Midlife Emergence is a revelatory memoir and an inviting guidebook; it is a compassionate companion that belongs on the bedside table of every woman who finds herself burning to reclaim powerful parts of herself that social conditioning has locked away. Midlife doesnât need to be a crisis or an emergencyârather, itâs an emergence, an opportunity to make those beautiful, unexpressed facets shamelessly visible.
When psychotherapist and coach Jen Berlingo traversed her own midlife portal, she expanded into her queer identity, experimented with ethical non-monogamy, and reframed divorce as an expansive form of love. Through her midlife journey, she became a cartographer, pinpointing signposts so others would not have to walk this path alone. Alongside her story, Jen shares journaling prompts, art invitations, and rituals designed to support the woman in midlife in freeing her own inner fire.
Midlife Emergence is for the woman who secretly wonders âIs this all there is?â It validates the adult in untangling her inherent values from those culturally imposed. It emboldens the woman who has come of age under the patriarchy to finally claim her sovereignty. It empowers the recovering âgood girlâ to take courageous steps toward full integrity in the second half of life.
Midlife Emergence is a revelatory memoir and an inviting guidebook; it is a compassionate companion that belongs on the bedside table of every woman who finds herself burning to reclaim powerful parts of herself that social conditioning has locked away. Midlife doesnât need to be a crisis or an emergencyârather, itâs an emergence, an opportunity to make those beautiful, unexpressed facets shamelessly visible.
When psychotherapist and coach Jen Berlingo traversed her own midlife portal, she expanded into her queer identity, experimented with ethical non-monogamy, and reframed divorce as an expansive form of love. Through her midlife journey, she became a cartographer, pinpointing signposts so others would not have to walk this path alone. Alongside her story, Jen shares journaling prompts, art invitations, and rituals designed to support the woman in midlife in freeing her own inner fire.
Midlife Emergence is for the woman who secretly wonders âIs this all there is?â It validates the adult in untangling her inherent values from those culturally imposed. It emboldens the woman who has come of age under the patriarchy to finally claim her sovereignty. It empowers the recovering âgood girlâ to take courageous steps toward full integrity in the second half of life.
OCEAN
June 2017
It was in that summer of the nose piercing when the tremors of my midlife emergence made themselves emphatically known. One morning, after inching through the drop-off car lane at my daughterâs summer camp, instead of heading home, I found myself driving too fast through the redwood and eucalyptus trees along a snaky, densely fogged highway that connects San Mateo to Half Moon Bay. I always slept in as long as I could, so I did the weekday school and camp drop-off in my pajamas, grateful I did not have to leave the car. On this day, my hair and teeth were still unbrushed. I was braless, wearing a soft gray T-shirt and black sweatpants. As I drove that winding road, the gas pedal carved striped grooves on the ball of my foot and toes; I had left the house in such an emotional haze that morning that I had uncharacteristically forgotten to put on shoes. Though I didnât have a particular destination in mind, I felt like I was hypnotically being pulled toward the ocean. I needed to bring myself to the very edge of something grand.
I used my music playlist as an oracle that morning, clicking the shuffle setting and accepting the songs that came as perfectly timed messengers. The window was halfway down, so the wind whipping by my left ear necessitated turning the volume way up to hear Ani DiFranco sing âSo What?â Her song poured through my carâs speakers like medicine, not because it eased my pain, but because it so beautifully met it:
whoâs gonna give a shit
whoâs gonna take the call
when you find out that the road ahead
is painted on a wall
and youâre turned up to top volume
and youâre just sitting there in pause
with your feral little secret
scratching at you with its claws
The lyrics immediately penetrated my uneasy gut, moved up to my heart like a burning, then got stuck in my throat in a familiar lump. Tears welled up in my eyes, making it hard to see the road. I turned into a state beach parking lot to reorient, my car now facing the Pacific Ocean.
and youâre trying hard to figure out
just exactly how you feel
before you end up parked and sobbing
forehead on the steering wheel
who are you now
and who were you then
I stared blankly at the pale gray sky, the dark gray ocean, the flat gray sand. The green, magenta, and yellow portulaca growing between my car and the beach provided the only color. I let my tear-blurred vision find comfort there.
how many times undone
can one person be
as theyâre careening through the facade
of their favorite fantasy
you just close your eyes slowly
like youâre waiting for a kiss
and hope some lowly little power
will pull you out of this.
