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Courtney Townley 0:00
Welcome to the Grace and Grit Podcast made for women who want their healthiest years to be ahead of them, not behind them. Join your host Courtney Townley right now. As she breaks down the fairy tale health story, you have been chasing all of your life, indispensable action steps and lasting change.
Courtney Townley 0:28
Hello, my friends, and welcome to the Grace & Grit Podcast. This is your host, Courtney Townley. As always, I am beyond delighted that you decided to join me here today. And I hope all is going relatively well in your world, I hope it’s going really well. And I’ll tell you a little bit about what’s happening in my world, we are actually about two and a half weeks out from our first ever Grace & Grit retreat here in Northwest Montana. And this has been something that’s been on my heart quite literally for nearly 20 years.
Courtney Townley 0:59
So I remember 20 years ago, when I was on my honeymoon with my husband, we were in New Zealand in a kayak. And I remember having a conversation about wouldn’t it be great if we could create an experience where people could come out to a place like Montana, and decompress and connect with each other and get some great education inspiration around how to take better care of themselves, and sort of what the next steps for their life are and all of these things. And it took us a minute. But we finally created the experience. And I have to tell you putting this event together has been nothing but joy filled, it has been a year in the making. And we have 16 women from all over the US flying out to Missoula, Montana, where we will transport them to an incredible 2000 acre ranch that is wedged between mountains and the Blackfoot River.
Courtney Townley 2:06
We will spend four days together, connecting, sharing, being inspired, being educated, and really getting clear on where we currently are and where we want to be heading. So I really excited about this event. And obviously, I have to run this event before I decide to do it again. But if the experience of running the event is anything like the experience of putting it together has been, it is going to be magical. And I will absolutely do more in the future if that proves to be true. So if you are someone who is listening or watching this Podcast today, and you are interested in coming out to a place like Montana to have that kind of experience, I would highly encourage you to head on over to my website, graceandgrit.com/retreat, and just get your name on the waitlist. Because when we advertise the next retreat, you will be among the first to be notified.
Courtney Townley 3:16
And I will tell you this retreat, the one that we’re running first, we sold out in two and a half hours. So I started marketing, I didn’t even market it I sold out and I sent out an email to my private community in March of this year. And two and a half hours later, we had all the spots sold. So again, if I do run these in the future, if you want your best chance at reserving a spot, make sure your name is on the waitlist. All right. That’s what’s happening in my world right now. I just wanted to share that, and…
Courtney Townley 3:16
If you have been listening to this Podcast for a while, undoubtedly, you have heard me say at least once probably a million times that life is transformation. And it is so much more sensible for us to pursue and develop skill sets that help us to navigate the fact that life is transformation versus pursuing strategies and playbooks that only create a once in a lifetime transformation. And I don’t want you to hear that if you are someone who really wants to create a once in a lifetime transformation, great good for you go down that road. But just be aware that there’s more transformation coming because that’s what life is. And it’s always going to present you with a lot of opportunity to navigate your way through transition. Life is a series of transitions. And in no time in our life is that probably more true than at midlife, because at midlife in the realm of midlife, we are going through so much transition that might look like a career shift. It could look like changing jobs starting a passion project, starting your own business, it could look like retirement. But there is often some type of transition with our careers.
Courtney Townley 5:30
There is often transition at mid life with relationships that might look like the relationship with your spouse. It might look like the the relationship you have with your parents. It might look like people passing kids leaving the home, it can look like a lot of things. Transitions also show up in midlife in our living situations. So we are sometimes downsizing, we are sometimes building dream homes, we are sometimes moving across country, or to a foreign country. And even the living situation inside the home may shift. So you may go from being a partner in a relationship to living alone, or having kids in your home and now they have left the home and we have become sort of the proverbial empty nester. And then of course, there are transitions in our own biology at midlife, our hormones are shifting our you know our bodies are shifting. And sometimes we might even go through something like a diagnosis of some kind that may be a part of our transition. And these transitions at midlife really present. The midlife woman with the opportunity, a unique opportunity to engage in what you’ll often hear me refer to as the rumble. And the Rumble is really kind of that awkward dance between where we have been and what we have known into a space that is yet to be determined. And it’s riddled with a lot of complex emotion, there’s fear, there’s excitement, there’s anxiety, there’s worry, there’s all kinds of things that show up in the rumble. And helping women to navigate the rumble in a way that preserves their well being from cell to soul is really the heart of the work that I do with my clients. Because it is all too easy to generate a lot of unnecessary suffering in the midlife transitions.
