A new life at midlife (or, what the heck have we done…and why?!)
"I think midlife is when the universe gently places her hands upon your shoulders, pulls you close, and whispers in your ear: I'm not screwing around. It's time.”
Brené Brown
This is one of those quotes that hits me right in the heart AND in the brain. It’s right on the mark and demands action: It’s time. What are you going to do about it?
My husband and I decided to listen to those whispers and take a leap into the unknown. We’ve ripped the rug out from under ourselves, closed down our respective businesses we loved and nurtured for decades, and moved to France last month to start a new life.
There’s some history here - we’re not strangers to making big moves! We actually met in France over 30 years ago, got married in Paris, then moved to the UK. A few years later, we took a chance and moved to the US with 3 small children. That didn’t quite pan out and less than a year later, we moved to Ireland with 3 small children…and a new baby!
This time we settled in. Raised our kids, built our lives, grew our businesses.
Life moves on, and now our kids are now grown and have lives of their own. And here we are, right smack dab in the “messy middle” of life. When the life-lessons keep stacking up and those whispers just keep getting louder, reminding us that life is short and nothing is ever guaranteed.
Those whispers become a quiet-but-insistent inner voice asking - is this it? That voice calling you to keep moving, learning, exploring, growing. The voice that tells you: you’re not done yet.
So what are you going to do about it?
It can be tempting to ignore that voice and stay in your comfort zone. Changing a life that is comfortable and known is scary.
After hearing that voice for so long, we came to a crossroads. We had to decide which is more scary: taking a leap of faith, or always wondering “what if?” Play it safe, or run the risk of regretting that we didn’t at least try.
We knew we wanted a chance to (ironically both) slow things down a bit and challenge ourselves by trying something new. So we took the leap and here we are, in beautiful South West France, starting all over again…again!
And now we are doing a LOT of new things all at once. Which is definitely a challenge for our midlife brains - and a big part of why we are doing this, but more on that in another post!
I think it’s also important to say here that we know how fortunate we are to have been able to make this move. We are so grateful and it’s something we don’t take for granted.
And that’s the story so far!
Coming up next: how we’re adjusting to la vie Française, learning to be ok with the in-between stages of a big life change, house/business hunting in our rusty second language, and a deeper dive into what all of this has to do with ageing well and brain health!
With love,
Laura
P.S. I’m listening to and loving this podcast episode right now and wanted to share it with you. It’s all about brain health, living a full and fulfilling life, and so much more: