A Midlife Woman On A Mission Knows Her Own Heart

There you stand. On the edge of a chasm. You're somewhere in your 40's and there's not much left for you here on this side.

Below you see a whole river of loss running between two rocky walls. You feel that loss. 

Loss of a house filled with noisy kids and schedules to keep running.

Loss of your energy and muscle tone because midlife changes are catching up with your body.

Loss of love from so many directions. Uncertainty. Fear. 

"Who am I now?" you ask. "Who am I going to be?"

 I know. Been there. Actually, been thinking about the solution since I was about 19 years old. YOU are not done yet. I know it seems weird that I would say that but you need to hear it.

You have 2 choices when it comes to crossing that chasm... midlife. And none of us escape making these 2 choices because we ALL end up here.

This is what we're talking about in this podcast today. Those 2 choices. Both involve something important you still have to do and finding that something right there inside you where you live. In your heart.

Come on in, grab a coffee, put your feet up and...be inspired.

Download here:  FREE e-Book:  How To Find Your Passionately Personal Midlife Mission

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Transcript

(00:02):

Andrea felt lost as she climbed back into her car, turned the key and gave a last wave to her baby girl standing on the sidewalk in front of her college dorm. Her forced optimistic smile collapsed into a torrent of tears rolling down her cheeks. As she drove away, Andrea's heart was breaking. Seeing her daughter spread her wings was a joy in so many ways. But for Andrea, it felt like so much loss questions came pouring out as her tears flowed. Have I taught her enough to keep her safe? How will she do without me to be her home? Who am I now? Anyway? What am I going to do without her to care for Hi, my beautiful warriors. This is Bernice McDonald, and I am so happy that you are back here for this podcast. And if this is your first time listening, welcome. We are creating an army of women on a mission.

(01:22):

Midlife is just that the middle of life. This is the most important time to remember that you are an individual walking a path, a path we call life, and it's your path. You entered that path just as your children did when you were born. When you die, you will leave this path. You grew up just as your children are doing. You left home and a new adventure began. Just as your children are doing and just as we cannot make the decisions for them, no one really makes those decisions for you. Your mission was to love that girl and all the children that are given to you to prepare them for this moment when they leave, when your nest is empty, and then the mission is complete. That's what we call the empty nest. Now, don't worry. Your mission as a parent never ends <laugh>, believe me, it just shifts to be more of a guide than anything. But this phase of parenting ends, it changes. The decisions

(02:58):

That you make from here on in are all yours. You have the power to decide what you do with your life. So how have these middle years caused your life to shift? Your child is at a different place on her path. She's there at the end of the teen years. When we move into our uh, time, when we leave home and we make all those decisions about who we're going to be in the future, she's in the transition from home phase, but you are in a different phase. The midlife phase, what changes are leaving you feeling that maybe you're just a little lost as if you're not sure of who you are right now? Middle midlife is one of those natural transitions that is always filled with loss, loss of our youth, loss of the dream body. We always thought we'd get to loss of love in many forms. Our romantic relationships, sometimes our parents aging, so our relationship shifts with them. The career we thought we loved begins posing new challenges. <laugh>, we find what used to fill us up just doesn't anymore. We even feel the loss of a bright future because we see that aging is closer than ever and that doesn't seem very bright to us.

(04:54):

The worst fallout of midlife, and I want you to listen carefully to this. All of these losses, all of these things that we're going through can cause if we're not careful, a loss of heart, the worst loss of all. But I have for you the secret to get you through this time in a way that creates more joy, more fulfillment, more reasons to get up out of bed in the mornings than you've ever felt before. It's something that gives you the courage to get through the time of all this loss, and it's found right there in your beautiful heart.

(05:48):

Can I tell you this? Your life is far from over. You are not done yet. There's more for you to do, or I believe your creator wouldn't leave you here. Now, I have to tell you that even though that sounds so simple and kind of logical, and of course there's more for you to do because you're only in the middle part in your forties, your fifties, your sixties, you're only there as far as you know your life is gonna go on until who knows, 95, a hundred. But I have to say that because so many people don't know that and they don't think about that, what's in your heart? This is where you're going to find what will carry you through to the future. This is where you're going to find the most crucial thing for you to latch onto. This is where you're going to find in your heart your next great mission.

(07:01):

You know that this has been coming for years near the end of your thirties. You know we have that big birthday for <laugh> and it sets you back. My 40th was difficult for me. That was a hard transition, and I watch people in their late thirties now as they anticipate that 40 coming up, it's a big deal. It changes things. It suddenly means you're not young anymore. Suddenly you're noticing all the little things that are signaling that another transition is happening. The first child graduating from high school, the first gin hair you didn't realize was there until you see it poking out in the mirror and you feel this weird humiliation washing over. You wondering how many people noticed, or was that just me? <laugh>?

(08:02):

Yeah. Uh, that was my reaction. The first glimmer of dissatisfaction at work, feeling a little annoyed by how young and inexperienced the last person they hired seems to be and attitude. Where has a good work ethic gone to these days? You talk about to your spouse, to other people in the coffee room, the first death of someone really close to you and you're thinking, how could that happen? I felt like we would live forever. You wonder why you wake up with this emptiness inside. You wonder why you're thinking about decisions you've made in the past and where you might be if you had made different choices, all of that part of midlife, part of that transition into a different phase of your life. Let me tell you something reassuring here. It's all good. I know you don't believe me, but it's all good and it's normal.

(09:16):

It's as if you're being prepared for something to change When you notice it, it's like the air growing really still before a storm. Although most of the time you're not even aware that the clouds are building because you keep yourself so busy in that time of life. The bottom line here is that you have two choices when you're looking at all this loss right in the face. All of us have these choices because all of us go through this. No exceptions. If you are still here, you're going to encounter midlife. I'm sure you've noticed those who seem to make it across that great chasm into the middle years as if it's a breeze. How do they do it? How does it not even bother them? What's really very simple, those people have a map. They know where they're going. They have their eyes set on the future and have a mission in mind.

(10:26):

You also know others who never seem to cross that chasm. They end up there, yes, as we all do in that age bracket, but truth be told, they've actually just sat down on the edge and stopped. They don't grow. They don't go forward. They stay the same. In fact, sometimes we think they're regressing because of they're not maturing. Some of them, many of them who just sit down and stop living in a sense, spend more time thinking about all the three phases of loss, focusing on everything they had before and how they wish they had it back, or focusing on how their life will always seem less than now without their youth, without the love they knew, without the lifestyle style they lived and on and on, or focusing on all they believe they will never have again because it's gone, gone, gone. You will become one of these two people.

(11:44):

There are different degrees, but you will lean into being one of these two. You will be the one who sits down and lets their life pretty much end now, or you'll be the one who builds a bridge and leaps over to the other side almost without the bat of an eye. Now, this is why I do what I do. I want you to be the one who builds the bridge and runs across to all that's green on the other side, I have a vision of thousands of women crossing that bridge to be living their midlife missions because women at this age have so much to give in so many ways. I in my life have watched way too many older ladies who are near and dear to me in my life give up on who they were at about that time in the middle to give into the voices that were stronger than they were and end up they ended up dying in loneliness, feeling as if they had somehow missed out on truly living their lives.

(13:10):

And the truth is, in many ways, they had, you know, I cried all day on my 19th birthday because I could already see the path, and I thought that we had no choice except to end up old and angry and bitter. I was looking at friends and relatives who were only at that time, probably in their late forties and fifties. Well, you know what happened? I heard a voice <laugh>. Yeah, I heard a voice, but it was a voice from up above. When I looked up at him and said, I don't wanna grow up. I don't wanna be like them. More tears, more tears. I heard a reply back clear as anything than don't be, and suddenly I knew it was that simple. Even at that age, it's my choice. I was the one making the decisions for me.

(14:21):

It's been a while since I was 19 and lots and lots of water have passed under many bridges that I've built. I've fallen in the water <laugh> a lot. I've almost drowned sometimes as I walked along my path. But this one thing I know has pulled me through to this point. This is now how I train any woman who chooses mission over feeling menopausal because don't you fall into that so easily. As we talked about in the last podcast, oh, I must be in menopause. All of these awful things are happening to me. I'm sure it's because I'm in menopause. Well, how I train women all starts here. One, three things I'm going to tell you about. One, know your own heart. Know what you believe in, what you stand for, and know what makes you sad and angry and makes you cry. You are such an individual, so unique.

