularly when we know that technology allows manipulation of photographic images. What we are looking at is not reality.
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So much of what we believe about ourselves, when it comes to body image, comes from outside of ourselves. It comes from our family and larger society. From a very young age we internalise messaging about what we are supposed to eat, how we are supposed to look, who we are supposed to be, who we should love, what we should be able to do.

Our body is centred in all of this.
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Notice there are a lot of should and supposed to be there.

When you look around the world, what is considered healthy and acceptable, changes culturally. Although this has morphed and blended with social media.

Image - Mohammed Nohasi

I was a teenager in the 80s and young adult in the 90s and this was the time where diet culture was everywhere in popular media. It was aerobics everywhere, hello Jane Fonda and Richard Simmons. I was an aerobics queen, don't get me wrong it was a lot of fun and a great thing to do with friends, but the body standards were impossible and dangerous. The leotards were ace though!
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This was also the generation in modelling of the waif. Remember Kate Moss when she started out, impossibly thin. So there is a whole generation of 40 and 50 year olds out there who whose mental models of acceptable beauty are based on, excessive exercise, starving yourself and dangerously thin models.
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We are very impressionable in our early years and these impressions around body image last for years. When we don't look like what is portrayed in popular culture as normal, we feel like we aren't enough, like we don't belong. Some of us will go to extremes to fit in. This need to belong is hardwired into our DNA. In Tribal days, we relied on the tribe to be protected and fed. So it literally can feel like a life or death situation when we feel like to don't belong. It puts us into survival mode.
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So as you can see, shame has a lot to say about how we perceive our bodies. We have these internal versions of ourselves based on these external images that relate to our self-esteem. Some of us who suffer pervasive shame over our body image, have some very harsh inner critics. Some of these inner critic parts live deep in our unconscious so they are not always that easy to detect and hear. They way to diminish them is to talk about them. Shame thrives on secrecy; when we talk about our inner critic we starve them of their supply.
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There is a particular type of shame a lot of us feel as we get older. We compare how we are now to our younger selves. We remember when we were really fit and healthy and could do a lot. We remember our young faces, without wrinkles and saggy skin. We remember our hair before it was grey. Some of us go to great lengths to avoid this. There is a particular strength that can be found in accepting ourselves just as we are right now. A happiness, a contentment, a sense of joy.
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Whats the antidote to all this shame?
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Pride, curiousity and open conversations, shut shame down. Learning to love your body and all the amazing things they have done for you is the way through. It might not be easy but it is totally doable.

Need some help? Come talk to me.

Midlife, the autumn season of our life. A time to pause, reflect and let go.

We humans are cyclical beings although our modern world doesn’t care or cater much to our cyclical nature. For those of us in female bodies, we are in a constant state of cycling through our menstrual cycles and this brings with it for many people a way of orienting and being in the world that provides a sense of feeling anchored to our cyclical nature. Our life is seasons within seasons, within seasons. Although many of us don’t always feel good about this all the time and I wonder if we talked about our inherent connection with nature and the natural rhythms of the world more, this would provide a sense of meaning to us at a deeper level.

Our midlife season is Autumn. It is a time to take stock, pause, reflect and let go of what we no longer need in our life so we can birth new parts of ourselves. I find this metaphor to be true for all midlife people I work with regardless of gender. It is a process of death and rebirth that happens where we are moving toward a soul oriented life. With this for many comes expanded consciousness where you are stepping into an unknown way of being in the world; this in itself can be overwhelming for many especially if you do not have roadmap or mentors to guide your through. The rebirth is your initiation into your wise woman power that is your authentic self. You are probably familiar wit the archetypes of maiden, mother and crone. This archetypal stage is called Maga which is the stage before Crone. Maga is Portuguese for sorceress and is the feminine of Magus, which is the sorcerer. We are the first generation of woman going through this because we are living longer than the other women in our female lineage.

For Males the archetypal equivalent is the Magician or the Sorcerer and to move to this is a rite of passage, a man needs support and community of wise elders supporting him. The Magician archetype when integrated in a man has the ability to turn disappointing situations and setbacks into opportunities to learn, grow and become a better man.