Courtney Townley 8:04
So in today’s episode, I thought it might be helpful to share with you a few things that I have learned from working with so many midlife women over the years, who are in fact rumbling with these midlife transitions, and how to do it in a way that affords you a lot more ease and grace and a lot less unnecessary suffering. So I think it makes a whole lot of sense that we start by having a conversation around what midlife is, because this is a question that actually comes up a lot. I get emails, I have clients talking to me about it. People who listen to the Podcast will reach out and say, Okay, what are you actually calling midlife? Because I’m not in midlife. And yet your work is speaking to me. And I want you to know that I cast a very wide net over this term of midlife. So essentially, that net is spanning the space between young adulthood and old age. And I think Old age is something that we decide. We get to decide when we’re old. And some people decide to be old to step into old age at a very young age, in terms of actual numbers. I know 50 year olds, I know 30 year olds who have stepped into old age. So what do I mean by that?
Courtney Townley 9:55
I mean so old age to me is when we don’t When we talk about the future, we only talk about the past, we don’t really take new risks, we’re set in our ways, we no longer challenge ourselves. And we kind of start to fade out. So you can imagine trying to put a number on middle age is kind of tricky, because it really is up to you to decide where middle age is going to be for you. And my hope for you is that you decide to be in middle age. When you’re at when you’re 90, like, you can still be in middle age at that age.
Courtney Townley 10:41
My family and I have kind of a, a joke that we always toss around in our household, which is you’ve let the old man in or you’ve let the old woman in. And this comes from Toby Keith has a song called Don’t let the old man in. And I’ll just read you some of the lyrics from that song. It says don’t let the old man in, I want to leave this alone. Can’t leave it up to him, he’s knocking at my door. And I knew all my life that someday it would end. Get up and go outside, don’t let the old man in many moons I have lived my body’s weathered and worn. Ask yourself how you would be if you didn’t know the day that you were born. Try to love on your wife and stay close to your friends, toast each sundown with wine, don’t let the old man in. And that song has kind of again inspired this joke in my family where when one of us is not participating fully in our life, or we are being really kind of shut down about something, or we aren’t willing to take risks or be playful, or find the fun in something.
Courtney Townley 11:52
Our joke is you’ve let the old man in. And so I just want to invite you to consider that middle age is the age that you continue to not let the old woman in like and again, you know, some I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with old age there isn’t. But it’s an attitude, right? That’s what I’m really referring to here. That when we adopt the attitude of becoming an old woman, we do sort of behave in a way where we’re only past focused, and we aren’t taking risks anymore. And we are waiting for the end to arrive.
Courtney Townley 12:35
I heard an interview the other day on I think it was on Instagram, I just saw a clip and I did not catch the woman’s name. But I believe she’s a physician. She’s 102 years old 102. And she still has a 10 year plan. And I just thought what a great example of middle age, right? Like she’s still looking to the future. She still believes and is living as if there’s all this time ahead of her. So you call you define for yourself what you want middle age to mean. But like I said, I cast a very wide net over the term of middle age in terms of numerical age. So the space in between young adulthood. And Old age is going to offer you a lot of invitation, right. And some people refer to this invitation as a crisis. We’ve all heard the term midlife crisis, because there’s so much rumbling that happens. And often a lot of that rumbling is happening in high doses. So we’re having relationship challenges and career challenges. And we’re starting to deal with our body changing in ways that we don’t understand. And it’s all starting to stack on top of each other. And so a lot of people refer to that as midlife crisis.
Courtney Townley 14:04
And I really love Brene Brown’s perspective on this. She calls midlife more of an unraveling. In fact, if you go to her website and you look for the article, midlife unraveling, you will read all about her philosophy on this, but I’m just going to read you a snippet of that article. She says people may call what happens at midlife, a crisis, but it’s not. It’s an unraveling. It’s a time when you feel a desperate pole to live the life you want to live. Not one you’re supposed to live. The unraveling is a time when you are challenged by the universe to let go of who you are supposed to be and embrace who you are.
