I have been wanting to write about this for ages, but I felt I had no place in doing that because I hadn’t worked it out for myself yet…

To be honest with you, I still haven’t, not completely.

My version of this story starts, I suppose, much like most people’s. Possibly even yours?

Before life gets busy, life gets full, and before life seems to resemble a repeat of yesterday and the day before, and where tomorrow also starts looking the same.

There was a time in life that I wasn’t so busy, it wasn’t so full and it didn’t seem like an automatic repeat of yesterday.

But that was long ago. It’s almost hard to remember what life was like back then.

It feels as though we kind of settle into a steady groove and just ride the ebbs and flows of life.

Which made me think there’s something of certainty and security in accumulated years of the repetitive conformity of everyday life. You know where you are, you know what you’re doing, and you can almost certainly predict what’s coming next.

And you know who you are in all of that and what roles you play.

Until things start changing, and life starts to feel a little different. It can feel a little unsettling, a bit unfamiliar, and it can sometimes leave you wondering what this is all about.

 And this feeling had caught me off guard.

This feeling is quite hard to describe… a pendulum comes to mind, imagine a pendulum gently swaying back and forth rhythmically, nice soft sways.

But if you disturb the pendulum, its rhythm becomes unsteady, gaining momentum as it swings way out and back again, gaining speed and reach.

I’ve come to realise that this metaphor is a visual representation of how I was feeling when it first started. The nice soft normal rhythm that I’d have been used to is beginning to feel out of whack.

But why?

Driving around one Sunday afternoon, I was deep in thought, and I couldn’t ignore the visual of the pendulum in my mind.

I needed to know what the pendulum represents and what has disturbed its normal rhythm.

Nothing appeared to be out of the ordinary at first glance, I hadn’t really noticed anything, nothing had really happened.

But I did wonder if it had something to do with my burnout a few years ago and its long-term effects. Or was it my health? Was I just getting older?

Yet, at the same time, this feeling was somewhat familiar…

As I went to bed one evening I couldn’t shake it, my mind began to wander.

I started thinking back to childhood as I quite often do now, trying to retrace my life’s timeline of shifts and unbalance.

Using the pendulum to visualise different periods of shifts throughout my life, to see if I could possibly connect some dots…

Fortunately for me, childhood was relatively stable, nice soft sways back and forth.

And it stayed just like that until my teenage years.

Then holy moly did that pendulum swing wildly!

By my 20s that wild swaying had slowed down, losing momentum, settling into a nice smooth rhythm once again.

Throughout my 20s, 30s and the most part of my 40s, the pendulum was almost non-existent, a few little unbalancing sways, but it seemed to settle very quickly.

Around the age of 47, I can recall something or some things had shifted, giving force to the pendulum once again.

But I didn’t know why?

And I sure as hell didn’t know what this pendulum meant.

The more I thought about this, the more obsessively curious I became.

The only thing I had to go on was my teenage years…

What made the pendulum sway so wildly back then?

So, I began writing down what I remembered about those years to see if I could connect anything to my current circumstances.

Okay, so my teenage years:

At first, I thought “ahh that’s it! It must be the hormonal changes, menopause! That’s what this is all about!” It was easy to blame them because with that I had an answer.

But not entirely convinced. I knew there was more to hormones in my teenage years.

So, I read through what I’d written down some more.

I had also written:

Hmmm this is very interesting…

Because I could easily tick all of those as well!

I hadn’t even thought about this, let alone come to this connection before I went digging.

So what does that mean?

I can’t blame hormones for the familiar sense of not knowing what I am doing and who I am supposed to be…

Does this mean I am actually questioning myself all over again?

Am I seriously starting to ask questions at 51 that I thought I’d solved at 21!?

Is this actually what’s happening, an identity thing?

Wait… is this what they call a ‘midlife crisis’?!

Really? A midlife crisis?

Because I felt like screaming “I am still me!”

But if this really is an ‘identity’ thing, then why? Why now?

I have to admit this internal conversation did rattle me.

So, yes, I decided to go there.

What has changed so much to warrant this? If this is actually what it is…

Let’s see…

Well, I suppose a lot has been changing, but if all this has changed, then does this mean that I have changed too?

And if I have changed, then who the hell am I now?

It felt quite unsettling to be questioning all of this at 50 years of age.

This also might explain why I don’t quite feel like myself anymore.

So, where did I go then?

Does this mean I have to figure myself out all over again?

I didn’t think I had lost myself. Or had I?

I am still the same wife, mother, sister, daughter, grandmother, friend, business owner, and person with all the other things that make me, me…

So, no, I don’t believe I have ‘lost’ myself!

With this new insight, I can clearly see how we can lose our sense of self in midlife and start questioning ourselves.

We see it all over social media, women trying to figure out what and who they are during midlife and beyond.

I think it is because we spend so many years adapting ourselves to what life requires of us.

We become mothers, partners, professionals, carers, providers. We develop routines, responsibilities and expectations around all those roles.

It’s these very things that shape us, and somewhat define who we are.

Eventually, all of it becomes so familiar that we stop consciously thinking and noticing.

And I think there’s safety and security in that, and a comfortable, familiar rhythm in the repetition of that.

For me, I have realised that I have simply been stuck living my life as if nothing had changed.

And with that realisation came another: I no longer have to maintain a life that doesn’t exist anymore.

Have I figured it all out? No, not completely.

But this has given me a whole new perspective of myself, and my life.

And this has also explained to me what I now understand the pendulum represents.

It represents the disruption to my familiar sense of self, or rather, the person I’d become so accustomed to being.

So, we can understandably be forgiven for questioning who we are during midlife.

Because let’s face it, a lot changes, and it is supposed to change.

And what I’ve learnt through all of this is that identity can be many things, depending on the moment and the stage of life you’re in.

We have many versions of identity that we accumulate and carry with us throughout our entire lives.

So, now when I ask myself, “Who are you?”

The answer is actually pretty simple.

Me.

I’m still me. Just with a few more versions of myself behind me than I had before.