For all of us when we come to midlife their is often a great deal of inner work to be done for Autumn is the seasons of letting go. In the Celtic tradition, Autumn signifies a time of abundance because harvests are at their peak but also the season where we prepare for austerity, the winter season to come. Autumn is the season that brings the double outer and inner movement, a transition. By midlife we are ready for this big transition. It is the right time for this as we have the wisdom and perspective to really differentiate what is going on for us. Many of us may have been judged as having mental health or personal development needs in the past when they are in fact dealing with cultural overlays that are maligning our life. With our deep life experience we begin to see everything happening in our life for what it is.

Midlife is about healing any trauma or wounding from the first half of your life. When we move through this process of letting go, we are going through a process of dying metaphorically speaking. All the ideas you had about yourself, who you are, who you thought you were becoming, where you thought your life would take you may not have eventuated. So of course there will be anger, grief, resentment and maybe sadness that comes with that. You will find that what used to motivate you no longer does. You will start to pull back into yourself in a way, rather than giving your energy away.

This is because, for women in particular, you are leaving the archetypal mother phase of your life. With that comes some very real deep emotion. I think for many women there is grief regarding fertility ending. This is especially true for women who have not had children regardless of the reasons why, because all of a sudden choice is removed. There will no longer be any choice anymore, no possibility. I have also seen women who have had children experience this even though they were quite adamant that they did not want more children. The nervous system loves choice and agency, so when we are faced with the removal of choice, it does not surprise me that the body experiences either strong fight or flight responses like anger, anxiety and resentment because lack of choice backs us into a corner. But you also experience grief. Grief you see is the emotion that is the secret ingredient that helps us move on. You cannot let go without grief.

For grief to flow it needs the support of the community. it strikes me that at midlife, many of us feel like we are losing our true inner compass we got from our regular cycles and we are trying hard to orient to something new that we have no road map for because there is so much shame and denial in our culture about ageing. I think for males they experience something similar but often later maybe in their fifties is what I have noticed with my clients. All of us are looking for our ‘north star’ to anchor to something.

So why are these big emotional experiences in midlife so hard?

I think it is because we live in a culture where there is collective denial about our emotional lives. Many of us grew up in families where we did not have that emotional life fostered by our parents or caregivers. There was a complete lack of attunement to our needs. This has contributed to a huge array of hurt, trouble and physical symptoms for many people. When we are disconnected from our emotional body we become frozen on the inside, our emotions gets stuck with no means of freeing them. Our nervous system is very clever it will create all manner of management strategies to stop us from feeling that which is painful to us. This is deep work that is required. Learning to befriend our vulnerability so we can feel into our emotions, the harder ones in particular, opens the way to feeling the full spectrum of emotions - Joy, Love, Anger, Amazement, Wonder and Delight. It broadens your emotional landscape.

In midlife, we need our community around us to support us through this transition. But you know what, we need community all the time. Humans are not wired do life on their own. Our interpersonal neurobiology is wired to connect with others for co-regulation. Co-regulation helps us feel like we don’t have to carry the burdens of life all on our own.

Image - Visions in Blue

As my teacher Francis Weller says in his book The Wild Edge of Sorrow “Private pain is a legacy of the creed of rugged individualism. In this narrow story, we find ourselves caught in the shadow of the heroic archetype. We are conditioned from birth to the image of the hero, the one who needs no one, the one who rises above his or her pain, the one who is always in control and never vulnerable. We are imprisoned by this image, forced into a fiction of false independence that severs our kinship with the earth, with sensuous reality and with the myriad wonders of the world”.

The hero archetype, which so many of our stores are centred around, disconnects us from nature, from our cyclical nature, from our natural rhythms and our inner seasons.

Is it any wonder that our rites of passage feel so hard and so overwhelming. They are super complex and we need a circle of support around us to get through and for many of us that is simply not there nor do we know how to put it together.

So how do we navigate midlife better? We face it together we build a circle of support around ourselves. Each life stage has a developmental task that is asked of us, and in midlife it is radical honestly with ourselves, discern our truth. To learn to be kind to ourselves and to stay present to our life. For many of us this might be the first time we have had to do this it re requires vulnerability and acceptance of ourselves for who we are right now. Once we can accept ourselves as we are we start to connect with our unique gifts and slowly we are ready to put them out into the world.