Courtney Townley 15:02
I kind of think about midlife, again as this really liminal space. And liminal space is really kind of it can be psychological, it can also be physical. So physical liminal space is like when you leave your room and you walk down the hallway to enter another room. The hallway is the liminal space, it’s just a transition space. And in a way, that’s how we can think of midlife aid as a giant transition space. from who we have been at young age, to who we will be in old age. And basically a space of how we have been living versus how we want to be living moving forward.
Courtney Townley 15:53
So where are you currently? And where would you like to be? The space between those two is liminal space, it’s a transition space, lots of rumbling happens there. And I’ve heard this referred to as the river of misery. Because it sometimes feels that way. Like being in that transition space, can feel incredibly uncomfortable. It doesn’t feel good. It’s messy, it’s uncertain. And it’s very humbling. And for all of those reasons, we often try to avoid it. So even though you’re in it, you’re not necessarily psychologically present in a way that is useful. And a great example of this is our insane to do lists, and our quest to always be busy and fill every moment of time with more to dues. It’s really hard to question how you want to show up in transition space, when you don’t even have time to acknowledge that you’re in it.
Courtney Townley 17:08
We also distract ourselves from transitions, especially transitions that feel hard, right, and we buffer. So we turn to alcohol, we turn to, you know, cigarettes, and smoking and Netflix and social media and complaining, and all these things that might temporarily make you feel better. But they don’t actually help you to transition in a powerful way into whatever’s next. Another thing that I see that we do to sort of avoid and distract ourselves from the discomfort of transition, is I see a lot of women paying the price of staying the same, even though it’s super uncomfortable for them. And they don’t want to be there, they want to change. But they don’t change, to make other people comfortable. They don’t want other people to have to rumble with their discomfort. And so they stay in a space of people pleasing. And the cost of that, of course, is that we make other people really comfortable. But we make ourselves wildly uncomfortable. We we behave in a way that makes other people like us. But we end up not liking ourselves.
Courtney Townley 18:35
We also start compromising the promises that we make to ourselves, like we have some inkling of what we really want. And we might even like make a plan for how we’re going to attain that. And then, when life gets a little complicated as it always does, we are the first things we remove from our to do list. We don’t treat our own desires with urgency. And that comes at a big price because it costs us our self trust, and ultimately our self confidence. So we start sinking at midlife rather than rising at midlife. And here to me is the most maddening part of all and you’ve heard me speak about this before if you’ve listened to this Podcast, that rather than doing the real work of what’s broken at midlife, rather than doing the real work that our transitions are inviting us to do. I see so many women hyper focusing on their body being the problem because that’s normalized in our culture. It’s socially acceptable to hyper focus on your bra, your body being problematic. But the truth is lose Losing 10 more pounds. Getting to your ideal body weight is not going to make you happier at work, it’s not going to fix your marriage or make you more clear on what you want your purpose to be moving forward, now that your kids are no longer at home.
Courtney Townley 20:16
So focusing on the body is the problem for a lot of women is honestly just an avoidance tactic for not facing the real work that midlife is inviting you to do. It’s a way of distracting ourselves. It’s way easier to focus on my body being the problem, then there not being any communication in my marriage. Right. So look, I full disclosure. I mean, I am 110% Human, I don’t have midlife all figured out, not by a longshot. But I have had the amazing privilege of walking alongside of hundreds of women who are rumbling in that in between space between where they have been in their youth, and where they are headed in their later years. And there are a few things that have become acutely clear to me that they can do to help make that journey more grace filled.