(15:34):

There is no one in this world like you. Just like there's no one who has your same fingerprints. There is no one who has everything that you have within your own heart, nor anyone who has the same passions that you feel, the same things that you believe in. Secondly, believe that what makes you sad and angry and makes you cry is therefore a reason. It's a clue to the difference that you are meant to make in this world that you could make in this world. If you choose to build that bridge from here, from the past into the midlife, whose tears would you like to dry up? What problem would you like to solve? If you could, what would you like to tell every person you know and every person you don't know? Because they really need to know this. What would you be doing if you were to experience a heart that was overflowing?

(16:42):

Think about the feelings of that, that same kind of love that you felt at the most magical moment in your life. Maybe it was your first kiss <laugh>. Maybe it was the first time you held your baby or maybe it was when you threw your hat up at your at your university graduation. What magic moment feeling would you love to carry forward with you through the rest of your life? What brings that feeling back to you? And third, know what great things will happen if you were able to have a part in bringing something amazing to a world that may be hurting or lonely or confused. And also on the other side of that, know what bad sad things will happen if you don't do anything about what's in your heart. If you just sat down on the edge of that chasm of all the losses and didn't build a bridge to the rest of your life, if you didn't write a new chapter in your story, if you just stayed there looking back, what consequences would you know would happen?

(18:06):

What results would happen? How would you feel? What kinds of things might you not put out there in the world? What kind of people may not receive help because you chose to just sit, you chose to be afraid, you chose not to take risks. So first of all, the three things that will help you in choosing mission over being menopausal. One, know your heart. Two, believe that what makes you sad and angry and makes you cry is there for a reason. Pay attention to it. And three, two parts. Know what great things will happen if you follow your heart and find your next great mission and know what bad sad things will happen if you don't do anything about what's in your heart.

(19:19):

I have a dream. Do I sound like Martin Luther King <laugh>? Look where that got him, right? And all the people who followed him. I do have a dream. I see thousands of women taking all the amazing strength and wisdom and learning and grace and intelligence and ideas they have in their amazing hearts and walking across the bridges they've built from youth to midlife, believing in themselves and the clear mission that they carry. I see them inspiring and uplifting and healing and helping tens of thousands of other humans to live their lives well to facing everything we face on our planet with courage and strength, dignity. Aspiring to make it all better, if you're wondering what your mission could be, I want you to check out my coaching@wwwbernicemcdonald.com. Book a consult with me because this is too important to let go. And if there's something tugging at you in your heart, then you need to respond to that.

(20:46):

The other option is for you, I have an ebook, how to Write a Passionately Personal Midlife Mission Statement, and it asks you the three questions which we've just gone through that you need to start thinking this through. The link is in the show notes, or you can also find it@ww.bernicemcdonald.com. I really hope you're gonna take this next step. Imagine how we could change the experience of living. Imagine the eyes of so many people closing for the last time with a smile on their faces, glad that they have lived because maybe those people lived their mission and did it with all their passion, proud of what they accomplished. Or maybe those people were touched by the people who were living their mission and their lives were lifted up, encouraged, made better, brighter, happier in some way because somebody chose to take a chance and reach out and touch that person.

(22:03):

I am hoping with all my heart that you're inspired to tap into your own mission. We are gonna be talking about this going forward in this podcast. I talk about it in my emails. All of that together, I'm hoping will encourage you to, to take hold of what you know is in your heart and get out there and live it. I know that's not easy, that's why I wanna lay out the steps. That's why I wanna show you how I did this, where I'm going with this. I want you to discover how your voice, your hands, your love, could touch someone else in huge ways or behind the scenes kinds of ways depending on who you are running for office or planting beautiful gardens for others to enjoy. It's all mission and it's all so exciting. Remember, midlife is not a time to sit down and just stop living. The courage to get through the time for all this loss is found right there in your heart. It's yours alone, and it's something that you will love. Okay, my beautiful warriors. Let's connect and find your next great mission or download the ebook to pinpoint it on your own. Either way, please just do this,

(23:45):

Move yourself forward. Start building that bridge from where you are to where you wanna get to. And remember when you download the ebook, you will also get onto my mailing list where I take you step by step through finding a meaningful midlife to creating and actually implementing your mission. I will talk to you in the next podcast. So excited.