I was texting with my friend recently about something happening in her family when a thought came through me so clearly. I believe in past lives. I’ve actually remembered some of mine. And I suddenly thought, no wonder I’ve accumulated so much karmic trash to clean up. For much of human history, life was shorter and harder. Maybe I kept getting just old enough to accumulate some wisdom, but didn’t live long enough to do anything with it. Stay with me, because whether you believe in past lives or not isn’t really the point. The thought opened up something much bigger for me about midlife and why so many of us seem to arrive here with so much stuff asking to be looked at. Because there’s something we have now that we simply didn’t have when we were younger: experience, wisdom, discernment and access. Think about the world most of us midlifers grew up in. There was no internet. There were no podcasts or social media. There wasn’t a coaching industry, so I couldn’t have aspired to be the coach and guide I am now. There weren’t thousands of books, programs, methodologies, communities, therapists, teachers and guides available from a little device we carry around in our hands. We were adults when email became mainstream. We were adults when mobile phones became mainstream. Hell, we were adults when “the cloud” became a thing. Our worlds were smaller, and so were our resources. If you were struggling with something, you might have had a religious leader, a business mentor, an older family member or maybe a really wise friend. And some of those people were wonderful guides. Some of them were carrying around just as much unhealed shit as we were. Younger generations have access to language, tools and support for understanding themselves that we couldn’t have imagined at their age. And I’m incredibly grateful that they do. I watch younger people recognize family patterns, talk about nervous system regulation, question expectations, establish boundaries, go to therapy, explore who they are and reconsider what they’ve been taught at ages when many of us were still doing exactly what we thought we were supposed to do. We worked hard. Got married. Raised the kids. Built the career. Took care of everyone. Tried to be responsible, successful and good.

When I lived in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, my apartment was on the fourth floor of a small building. Each floor had one apartment. The others were one-bedrooms, but mine was a studio with a large, plant-filled patio. When I was looking at apartments, the one directly below mine was also available. It probably would have been the more practical choice. One less flight of stairs. A separate bedroom. But I fell in love with that patio. The only problem was those damn stairs. They were outdoor tile-covered stairs, and the first time I climbed them I thought I was going to die. It was the middle of the afternoon in September in Playa del Carmen, which meant it was swampy. By the time we got to the top, I was so hot and winded that the landlady went to the store and bought me a cold mineral water while we waited to hear from her daughter about whether they would accept the price I’d offered. They did. So I got my plant-filled fourth-floor patio and the apartment for the price I wanted. And I got the stairs. When I moved in, the rental agent carried my large suitcase up while I took the smaller suitcase and my backpack. I was going to be there for just shy of six months, so I figured eventually I’d get used to them. The first few weeks were brutal. I’d found a coworking space I loved and usually went about four days a week. On the monthly plan I got my own key code, so I started going early to get a good seat. Or, more accurately, “my” seat. 😂 I’d leave around 6:30 am and usually come home around 2:30 or 3:00 pm. On the way home, I’d frequently stop to eat or pick up groceries. Sometimes I saved the groceries for the weekend because after walking home in the heat, I knew exactly what was still waiting for me. Those damn stairs. I didn’t have a washer or dryer, so I took my laundry to the lavandería. They had a minimum price, which meant I usually waited until almost all of my clothes needed cleaning before I took them in. I had a backpack to carry the laundry. There were days I’d leave the coworking space with my computer and everything else in my backpack, stop to pick up my clean laundry on the way home, and then climb those four flights with two packs on my back.

I woke up this morning feeling like I could finally exhale. Not because everything is suddenly different. Not because I woke up on the other side of last night’s lunar eclipse with my new life neatly assembled and waiting for me. But because something feels like it’s moved past the peak. For weeks, I’ve felt an enormous amount of pressure building. My personal astrological placements added laser-like intensity to the energy, focusing it directly on my identity, career, home and some of my deepest wounds. At times, it’s felt unbearable. And the image that keeps coming to me is birth. The baby has been birthed. The body is exhausted. The hormones haven’t magically regulated themselves. There will be adjustments and healing and learning how to care for this new life that has just arrived. This new version of myself needs to be fed and nurtured and loved and gently held. This eclipse season began with the total solar eclipse on August 12 and culminated with the lunar eclipse last night. On the day of the solar eclipse, I experienced a breakthrough that released something I’d been holding my whole life. And in the two weeks since, it has felt as though everything that breakthrough disturbed, revealed or loosened had to move through the birth canal. There was no rushing, pushing it down or avoiding it. No spiritual bypass. And there sure as hell wasn’t any room to bring all my old baggage through with me. I’ve thought a lot during this eclipse season about the eye of the needle. About what can actually fit through that tiny opening and what simply can’t. For me, that has meant looking at some very old ways of living and being. Tethers I didn’t even realize were there began releasing. Things like managing other people’s emotions, editing myself to maintain connection, feeling responsible for things that were never mine to carry. Being the strong one. The fixer. The one who can handle it. Believing love requires some degree of self-abandonment. Believing struggle is simply the price of admission.

We’re in the middle of a powerful eclipse season right now, and I’m experiencing its energy in real time. Eclipses have a way of changing the landscape. Because of some of my astrological placements, these two in particular are hitting me hard, revealing things and closing things out. They’re bringing me face-to-face with what no longer belongs where I’m going, even before I have any idea what’s supposed to replace it. And it’s left me in a really strange place. It’s like standing somewhere I’ve never been before, holding a map that used to help me navigate my life, and realizing the roads on the map don’t match the roads in front of me anymore. Over the last several weeks, I’ve gone through a pretty significant internal shift around my relationship with my mom and the way I had oriented parts of my life around her approval, love, pride, and acceptance. It’s important for me to say that I didn’t spend my life without an internal compass. Quite the opposite. I’ve trusted my intuition for a long time. I’ve followed nudges that made absolutely no logical sense to those around me. I’ve listened to Source. I’ve made unconventional choices because something inside me told me they were right for me. My sense of self wasn’t missing. But I’m recognizing that even with a strong internal compass, I can still have old coordinates on the map. My mom was one of mine. Somewhere underneath the choices I was making for myself was still an awareness of her. The child in me was still asking, “Would she be proud of me? Would she approve? Would this somehow finally change the way she saw me? Would I eventually accomplish enough, become successful enough, or create a life impressive enough that I would receive something from her I’d wanted for most of my life?” She wasn’t steering the ship. Yet she was still on the map. And when I finally released that, something much bigger shifted than I expected. The compass didn’t disappear. The map did. I think that’s part of why I’ve felt so strange lately. I’ve described it as spaciousness. Emptiness. Untetheredness. Sometimes even dullness.