Courtney Townley 21:23
So when you start rumbling, with midlife transitions, and I’m assuming if you’re listening to this Podcast, you probably already are, you’re thick in the rumble. What however, those transitions are showing up for you because they’re a little different for all of us. But here are a few things you might want to consider. To help end any unnecessary struggling. First and foremost, how are you thinking about your midlife transitions? Whether it’s hormonal, or it’s relational? Or it’s something at work? How are you thinking about it? Are you thinking about it as a crisis, or as a canvas? A crisis. If you’re looking at it through the lens of a crisis, that means your problem focused. It’s a problem. And we marinate in the problem. But when I look at my transitions, as a canvas, I become solution oriented. I’m looking at it at now as an opportunity to reshape and really reconsider how I want to be showing up here. So I have a client that I was speaking to recently who is becoming an empty nester. Her kids are leaving the home. And she has really been wrestling this year with this whole notion of what is my purpose? What is my purpose? What am I going to do now that my kids are gone? I don’t have a purpose. This is her language, not mine. And one of the things we have really kind of done a deep dive into is the idea that you don’t need to wait for your purpose to find you. Decide what you want your purpose to be. Be willing to experiment with a lot of different things to see what lights you up. Don’t wait for it to be delivered to your front door because that day may never come decide where you want to put your time energy and focus now that it’s not this that is an example of looking at a midlife transition as a canvas and not a crisis.
Courtney Townley 23:53
Another thing that I a common thread that I find a lot is that it is very helpful to travel with more grace through midlife transitions when you self coach rather than self deprecate. Because rumbling is really uncomfortable, without self self deprecating. Because again, we don’t know how it’s gonna turn out. We feel a little lost in the wilderness. We don’t have all the answers. We’re mourning losses. We’re mourning the ending of things. And when you say things to yourself, like I’m not capable, I’m too old. It’s too late. I’ve never been any good at anything. My body sucks. That’s unnecessary suffering. That’s like watching your kid at a soccer game. And rather than cheering them on, when they’re having a hard time, you know, they haven’t been playing well. And you can see on their face the disappointment rather than giving them words of encouragement, would you ever yell? Like what a loser they are that they should leave the field that they should stop trying? Of course you wouldn’t. So why would you do that to yourself? And man, do I bump up against this a lot, where women are self deprecating rather than self coaching in the thick of midlife transitions, that is not useful.
Courtney Townley 25:34
Another thing I want to offer you is that there are a lot of endings in life. There are endings of relationships, there are endings of passions and pursuits there are endings of careers, there are endings of all kinds of things. And when we make endings mean that we have failed, man, does that hurt. And not only do we make it mean, we failed, but then we roll into the self deprecating, so it becomes this very slippery slope into a lot of suffering. So what would it look like for you when something ends to redefine it as a completion, rather than as a failure? This thing is just now complete. It doesn’t have to mean that you have failed. I think of clients that have injury like really significant injury, their bodies, they’ve had surgeries, things where they can no longer participate in a sport in the way that they once did. And there is a grief that goes with that for sure. I encourage them to move through their grief to feel it to experience it to mourn it. Because completions can bring up emotion. But when we look at that I have failed when we define it as a failure. Either I have failed or my body has failed. How does that help you to move forward? How does that help you to suffer less? It doesn’t. It makes you feel like you’re sinking in quicksand.
Courtney Townley 27:28
Another thing I would offer to help you move through midlife transitions is and I say this I’ve used I have shared this in other podcasts. But even if your scenarios rather than what if them? I use this all the time in coaching, where I will hear a client what if in herself to death? What if I go on a date and they don’t like me? What if I go to the interview and I don’t get the job? What if I put in all this effort around taking better care of myself and I don’t lose weight? And what a thing is like asking this wide open ended question to something outside of yourself, like who’s going to answer that question for you? Nobody? What if that just makes you worry, it just fills you with anxiety. It’s not actually filling you with confidence and sort of a can do attitude. It doesn’t encourage you to show up it makes you want to retreat because you don’t know. So, don’t want if yourself, even if yourself even if I go on this date. And I don’t like the guy. Even if I go to this job interview and I don’t get it. Even if I put all this effort in to take better care of myself and I don’t lose a pound. Finish those statements.
