Latest / Living Midlife In Color / What It Means to Live Midlife in Color: Maybe This IS Your Prime
Transcript
- Shar'da: Welcome to Live and Midlife in Color where Women Don't Fade Into the Background and the Code Never Switches. I am your host, Sardet. And before we get into the conversation today, can I just have a moment where I just zoom in and I appreciate how my hair turns out this time, y'all? I am feeling super moisturized and defined. Y'all see the dip. I'm sorry for y'all who are just listening and not watching, but I am just super defined. And for my natural hair girlies. Who are struggling to find hair products? Y'all feel me on this. Y'all know exactly what I'm going through. Let me say real quick though, this is not a promo or advertisement for any hair care products. This is not a hair care tutorial video. I am just so happy and thrilled. And this is because last week was an absolute disaster. Y'all, let me tell you real quick. I did my two strand twist out. I went and got my whole my new. product. I wanted to make sure I came at y'all looking right, correct. I used our product. Y'all let me tell y'all when I undid my hair to try to show up for y'all it was a hot, flaky mess. The product looked like I had a hair full of dandra. I'm untwisting and unraveling. White stuff is popping out look like lights jumping all over the freaking place. The shirt was white, for but you know what I'm like I gotta show up So I just tried to spray my hair down with water. rubbing in the best that I could and I decided I'ma be here for y'all I apologize. You know what? I'm all off topic. Let me go ahead and reel it back in because you today I want to talk about something that I have been trying to put into words for a while now. And it's because when we talk about midlife, especially for women, the conversation almost immediately turns into hormones. Perimenopause, menopause, the hot flashes, weight changes, sleep changes. I am not showing disrespect to none of those things because all those things matter. But I think something else happens in midlife that is harder to name. You start looking at your life completely different. Given that, yes, moving from middle to older adulthood appears to be a particularly vulnerable time for losing one's sense of purpose, but things you used to tolerate before start to bother you now. Things you thought you wanted start feeling less certain. You become more aware of time, more aware of yourself, more aware of the differences between the life you are expected to build and the life that you actually want for yourself. That is what I want to talk about today because for me, that Is part of what it means to live midlife in color. So today my confession is this: my midlife confession is I think that one of the reasons I was a lifelong student is because school always told me what came next. Y'all, I spent so much of my adult life in school. There was always another class, another certification, another paper, another exam, another goal, another this, another that. And there was something comforting to me about that. School gave me a roadmap. I wonder if you can relate. If I wanted to become a nurse practitioner, there was a process. I knew what classes I needed to take. I knew what clinical hours I needed. I knew I had to graduate, study for courts, pass the exam, and then go get license. Even when it was hard, I still knew what I was supposed to do next. I didn't have to figure anything out. Then eventually I stopped going to school. I graduated. Y'all graduated in 2024, and for the first time in a long time, there wasn't another degree waiting for me. There was not another syllabus. There wasn't another professor telling me what chapter to read next. And although I was supposed to be happy and celebrate this, I remember thinking, now what? What do I do next? That feeling surprised me because I had I realized I had become so used to having a clearly defined step that I wasn't completely sure what to do next when the step had to come from me. Starting the midlife method did not come with the syllabus. Starting this podcast you're listening to didn't come with Either. Entrepreneurship definitely didn't. But there are books, there are courses of people you can learn from, of course. Success does leave clues, but at some point you have to decide for yourself what exactly is worth building and what's going to waste your time and your money. You have to start trusting yourself enough to make a move without knowing it will work because it could fail. And I think that is when I started to understand that this was bigger than a career shift. What I was experiencing, what you are probably experiencing too, is an identity shift I learned that there is actual research around identity development in midlife. We tend to talk about identity as though it's something you figure out when you're young, and then that's it, you're done. But that's not how adulthood works. Research has described midlife as a period when identity can be reevaluated and reconstructed as our roles, relationships, binding, careers, and priorities change. And that makes sense to me because the woman that I was twenty at twenty-five is still a part of me, but she hasn't lived the life that I Lived yet. She didn't know what I know now. She hadn't experienced the disappointments, the accomplishments, the losses, the lessons, or the moments that eventually change how you see yourself. So, of course, I don't think exactly the same way she did, and I know you guys don't either. And you know, I think mid-life can be the point where you finally start separating what you truly want from what you were taught you were supposed to want. We're gonna have a different conversation today because women have been handed a pretty narrow script for such a long time, y'all. We're supposed to get married, have the kids, build a career, take care of everybody, stay