WAY past midlife - and definitely going strong!

At 65, midlife is no longer the turning point, and there's still LOTS to learn.

It struck me the other day. Women who feel past midlife don’t have many places to turn to find likeminded women. The amount of women who are eager to start businesses, movements and communities is decreasing. Our sisterhood is shrinking, and we are trying to relate to women 10 - 15 - 20 years younger than ourselves. They have a different agenda.

No wonder this can feel alienating. The women speaking about this new cycle are often in their early 50s. And while I think they are wise and have important things to say, the distance between early 50s and mid-60s is real. It shapes how life feels, what matters, and how we make sense of this stage.

We don’t speak, feel or think like them - and many of us don’t even act like them. So now what?

For one thing, we need a language for what is actually happening to us.

Many women in this part of life feel the same way as me; that something is shifting significantly. But when we hear women in midlife speak about that shift, it often feels like they we already lived much of it, and we need something else. A new language for how we feel and think.

In Human Design, we have cycles that describe the transitions we move through in life, through our 40s, 50s and beyond. In midlife, the cycle connected to our 50s, Chiron, is often seen as the most profound one, and the theory is that it does not simply pass and end. We keep it as a layer on top of our natal design. We speak about wisdom, healing, maturation and legacy. I get that.

Personally, though, when I read my Chiron chart, I can see that I lived so much of it without even knowing what Human Design was. That is what fascinates me. I can see how life added an important layer to me before I had any language for it. From the age of 49 until now, at 65, I have lived my Chiron deeply and learned so much through it. The strangest and most amazing part is, looking back I can clearly see that the shift really did happen when that cycle began.

Now, though, I need more. I want to learn something else. I have felt the new shift for a few years, and I want to understand the possibilities that lie in this cycle: my 60s. The transition has already happened, and I am more than ready to meet it consciously.

Why am I so eager to do that?

Nothing else quite captures the reality of being a woman who has already been through the fire, who has already carried her share, and who is now somehow expected to step down, pull back and retire. The truth is, I never thought that way when I was 50. Back then, I felt ready to begin again. I felt young, strong, adventurous and free. I quit my corporate job, purchased a one-way-ticket to the US, bought a car and drove out into the desert alone for three months. After that, I went to Encinitas and started my business, “Coffee&Coaching on The Beach”. I wasn’t thinking too much about the future.

That feeling of freedom is what still feels so alive to me now. I can feel a strong pulse of life, work, meaning and voice moving through me. This is not just an interesting framework to think about. For many women, it describes something they have been carrying, questioning and trying to understand for a very long time.

As I am studying Human Design, Chiron is interesting, but what really lights a fire in me at this stage in life is Second Saturn Return.

And just to be clear, I do understand that Chiron is something we live with for the rest of our lives. However, the lessons do not keep repeating once they are truly learned and the high vibe has been integrated. Chiron, in that sense, becomes the living of those lessons from there on. I’ve worked with many coaches who love to point at the shadow traits. I strongly believe in developing the strengths - and for that we do need the challenges. But not to dwell by, but to utilize the strengths and understand them.

So now, with the wisdom, the memory and the insight from Chiron already in the body, it is time for us “Second Saturn Returners” to take it further.

We can hold onto midlife, or we can accept the evolution into elderhood. And I want to rescue that word, because elderhood has been flattened into something far too passive. This is where Second Saturn Return becomes so interesting to me. We are not stepping back, becoming quieter, making peace with less, and gracefully accepting the edges of life.

That is not how this feels to me at all. It feels like a rise in voice, authority, clarity and relevance.

When I turned 60, the feeling of what matters and what doesn’t became so much stronger. I could feel a new voice ringing through. An urge to stop trying to be smart, if that makes sense. There was a new kind of drive pushing from the inside out, a need to come out and say it as I see it. A feeling that if anybody called me opinionated or too much, I would only see it as a compliment, not critique.

And that voice? It is female, strong, bold, and carries authority because the authenticity and integrity it springs from is no longer hidden behind the need to be polite or please anyone. There is substance behind what we say, and we are not here to play small any longer.

We ARE the Voices of A New Era.

So much of the language around age gets this wrong. The narrative says a woman’s power peaks earlier, and that later life is mainly about reflection and retreat. I don’t buy that for a second.

What I see are women who are no longer interested in spending precious energy on politeness when what they really want is integrity. I see older women whose voices carry more weight and sound louder than ever, even when they whisper, because life has tested them, stretched them, corrected them and taught them.

If you feel the same way, you already have a whole body of text inside you, ready to be sharpened into the important message you are longing to speak out loud.

Experience and authority do not sound the same as a voice still trying to prove itself. They have more depth and more edge. By 60, many of us are far less interested in pleasing just to make it easier for everyone else to hear what we have to say. We’re done being vanilla. We’re ready to be valued!

This is what lights me up about Second Saturn Return.
This is why I say we are The Voices of A New Era.

We are clear. Our voices have substance, range and authority.
And the world needs us!