THE SECOND HALF IS NOT A CRISIS

Growth in the second half is not addition. It is everything you finally get to put down.

Hi dear one

I have never felt less like I’m winding down.

There is a post going around at the moment. The first half of life is about becoming whoever you had to become to survive. The second half is about unravelling everything that no longer fits who you actually are. Most people call that a midlife crisis. I think they have the name wrong. It is a rebirth.

This morning in Bali the air is already warm by six. The kind of heat that slows you down whether you want it or not. I sat drinking my warm lemon water and watched the light come up, and I thought about how much of my earlier life I spent moving fast. Moving countries, changing schools as a kid in Sweden, then changing them again. Raising children with very little money and a mind that never stopped counting what we might run out of. I built a self who could carry all of that. She was useful, she kept us fed and safe. And she carried a tiredness that lived underneath the sleep. I became her because I had to. She held the line, and I can put her down now.

The armor is not the enemy, she did her job. For a long stretch of my life I needed someone inside me who could brace for the worst, stretch a small amount of money across a long period, and keep going when going felt impossible. I dont resent her, I’m grateful for her. And I have slowly realised I don’t have to be her every single day anymore.

For years I thought growth meant adding. More skills, more discipline, more proof that I was keeping up with a world that kept speeding up and changing very fast. The second half is going into the oposite. Its subtraction. I keep taking things off and setting them down. Beliefs I absorbed from very young and from sometimes frightened young parents. The certainty that money could run out at any second, so I had to stay braced forever. Roles I agreed to before I understood I was agreeing to anything. Every time I put one of these down, I feel lighter and a little more like the person I was before the world told me who to be.

That’s the part that might looks like a crisis from the outside. When a woman in the second half of her life stops performing the version of herself that everyone got comfortable with, people might worry a little. They call it a phase. They ask if she is doing alright. She is more than alright. She’s finally putting down weight she was never meant to carry this far.

I notice it most clearly when I paint. I lose track of time completely. There is no one to be and nothing to prove. No survival to manage, no outcome to protect. Just color and movement and a peace I was far too busy to reach for most of my life. That peace was always in there. The armor simply kept it hidden, because armor doesn’t have much use for stillness.

The biggest thing I am setting down right now is the one I have carried the longest. For most of my adult life my job, amongst other things, was to make sure my children were ok. That’s what a mother does. You keep one ear open for them always, ready to step in and fix whatever has gone wrong, and it becomes so woven into who you that you stop noticing you are doing it. What moves me most is that the beautiful children I raised are the ones helping me put it down.

A few days ago, I asked my two adult kids a straight yes or no question. Am I free from fixing anything you have going on in your lives. They both said, YES completely. Then they added something I love. They know, without a doubt, that I’m there for them if they ever truly need me. They simply don’t need me to fix their problems anymore, unless they ask for help.

My husband asked me afterwards where I am on a scale from one to ten for actually not solving things for them. I said a strong five and laughed, because five is true and five is a start. The rest will come. They are grown, capable, wonderful young humans building their own lives. Raising them well and then trusting who they have become turns out to be the same act. Now I get to simply enjoy them. Two of my three live near us here in Bali, and for that I am so, so grateful.

The unraveling and undoing is not easy. I will not pretend it is. There is a strange middle section where the old life no longer fits and the new one has not arrived yet. Things you built your identity on stop making sense. Work you were proud of starts to feel not so important anymore. Friendships shift. You catch yourself grieving a version of your life that you had already outgrown. That middle can be uncomfortable, and the discomfort is not a sign that you are doing it wrong. The discomfort is the doing.

I keep coming back to a thought of compost. Everything breaking down in you right now is not waste. Its feeding what comes next. The old leaves have to fall and rot before the soil is rich enough to grow something new. We have been taught to fear the falling apart. I have come to see it as the most alive thing a person can do.

If you are younger and reading this, none of it is a warning. The first half is not wasted time. You need that survival self. You need to learn to stand on your own feet, to earn, to protect the people you love, to find out what you are made of and what your purpose in this life is. Build her well. Just hold her loosely and remember she is scaffolding, not the building. One day you will get to take the scaffolding down and see what you were constructing underneath the whole time.

And if you are somewhere in the middle of it right now, in that tender, disorienting in between. You are not falling apart, you are being remade. Everything you are letting go of is clearing the space for who you came here to be.

I am not afraid of this chapter. I am curious about the woman underneath all the things I used to be. She has been waiting a long time, and I have finally grown quiet enough to meet her.

Until next time, stay grateful and curious.

Light and joy,

Kim