attractive, stay cute, stay agreeable, stay useful. And somewhere in all of that, you're supposed to know exactly who you are and what you want to. Women's lines don't have to follow one script. Y'all know and one in five American adults aged 50 or older have never had kids. Among people in their 50s, their percentages higher. And when adults over 50 without children were asked about fulfillment, most of them said that whether someone has children had little to do with whether that person can have a fulfilling life. That matters to me because I once dated someone. Wait a minute, hold on. Let me slow it down because I'm about to tell a story and y'all, this I once dated a man. Who said out loud, mind you, while his mother was there too, said out loud that a woman's only purpose in life was to have children. And then once that period of time is over, Her purpose was essentially over too, and she then became useless. What a freaking idiot. I remember thinking, who decided that? Where is he getting that from? Motherhood could be a part of a woman's purpose. Marriage could be a part of it too, but neither has to represent the whole woman. A woman could be a mother and still need an identity outside of motherhood. She could be married and still want something that belongs only to her. She can never marry or never have children and still have a life that is full. meaningful and deeply connected. There isn't just one formula. Women weren't born just to have children. And then, you know, there's this whole conversation around age and attractiveness. I'm not trying to get into controversy, but some of you probably remember the controversy about about Donnie Lemon. He was discussing Nikki Haley. He made the comment that she was not in her prime. You know, everybody was upset. His co-host, of course, pushed back. And later he then said that the comments he made were in artful and irrelevant. Y'all, I'm not trying to turn this into who said what and why, but What interests me is why that phrase hits so hard. A woman being told she is past her prime. Because what does prime really even mean? We treat it like there's one universal window where a woman is at her best, and then after that, everything just starts to decline. But that doesn't make much sense when you really think about it because your reproductive prime is not necessarily your professional prime. Your physical prime may not be your intellectual prime. Your emotional prime may come much later than either one. As a matter of fact, your creative prime, speaking for myself, may not show up until you finally stop caring what everybody else thinks. And I think those comments start landing differently once you are no longer observing aging from a distance. When you are actually aging, once you're in it, you start to hear things like, she looks good for her age. And now you start to realize that you are approaching the age people are qualifying. You start to understand how much a woman's value has historically been attached to her youth and how she looked. And that settling down on that can be so uncomfortable. But I also think it could be a bit freeing because eventually the question becomes less about whether somebody else still finds you desirable and more about whether you actually desire the life you are living. We can start measuring that completely different. One of the statistics I found fascinating is that among the fastest growing new businesses in the United States, can you believe that the average founder was about 45 years old? 45! Not 21, 22, 16, 17, not where her ovaries are still in their prime, middle aged. That made me stop because we have this image of entrepreneurship as something young people do before they even know better. But experience, your experience, they count for something. Because there are things you couldn't have built at 25 because you hadn't lived long enough yet. You didn't have the professional experience. You didn't have the confidence. At that time, you hadn't made enough mistakes yet. You hadn't learned what wasn't worth your time. And now I find myself entering entrepreneurship at exactly the age when society sometimes starts talking about a woman as if we're supposed to be winding down. Meanwhile, where I'm starting things, we're starting things. That contrast really means something to me because this season of my life is teaching me something school could not. It's teaching me how to trust myself when there is no answer key. And I don't have a syllabus. There was another change I noticed about myself too, and maybe you have too, is that I can care less about what people think. And I don't, and I mean that in the healthiest possible way. I'm not trying to be toxic. I'm just saying I'm introverted. I'm not naturally somebody who wants people looking into my life. I didn't create my first Instagram, y'all, until like 2024. It's because I was trying to start a business. If you look at my actual personal Facebook page, not my business page, there is barely anything on there. I never really liked the idea of people watching what I was doing and forming opinions about it. And also I didn't want to spend too much time watching everybody else too because comparison is very easy and that can bec become depressing. You start to look at somebody else's life and suddenly start to question your own. So for a long time, I protected myself by staying quiet. And somewhere along the way, I realized I had given this imaginary audience way too much of my power. Most people are not studying your every move, girl. They have their own lives. And there is such a sense of relief in realizing that because I think a lot of us delay things while imagining what other people might say. I'm saying that from experience. Now I'm starting to understand that fear doesn't have to make every decision. I'm still a nervous person. I'm still introverted. I still think before I post