Becoming your essential self

One of the things you may discover in midlife is that you’ve spent a lot of time becoming someone you think you should be, rather than becoming your essential self. This journey isn’t unique to you or even unique to our time. Indeed, it’s part of a normal developmental cycle of redefining ourselves and finding meaning in our lives.

Recently, this was impressed on me again. Yesterday, my husband and I arrived home from the cabin, tumbling out of the pickup to pick up our mail, greet the kitty, and put away our bags from the weekend. Two packages were on the doorstep, including one from Wolfgang’s cousin in Michigan.

The package contained photos, as well as a news clipping and a speech titled “Opening the Door to You,” written by his grandmother for a gathering of Presbyterian women.

As I scanned the speech, one line stopped me, capturing my attention.

“As women, our lives are pre-empted”

“And so, the significant you — the essential you — this all important heart-of-your-being is neglected in the melee of daily survival, perhaps never to located and nurtured,” his grandmother wrote.

These lines hooked me, echoing my own writings these past two years. Granny Jean spoke to this group of women about the importance of discovering your essential self amongst the many roles women hold in life, from infancy through childhood, and into adulthood.

At age 65 and in the early 1980s, she too felt a sense of having been “other-directed” through societal norms for women. She spoke of the many talents and skills women use to hold together their homes, families, personal environments and professional or non-professional careers.

She urged “open the door to you”

And she encouraged women to continually grow and change, to “open your thoughts to pathways which will lead to opening doors to you.” I met Granny Jean a few short months before this speech was written.

I knew her as a strong, elegant, capable, cultured woman. She was an educator and well-traveled. She and Grandpa Bob lived in a college town, were active in the community, and mentored university students from many different cultures.

At the time she wrote her speech, she was slightly older than I am now. And although I wasn’t privy to it at the time, her journey included the process of opening the door to herself — and encouraging other women in her community to do the same.

Finding our authentic selves is an essential stage

Gail Sheehy, best-selling author of Passages, The Silent Passage, and New Passages, described a “massive shift” from survival to mastery in the passage from First Adulthood into Second Adulthood, typically in your 40s or 50s. She said, “In young adulthood we survive by figuring out how best to please or perform for the powerful ones who will protect and reward us: parents, teachers, lovers, mates, bosses, mentors. It is all about proving ourselves.

“The transformation of middle life is to move into a more stable psychological state of mastery, where we control much of what happens in our life and can often act on the world, rather than habitually react to whatever the world throws at us.”

The push for authenticity

One of the most important steps in mastering our lives as we move into this middle adulthood stage is closing the gap between our “real selves” and a false self built on expectations. Sheehy described it as a push for authenticity characterized by a sense of being your own person.

According to Sheehy, this transition requires the “little death” of first adulthood. This can be a confusing transitional period as we’re becoming uncomfortable with the striving and performing that have worked for us in the past.

Often, as we enter this stage, we come to grips with no longer knowing who we are in life. We’re torn between multiple priorities and consumed with trying to juggle multiple roles.

We search for meaning.

The secret is to find and pursue your passion

Sheehy says that a successful Second Adulthood is about finding “a new value in life,” a passion. She recommends a simple “Time Flies Test” to discover what you love so much that time passes without you realizing it.

You may find clues in early childhood dreams, back when you were passionate about an activity or pursuit. Or, perhaps, you’ve felt a call toward something for some time, but not given it the credit it deserves.

Becoming your essential self is purposeful work

Moving from a state of living up to others’ expectations to finding your own unique journey takes energy and effort. Granny Jean said in her speech that “opening the door to you” requires exploring three sides: physical (our bodies), intellectual (our minds) and spiritual. Above all, we must give ourselves permission to grow and assume responsibility for our own being.

And part of taking responsibility for ourselves is taking care of our bodies and feeding our minds. We must open doors by seeking out wisdom — in books, music, study, travel and diverse community. And we must learn from nature, explore the relationship of all living things and find joy and wonder in being alive.

Experiment with your life

Yes, take risks. Try new things.

Sheehy’s research showed that the people who were most risk averse were not the old, but those in the middle. Men and women in their forties. Her theory was that people in their forties have not yet faced mortality — and so it seems closer, scarier.

As you gain mastery in what she calls Middle Adulthood, Sheehy says that you begin to approach mortality more as a negotiation. What changes are you willing to make to invest in your health and well-being? Are you ready to stop destructive defense mechanisms, such as numbing or avoiding with any number of habits?

And what is the payoff of becoming essential you?

The world needs what you have to give. It needs what only you can offer. Granny Jean said it so well.

“Yet, how important it is to your world — and to all of the universe that you find this essential you; because of all your skills, that which you do the best, what no one else can ever do, is be you.”

Elizabeth C. Junge, Excerpt from a speech given to the United Presbyterian Women, Corvallis, Oregon, February 17, 1982

Anything less is second best

She went on to say, “Whatever else you do is second best. Your wonderful, exciting, unique self, the only one in existence throughout all of the history of creation — the result of the selective compilation of genes from all of your ancestors since time began — You. There never was, there never will be an exact carbon copy, a duplication, a clone, of you.”

As I finish typing, I look up at a picture of Granny Jean with Grandpa Bob. Somehow I think she’s smiling down at me now, watching me catch on here. I’m not there yet, but I think I’m becoming Essentially Elaine.

Join me?

Other resources:

• Are you having a midlife crisis?
• A midlife manifesto
• When does middle age begin?