1) Midlife: A Time of Growth and Change

One cannot live the afternoon of one's life in the way of the morning. Jung

Who looks outside dreams, who looks inside awakens. Jung

All true things must change and only that which changes remains true. Jung

2) Midlife Symptoms: A Call to Wake-up

Midway this way of life we're bound upon I woke to find myself in a dark wood Where the right road was wholly lost and gone. Dante

Crack: Who I now feel I am and who I have appeared to be in my own eyes and in the eyes of others in the past.

When a person measures his/her life in years until death not years from birth.

Leave nothing for death to take, nothing but a few bones. Kazantzakis

3) Midlife as an Inner Journey

No one knows where the journey takes us.
But to know to accept responsibility for ourselves.
The path others take is not necessarily for us.
What we ultimately seek lies within, not out there.

4) Pushing Life Away at Midlife

Why can't I show up for the Great Gift of life?
What is it I'm currently longing for in my life?
What part of myself is wanting to come home?

I cannot believe how much of my creativity I have used to push life away.

5) Midlife and Passion

We need to find that which draws us deeply into life and our own nature that it hurts, for that experience transforms us.

Life without passion is life without depth.

6) To Become Fully Human at Midlife

The goal of the middle years is not only to resolve childhood problems or relieve private torment. We are called upon to break traditional rules and embrace the whole of human life, light and dark, masculine and feminine.

We have our journey for sure and that is large enough to take us beyond our personal history toward our full potential. Jung

7) Learning from MiddleTales

When middle tales are place side by side, striking cross-cultural parallels appear. These common themes reflect the archetypal tasks of midlife.

I want dominates youth, when I must governs maturity. Jung

Let us take care of the children for they have a long way to go.
Let us take care of the elders for they have come a long, long way.
Let us take care of those in between for they are doing the work. Nelson Mandela

8) Midlife and Transformation

There is a pain from the split between our inner sense of self and the acquired personality and what we are, what we are meant to be.

Forced to face the corpses in our lives, the ways we are not ourselves.

No sooner do we think we have assembled a comfortable life then we find a piece of ourselves that has no place to fit in. Gail Sheehy

9) Confronting the Shadow at Midlife

The shadow returns at midlife and calls for attention. The shadow is what we are sure we're not. What we do not know. Do not want to know. Cannot bear to know.

Perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that want help from us. Rilke

10) Coming into our Gifts and Talents at Midlife

It is never too late to be what you might have been. George Eliot

Let the beauty of what you love be what you do. Rumi

What is it, you want to do with the one wild precious thing called your life? Mary Oliver

11) Midlife and Balance

No matter what the starting point the individual comes to terms with power and intimacy, confronting whatever half they neglected in youth.

12) Midlife and Relationships

The truth is one never can be any better then our relationship with ourselves.

How we are related to ourselves determines not only our choice of others, but the quality of our relationships.

13) Midlife and Dreams

Dreams are the quickest way to our inner world.

Our dreams can often tell us what and where a problem is long before a doctor can diagnose.

Sleep bring body into balance. Dreams bring psyche into balance. Marion Woodman

14) Midlife and Spirituality

We count for something only because of the essential we embody and if we do not embody that, life is wasted. Are we related to something infinite or not? Jung

15) The Soul at Midlife

There is a gift of soul at midlife
One cannot specify what it will be, but presented it must be received. Taken in it is a hallmark of life, a core of our uniqueness. Refused it will haunt our days.

16) Legacy at Midlife

Part of the legacy of what we leave to our children is what we did nor did not work out for ourselves.

The greatest burden on a child is the unlived life of the parent. Jung

17) Wisdom at Midlife

Seizing permission to live one's reality is the essence of midlife.
One is mortal, time is limited.
No one will deliver us from the burden of responsibility for our lives.

Those that thought they should have, could have, suffer the most.

18) The Goal of Midlife

We shall not cease from exploration
And at the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time
T.S. Eliot

I am luminous with age. Meridel LeSueur