things. But you know what the difference is now? Now when I'm 40 versus when I was 25, is I do them. I can care less. That's different. I'm different. I think that same shift shows up in other parts of women's lives too. Let's talk about these girls that's out here traveling by themselves. Solo travel has become increasingly popular. And one of the things women repeatedly describe enjoying about it is the freedom and flexibility. I understand that. I've traveled with groups, I traveled alone. But the deeper point isn't really about traveling alone, though. It's about not keeping your life on hold until someone else's schedule lines up with yours. You can cancel plans that way. You don't have to postpone something meaningful simply because someone else can't go. You can want companionship and still be willing to live in the meantime. This is why I've always understood some of Whoopi Goldberg's comments about enjoying her own space. People laugh. Y'all thought it was funny when she said she don't want nobody in her house. But there is something underneath that humor that I think was missed. Women are often expected to explain why independence is enough for them. We don't always ask whether the woman is actually happy being by herself. We just assume that if she's alone, something must be missing or something is wrong with her. And those are not the same thing. Loneliness and solitude are different experiences. Partnership can add something beautiful to a person's life. But it does not have to be the thing that finally makes your life legitimate. And I'm going off. Okay. And that brings me to something I've also really been thinking and pondering about lately. It's purpose. I've learned. That having a stronger sense of purpose in midlife is associated with better, later health outcomes. Setting goals and intentions for the future contributes to a sense of life that has meaning and purpose. I want to be careful about how I say that because it does not mean that finding your purpose is somehow going to guarantee good life and prosperity. But it's interesting that having something meaningful, pulling you forward, appears to matter. And while I was thinking about this, I I thought about mass lives, hierarchy. Your needs. Y'all remember is like a pyramid, and at the bottom of the pyramid are our most basic physiological needs: food, water, rest, then comes safety, then connection and belonging, and then esteem, which are things like your, you know, your confidence, accomplishments, and self-respect. But then at the top of the pyramid is what Maslow called self-actualization. Which very simply means that there is a desire to become more fully who you are capable of becoming. Now, real life doesn't happen in a perfect pyramid. We don't complete one level and graduate to the next, like school or like a video game. But I do think there is something interesting there because I spent a large portion of my time of my adulthood establishing that foundation. Foundation by way of my education, my career, my financial stability, I'm a home. Professional competence, all these things matter and they make me who I am today. But eventually, eventually, achievement by itself stops answering every question. There comes a point where another kind of hunger can show up. That hunger is meaning, that hunger is fulfillment, that hunger is authenticity, purpose. You can have the degree hanging from your wall and still wonder what you're supposed to do with everything that you've learned. All this time you're wasted in books. You can have a career and still feel pulled towards something else. There's you have another calling. You can have stability and still know there is another part of you that has not been explored yet. And maybe that is a part of what I'm experiencing now. Purpose doesn't have to mean changing the entire world. No, that's not what I mean. It could be something much closer to home. For me, maybe part of my purpose is this podcast. Maybe part is my midlife method community that I create. I don't know. I don't know exactly what either one of these will become. And that is uncomfortable for somebody who spent years loving a syllabus. And structure, but I know I wanted something that made women feel included in conversations where we are often missing. I wanted women to hear themselves somewhere, and even though I'm nervous about it, I just keep going. purposeful adults tend to have more supportive and less straining social relationships. A sense of purpose also appears promotive in healthier lifestyles, behaviors. This is our research I'm quoting now, y'all. Purposeful adults are less likely to develop sleep issues, become physically inactive or overweight. Research shows that sense of purpose appears associated with reduced negative effects and physical symptom reactivity to daily stressors. Let me pause there because. That's kind of deep, but it makes sense too, right? Have y'all heard of generativity? Generativity is something that helped me understand what I've also been feeling. So it's basically a concept in adult development that describes the desire to invest in something that extends beyond yourself. It could be children, but that's not everything, y'all. Legacy and children, somebody sharing your last name isn't all. It can be ideas, mentorship, community, teaching, creativity, or something you want to build. And when I thought about that, I thought, yes. That's part of it. At some point, I start to think differently about what I want to leave behind. part of that is because you guys know I don't have children, I have nephews. And one of the lessons that I've started teaching my oldest nephew is the difference between I'm just savings account and investing. And I'm telling him that because as he's starting to look for his first little job, y'all, he wants to work and get checks. He wants to get a check so he can buy like an e-bike. But