While sitting salt-water-face to salt-water-face with Momma Ocean, listening to Ani DiFranco croon about her feral little secret, I felt something hot start to crack my inner walls. For the past several months, I had become unbearably restless and inflamed, figuratively and literally, but I feared looking too deeply underneath because it might mean I would have to muster enough bravery to completely change my exquisitely beautiful life. A life where I was so very loved by people who felt like absolute home to meâmy husband and daughter. A life that felt as cozy and secure as a blanket fresh from the warm dryer. A life that I was terrified to lose.
In a prayer for courage, I breathed in the ocean air, trying to infuse my being with her powerful, feminine energy. I finally allowed silent sentences to escape the pit in my stomach and burn their way up through my heart and throat until I heard the words finally form in my mind. I whispered my secrets to the ocean because I knew she could hold them until I could set them all free. I confessed to her that it was time to bring forth my lifelong, unfulfilled desire to be in an intimate relationship with a woman.
What was more difficult to (un)swallow was that the particular woman occupying my heart at the time was Emily, my best friend. The friend who lived 1,300 miles away with her wife and their daughter, a family for whom I held deep respect. Emily was the friend who I texted first every morning, last at night, and at least twenty times in between every single day. The friend I studied with and graduate alongside from our masterâs program at Naropa. The friend I stayed with when I visited Colorado for our shared womenâs circle that summer. The friend who, one year prior, had slept peacefully through our night of glamping together while I lay awake tormented by a familiar inability to draw a line between friend love and romantic love.
I reached down to turn off the music once the song oracle had delivered its message. There was no turning away from truth now. Seismic waves undulated in my belly that day at the ocean. Magma explodes when it comes into contact with seawater. For what might have been three minutes or three hours, I sat in silence, staring at the sea, bracing for what would happen when I spoke out loud what I knew I needed to speak. Tear-soaked, dirtyhaired, wild-eyed, and more awake than I had ever felt, I backed my car out of the parking lot and started down the winding road toward home.
Just before I began reading this book, I remember having a nagging fear that it would be âjust another self-help book.â Since Iâm not a big fan of that genre, I hoped I would be able to give it a fair review. If I read it and really thought everything in it had been said before, would I be unnecessarily harsh?
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I was barely a few pages in when that concern evaporated into thin air. This book was clearly going to be intriguing at the very least. Several more pages in I was highlighting passages and reflecting on the themes in my own life.
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This book has heart. As much as it centers on romantic love, it portrays what it means to be fully alive in all areas. This is first made clear when the author relates an anecdote about seeing herself through the eyes of her young daughter. During a tickle fight, her six-year-old said, âMom, let your laugh out! You always seem like youâre holding back your true laugh.â This comes as a revelation and then makes perfect sense as she reflects on her lifelong tendency to brace and silence her true self.
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One aspect of the book that really impressed me was the authorâs ability to address topics about which one might be skeptical with an intelligence that convincingly cracks into the shell of skepticism. For example, the environment I live in has led me to generally eschew things like energy healing and astrology. I have wavered a little in the past, finding the chakra system fascinating. Berlingo furthered that fascination in her discussion of chakras.
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A month ago I would have insisted that I put no stock in astrology. Iâm still not a true convert, but this book taught me some fascinating concepts that I wonât be forgetting any time soon. It was eerie to learn that forty-two is a pivotal age in astrology. Spot on for me. And if the next âpotent astrological transitâ is age fifty-nine, well, thatâs a few years away and I suspect I might be gearing up for it now.
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And as for energy healing, I recently burned some bay leaves, something I had never thought of doing before.
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Berlingoâs writing is eloquent and captivating. In addition to sharing her own story and its full range of both painful and transcendent moments, she includes exercises at the end of each chapter, various creative ways to access that deeper self that might be longing to be revealed in each of us.
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I highly recommend this book to women in their mid-thirties and any age beyond that. We might not all have a journey as intense and life changing as the authorâs, but this kind of deep self-reflection is bound to bring a new self-awareness, and provide deep inspiration for courage and authenticity at this pivotal stage of life.
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I would like to thank Jen Berlingo and Bold Story Press for the opportunity to read and review this ARC.
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