One the principles I really like that helps us frame this experience comes from Japanese aesthetics and it is the world view that is called Wabi Sabi. Wabi Sabi is centred on the acceptance of transience and imperfection. This aesthetic appreciates that beauty is impermanent, imperfect and incomplete. This can be seen in Japanese art.

I think it is a beautiful way of framing life because it helps us to appreciate that all of life is fluid and we are always learning growing, that there is no such thing as perfection. We are all perfectly imperfect.

There is no right way to do your midlife transition. There is your way because you are unique and your life experience are unique and whatever comes up for you, whilst it might have something in common with someone else, will be uniquely your experience to learn from.

Are you a highly sensitive person? I am, here is how I turned it into my superpower

Are you a highly sensitive person? I am too. For those of us who are highly sensitive people (HSP) we pick up on everything that goes on around us. This can be great, people think we have extra sensory powers. It always made me a very good judge of character and I often felt I was able to feel what the other person was feeling. Turns out, I could, my body resonance is very good and I learned all of this through years of somatic coaching and somatic experiencing practitioner training. It helped me enormously when I worked in the corporate world in executive development roles because I was really good at spotting people’s talents and working through with them how they can continue to grow and learn and what work and life experiences would help them to do that.

So I am really good with my sensory experiences, very attuned to environments and very nuanced changes in them, I pick up minute details in people especially emotional and energetic changes. I am super aware of light, dark, electricity, climatic change.

Where does it become hard for HSPs?

I found the big differences for myself and for other HSPs I have worked with is whether the nervous system is regulated or not. That is, our ability to move into the different autonomic responses (fight, flight, freeze and fawn) and then soothe ourselves and come back to our window of tolerance where we feel curious, connected and safe. Sensitivity is a gift when you are well regulated, it is your superpower. When you are aware of everything around you and don’t perceive it as danger, you can have a very deep connection with the world you live in.

Where is becomes a problem is when your nervous system is dysregulated. We can be stuck in survival mode. When you are stuck in survival and you are an HSP, you can find it really difficult to stay present and grounded. Everything in your environment can feel like a threat, you can become constantly anxious, overwhelmed, have panic attacks. It is not fun.

So how do we become an HSP?

It starts when we are young. Even as early as when we are in utero, yes inside Mum’s tummy. When babies are born they don’t have the capacity to regulate and self soothe. We do that as parents, mostly through touch. We soothe babies through touch, rocking, our voice. Brand new babies are super sensitive to the new world and they will startle and cry over any sound or cause of confusion to them. New babies are sensitive to new sensory experiences and to their parents. It is our job as parents to co-regulate their nervous system and this continues for the rest of their childhood. If a baby has had healthy co-regulation from an adult who can self regulate, at about 11 months old they will start being able to soothe themselves a little. The first three years of our little lives are super pivotal in the development of this capacity. What can cause us to become dysregulated is early trauma, it can start at conception.

We can experience stress in utero if our mother is stressed. My parents were in a motor vehicle accident when my mother was five months pregnant with me and one of the earliest experiences I had in my somatic healing was, we think, (me and my therapist) this experience that came up in a somatic experiencing session. It is hard to put to words because we have no explicit memory the first 3 years but we remember sensation in our body.

Stress in utero can prime a baby to be living in high stress when they come out into the world. Other experiences we might have that cause us to be in this state is if we grew up in a family where mum and dad fought a lot. We become masters at anticipating what our parents are feeling in order to defend ourselves. We become hyper-vigilant to the mood of the adults in the house. We become attuned to energy, emotions, physiology of others and in these survival states this may drive behaviour where we are very introverted or shy or just feeling like we can’t be ourselves. I also think some kids can experience this at school either with a teacher or other kids and become in this hyper aware state.

Also medical experiences or sickness we experience as a little person. If we had to have surgery or spend a longer period of time in hospital our little nervous system can become super overwhelmed and can struggle to understand what is safe and what is not safe. Over time if we have a few of these experiences we can shutdown to our feelings and emotions. This is our nervous systems way of coping.

The impact of experiencing all of this dysregulation over time, is that our nervous system can go into shutdown, this is the dorsal vagal state of the parasympathetic nervous system. When untreated this can lower our metabolism, energy and immune function. There is a lot of evidence that early and developmental trauma has a significant impact on health outcomes as an adult. Look up the ACEs study if you are curious, this has all the info in it.