I I asked him, I said, What are you gonna what else are you gonna do with your money? Are you gonna invest it? You know, just seeing checking the temperature, seeing where he's at. He's like, No, I probably won't invest, might save it. And so at that time, I thought that it was a good point in life to teach him the difference between What a savings account can do for you and what investing your money can do for you too. And I say that to say, legacy, like I mentioned before, isn't always about having your name on a building. It isn't always about having someone else to share your last name. It could be lessons that you live, it could be teachings that you live, it could be the way somebody remembers what you taught them. It could be a younger person making a different decision. Because of something you encouraged them to do. A community that you created. It could be something that you wrote. It could be a conversation that made someone feel less alone. Sometimes legacy is simply evidence that something good continued because you were here. And I think midlife can make you more conscious of these things. We hear a lot about midlife crisis. We joke about it in fact. And when we think about midlife crisis, we think about the man with the pop belly and the toupee who's buying the Corvette that got the pretty young thing in the passenger seat. But sometimes underneath the joke is something just a little more deeper. Like I was trying to say with the Whoopi Goldberg comment, people reach a point where they begin seriously evaluating whether their current life still fits. That does not automatically mean something is wrong, y'all. No, it doesn't. But sometimes it means you have lived long enough to know yourself a lot better. At 25, later feels infinite. At 40 or 50, later starts to have a little bit of an edge. And I don't I don't mean that in a depressing way. I actually think that awareness can clarify things. You begin to understand that you do not have unlimited drafts of this life. And suddenly the things you kept postponing start to matter a little differently. Okay, y'all, let's go ahead and change gears a bit. Let's let's get into Act Shar the NP. And remember, these questions could be personal, medical, or whatever you like. If you want your question answered, just leave your question in the comments and I might pick yours to answer next. So today's question is: Sharday, do you feel behind because you're not married and you don't have children? Well, dang. All right, well, the the answer is yes, sometimes. I'm not gonna pretend that I never wondered what my life will look like different if those things have happened for me. Sometimes I do think about marriage. I mean, I'm still alive, I'm not in the ground yet. I do wonder what motherhood would look felt like too. Now that that opportunity is is slowly shutting down. I do think about what Asia looks like without children. These things still come up, but Also, don't believe my life is incomplete while I wait to see if I get married or have children. I can still desire connection and still value independence. I can wonder about motherhood and still believe my life has purpose. I can occasionally feel lonely and still genuinely enjoy solitude. These things can exist together. I I think that's one of the things I understand better now. Than I did when I was younger at 25. Life does not have to fit into one clean category. Neither do I, neither do you. All right, final reflection: the biggest change in life isn't always physical. Maybe it's awareness. We are becoming more aware of time. You're more aware of the patterns in your own life. You're more aware of what actually matters to you. You're more aware of how much energy you have spent worrying about the opinions that never should have mattered in the first place and that have never should have controlled your decisions. And I think part of that is what is happening to me now. I don't feel like I'm becoming a completely different woman. I feel like I'm becoming more aware of the woman who was already there. I'm learning what still fits, what doesn't. I'm learning what I want to build. I'm learning to trust myself without a syllabus and a direction. I'm learning that the second half of life does not have to be a quieter version of myself, of my of the first. Maybe 45 is a pasture prime. Maybe this is the point where experience, confidence, perspective, and freedom finally start meeting each other. And maybe living midlife in color means giving yourself permission to find out what that looks like for you. you know, this is where the word color really started to make sense for me. For me, living midlife in color means five things connect, optimize, lift, own, and reset. Connect with women who understand this scene. season. Optimize the way you care for your health and your life. Lift your voice instead of fading into the background. Own who you are becoming even when she no longer fits the version of you other people are comfortable with. And reset whatever needs reset until the next chapter actually affects the woman you are now. Alright, that's it, y'all. If if this conversation resonated with you, like this episode and start following the Living in Midlife with Color because every week we're going to get a little bit deeper into what Living Midlife in Color actually means. Also, I want you in the conversation if there is something about midlife you've been thinking about, struggling with, wondering about, or just want my perspective on, leave your ex shar, the NP question in the comments below or send me a message. Your question could be whatever you want it to be. Nothing is off limits. It could be about life, health, whatever. Cause that is what this show is really about. Living midlife and color rule. Women don't fade into the background and the code never switches. Same woman, new chapter. I'll see you guys next week.