Courtney Townley 28:57
Complete the statement of even if because what you will show yourself is that you have an answer. Even if I don’t even lose a pound, I will still be proud of myself that I am showing up in a way that helps me function better. Even if he doesn’t like me. So what there’s a lot of fish in the sea. That self coaching. I would also encourage you to expose your truth rather than hide it. And what I mean by this really is asked for help bring other people into the fold of your rumble. So you’re not rumbling alone. I was having a conversation the other day with this brilliant coach. And I didn’t know her. I had just met her for the first time we were having a zoom call and And we were kind of working on some ideas for a project. And clearly, she’s incredibly skilled. Clearly, she has immense experience, and she is very good at what she does. In fact,
Courtney Townley 30:14
I think she probably has more experience than I do. Email. I mean, it was just so clear that she has been in this for a very long time. And what struck me halfway through the conversation, is she said, you know, look, Courtney, I’ve been doing one to ones forever, like one to one coaching, but I’ve never coached in a group. Can you help me with that? How do I do that with more ease and grace? And in that moment, I was like, wow, I have so much respect for you right now. Because you have so much skill, so much experience, so much reason to be confident, which is incredible, and you are simultaneously asking for help. So she can avoid unnecessary rumble in a space that she’s not as familiar with. That is how we transition with more ease and grace, we ask for help. Help might look like therapy, it might look like coaching, it might look like making a phone call to a friend. It might look like telling your spouse or your partner or somebody you work with that you are rumbling. But when we hide from other people, and we don’t expose our truth, that is a heavy burden to bear. Because people can’t help you when they don’t know that you’re rambling.
Courtney Townley 31:46
And ladies, we are really awesome at masking our rumbles, putting on the smile walking out the front door acting as if everything is okay, when it’s really not. And that doesn’t solve problems that doesn’t make the rumble go away. It makes it lonely and it makes it brutal. The final thing I want to share with you today to help with these midlife transitions is to lean in not out lean into the truth of your life, rather than trying to escape it. So what I mean by that is be honest, that you are indeed rumbling. There’s nothing wrong with the rumble. I always say to my clients, you cannot rise without the rumble. There would be no need to rise if you never rumbled. Rumbling makes us more fortified. It makes us stronger. It makes us more resilient. It makes us smarter, wiser. You wouldn’t want to avoid rumbling, even if you could. But when it comes for you, and it will, and it does, and sometimes it comes in massive amounts. Be honest that you are in the rumble. Be honest about how you are making it harder than it needs to be. Face your misalignments face the things that you can take responsibility for. That are making the rumble harder than it needs to be. Feel your feelings. I always say emotions are signs of aliveness. And if we are always trying to avoid them, we never feel truly alive. And furthermore, your emotions have so many messages for you. They aren’t something to be feared and shut out. They are something to be invited in. So you can learn from them. I always say that ignoring your emotional messages is a lot like having a map to your life that you refuse to look at. So you’re carrying it in your backpack. But you just keep wandering through the woods totally lost but refuse to open your map. Your emotions have Intel for you. We’ve all had that experience right of being in the car with someone who’s clearly lost, but they refuse to ask for directions or they refuse to look at a map or ask for help. And then it just becomes this really stressful and time wasted experience. Stop doing that. Listen to your emotions and vitamin even though the ones that you really avoid. Right the ones that that don’t feel so good. Invite him in. What do they want you to know? Lean in, not out.
Courtney Townley 34:52
Okay, quick recap of what we’ve covered here. So to help you travel with a little more ease and grace through the midlife Transitions are through the midlife rumble. Here’s a few things. Look at it as a canvas not a crisis. Where’s the opportunity here? It is an opportunity to self coach rather than self deprecate. Look at endings as completions, not failures. Things are simply complete. Even if the sticky situations don’t What if them? Stop asking what if questions, start even effing and notice the confidence shift. Explore expose your truth to other people rather than hiding it. So you can get support, so you can get help. So you can move to where you want to be faster, and lean in to your truth, rather than leaning out. And I mean, being honest with yourself radically honest and start to invite all your emotions to the table so you can learn from them. And please, above all my friends know that I am rumbling right alongside you. Have a great day and I’ll see you again next week. Or in two weeks, excuse me, because we’re doing this bi weekly now. All right, I’ll talk to you soon. Take care.
Courtney Townley 36:26
Thank you for listening to the Grace and Grit Podcast. It is time to mend the fabric of the female health story. And it starts with you taking radical responsibility for your own self care. You are worth the effort and with a little grace and grit anything is possible.