Other kids might not shutdown they just might become hyper-attuned to their environment, these are our highly sensitive people. Their system is revving on high and they perceive everything as a threat, they don’t ever really feel safe.

Experiencing that co-regulation from caregivers when we are young is super key in teaching children to self-soothe and bring themselves back into presence and calm. If their caregivers were dysregulated because their nervous system never learned this, we end up with early developmental trauma.

A little passage from rumi or hafiz

If you identify as sensitive, whether you are introverted, extroverted or somewhere else in between, your sensitivity is a foundation.

Sensitivity is so wonderful, yet so fragile and misunderstood. We spend so much of our lives resenting it, fighting it, trying to smother it down, instead of nourishing it.

Sensitivity is often labeled as a weakness but in reality it cultivates a strength most people don't ever experience.

Sensitive people used to feel more so they can often simply handle more, when push comes to the shove.

The good news is that we can work with this. There are many somatic modalities, like somatic experiencing, neuro affective touch, neuro affective relational model, sensory motor psychotherapy which all support nervous system healing. It is never too late to learn, to heal your nervous system. When you do this nervous system healing work, your HSP gifts turn into your super power because you use them from a more grounded place. You are aware of your environment and you can witness your own experience on the inside and be with both at the same time. You can experience the world in technicolor and bring yourself back to calm, centred and grounded.

Come talk to me if you would like to explore healing your nervous sytem.

Ten things I wish I had known before I started my midlife transition

I ran into an old friend a few weeks back and we were talking about our work. We cross over on the trauma resolution and nervous system work. This friend is in her thirties and we were talking about midlife and menopause and supporting women in this transition and how important it is because it is such a time of overall transition AND it is a gateway to ageing. It is an important transition and we really need to review our life and all aspects of it so that she can set herself up to live well in her second half of life.

I went home and thought what would be the top 10 things I wish I had known before I started midlife? If we had a crystal ball we could stare into that would helps us, what would be the most helpful tips. So here you go.

1.We go through two transitions midlife and menopause at this time in our lives if we live in female bodies. Menopause is the end of our fertility with that comes not just physical change but psychological growth and healing. The developmental challenge at midlife is being radically honest and truthful with yourself about where you are at right now and who you are.

2. Learning about hormone health is absolutely key at this time in life, if you can learn earlier go do it. It is not just your sex hormones that change, they affect all our other hormones, like thyroid, insulin, our stomach hormones and stress hormones because of the change.

3. You cannot push your way through these transitions. The way through is going inward, slowing down and learning to rest.

4. You will get restless, question everything and intuitively feel like you need change in your life. Don't project this all out, explore your inner world.

5. Your body is the home that you live in. Take very good care of it. The overarching question that covers these transitions is "How can I set myself up to live well in the second half of life?". Use that as your guide and refer back to it constantly.

6. Old trauma will come up for resolution at this time and the hormone changes often impact the nervous system to cause that to happen. Remember our body is wise, intelligent and has an innate capacity and orientation to healing.

7. Get the support and help you need. You are the CEO of your body, it is OK to work with different professionals to get the support you need. (I count my chiropractor, shiatsu practitioner, GP, oncologist, massage therapist and somatic experiencing teachers just to name a few in that group)

8. Estrogen is a hormone that fosters connection with others and bonding AND it gives us rose coloured glasses. All of a sudden you will start to see the world differently when it declines. This is normal, you will get mad and annoyed. All of this is OK, you cannot 'unsee' things now, this will help promote your passion and purpose as you move through menopause.

9. You will come face to face with your cultural conditioning around ageing, sexuality and sensuality. Face into it, don't let it hold you back from growing and be radically honest with yourself.

10. Pelvic health is critical at this time in our life. The Pelvis is a incredibly important part of our body that connects the top and bottom of our body. Within it are our reproductive organs and and our organs that get rid of waste. We hold so much old emotional stress and tension in our pelvic floor and this impacts us physically, emotionally and sexually. It is ok to get obsessed about pelvic floor health in my opinion. Do pelvic floor exercises, pilates, jade egg exercises, whatever you need, find people who really know what they are doing.

And one more just because...... you are letting go of parts of yourself you don't need anymore and birthing a new part of yourself, your inner wise women is on the way!