The arc of my life as a 52 year old woman is quite a learning curve. For the first forty years of my life, I hiked straight up the steep “meaning mountain,” kind of like ascending a climbing wall by your fingernails. My identity as a spiritual person never came into question during this trying time, and I kept going: seeking, learning, striving.

But recently, in the past decade, I’ve felt a little tired. Tired like someone who started out excited to do a marathon then realized the finish line vanished a decade ago. And then kept going. Tired like that. My spiritual off switch is nowhere to be found. Being spiritual, and living a holistic lifestyle is all I know.

I listen to podcasts for midlife women. During my daily walk, my brain absorbs protocols for my health like how to consume one million grams of protein a day and deal with hormonal issues and/or mood disruptions.

Recently, I joined a six-week micro-dosing journey that had me doing lots of journaling and having giant ahas. Like the super obvious fact that my body needs support, and that I still have many codependent struggles despite years of healing. Face palm.

Every week I enjoy pulling oracle cards, so that I can clock my spiritual compass; otherwise I feel like I’m wandering aimlessly through the mundane, cooking dinner and folding laundry while staring out the window.

Occasionally, I’ll go to a therapy session or a healing session or join a Reiki share.

Yesterday, I joined a group of local women to bake apple pies together. I tried lard for the first time and liked it.

Also, I recently started adding a teaspoon of raw cacao to my coffee. That way it can add something to my day instead of just sitting idle, tasting delicious; get in the game, coffee!

All that to say, I do a fair amount of seeking, healing and contemplating. That’s who I am. Where it gets tricky is when I feel like I’m trying everything and I still feel blah. I still feel lost. I still feel meh.

Then I’m forced to take a step back and ask myself:

Am I doing too much?

Am I a walking billboard for the striving (and exhausted) spiritual student?

What if I took a nap instead of doing a deep dive into my astrological landscape?

What if I sat on the sand and watched the seagulls roll in with the waves?

Would my world collapse if I read a frivolous beachy novel with no lessons or checklists in it?

What if I did something that had no spiritual “point”?

Now there’s a good question. And I’m squirming in my seat just thinking about it.

The mere hint of a “time-wasting” activity brings on the guilt sweats.

And then I want to journal about how my ancestors never rested, and try to heal the part of me that can’t just “be.” But wouldn’t that take me away from my nap or book? Hmm. That’s so meta.

When was the last time I truly enjoyed a moment, feeling an inward smile of pure gratitude for being my Self?

Yesterday, I went into town with no plans, and three and a half hours of time stretched ahead of me.

I wandered down to the beach. I admired the turquoise and dark blue contrast of the water and watched tourists marvel at what I have access to every single day.

A warm feeling grew in my belly.

Then I went into a few gift shops, smelling each bottle, soap and candle. It was a heady experience!

I sorted through racks of jeans, shirts and blouses, but didn’t have the drive to try anything on. I just admired the textures, colours and designs.

I ended up at a nice hotel by the water, in the cafe, and ordered a coffee and turkey sandwich on a croissant. I did some more gazing out at the ocean, and a feeling of profound gratitude, calm and wonder washed over me. I felt my body relax and shift into being. I am SO lucky to live here!

When my husband came to get me, my heart had blossomed, and healing had occurred. With no journal, livestream or checklist in sight.

As long as you promise to get in and get out, I’ll open up the curtain to the inner workings of my mind. Think of it as a bizarre meetup group you wish you never went to. Warning: after reading this you might decide to stop the seeking and become a professional poker player.

Armed with my oracle cards, raincoat and reusable coffee mug, I begin to ascend my Mount Everest of UNWORTHINESS.

Halfway up, I stumble, twisting my ankle (AGAIN, DAMMIT!) on a DADDY ISSUES rock.

I keep going, because with a spiritual quest you NEVER GIVE UP. Besides the swelling isn’t too noticeable. It merely resembles a loaf of bread in my sock.

Fast forward (because this is already boring): sun warms my face. The path is lined with daisies and lush grass. I’m moving at a comfortable pace, feeling pretty good when suddenly, the ground drops away. I manage to grasp at the rock face as I skid down the mountain. But I’m hanging by my fingernails.

The famous white knuckle.

“Um, Universe, a little help?”

“Just let go!” he yells down from the top.

Really? Well, I guess I could give it a little trust and faith and all that. Here goes.

I LET GO.

Plummeting towards the earth at breakneck speed, I’m full on panicking.

“Build your wings on the way down? Who the fuck thought of that plan?!”

Just as my nose is about to hit the ground, a majestic flying horse gallantly swoops me up. We ascend into the heavens once again.

Ahhh…God is great. I feel so alive! What a beautiful view up here.

ALL IS WELL.

I feel at ONE with everything, especially with this magical Pegasus! I feel so much love and I could kiss everyone, EVEN the jerk who cut me off last week. My heart is as warm and fuzzy as a box of kittens.

I’m too drunk on love to notice that my winged specimen of grace has tipped forward. He drops me from a height of impossible feet into a predator infested jungle.

Umpf! I hit the ground, flattened.

“Thanks for the ride, four-legged one!” I squeak. He’s gone. Rude.

Lying on my back I think, I could really go for a plate of fries right now. This spiritual shit makes me hungry.

After a few hours of shaking my fist at the powers that be, I gather myself up and step through the mud, past snakes and unidentifiable deadly creatures. Eventually, I come upon a Rabbit. Peter Rabbit, I assume.

I feel a kinship and begin to tell him my problems. After a considerable amount of ranting and processing, I fall silent. I look at Peter Rabbit with anticipation. His wisdom oozes off him. He’s definitely an old soul. He blinks at me and hops away.

Ok, Snow White, I’m not.

A couple of miles and a bad case of poison ivy later, I come upon a cottage. This is it! Just like in The Shack! I’m saved.

I go inside and a lovely woman with long red hair greets me. She gestures to the chair by the fire and hands me a mug of tea. Smiling, she says, “You need to practice being grateful, my child.” She is about 35 years old and I’m middle aged. Awkward.

“Mother… er … can I call you that? I assure you I’m very grateful for my life. Like the time I fell from the summit of Mount Everest, being thrown to the ground by a giant winged horse and crawling through poison ivy with low blood sugar. I am eternally grateful for these miraculous expansions and lessons. But when does it start to get GOOD?”

“It’s all in the way you look at it. It’s either a failure or a learning. Everything is happening FOR you, not TO you.”

Hmm … so if I punched her in the mouth, it would be FOR her. I mull this over.

I fall asleep by the fire, with visions of violence dancing in my head. All through the night not a creature is stirring, not even a mouse.

I wake up in my own bed, in my normal apartment, on a normal Tuesday at normal o’clock. Had it all been a dream? It couldn’t be! It was too real.

Then I remember I have a Chakra Reshaping appointment scheduled for ten! I throw on my yoga pants, pour my double latte and run out the door. Today is a good day and I’m very grateful to be alive. Grateful mostly that my dream was just a dream AND thank goodness I don’t have poison ivy. That shit is terrible.

It always seemed to come around to: “Well, we’ll have to try again.”

Then the dentist would launch into another six month plan to upgrade their bridge or replace this or that.

My impulse after hearing about the next monumental dental procedure was to don my cape and swoop into the dental office with fiery rage in my belly, demanding to see the dental plan and make the dentist explain himself.

“The dentist has a business and that’s how he makes money. To always make sure there is something else to fix with your teeth.” I said.

“He’s looking out for me. He’s very good.”

“Ok, but do you really think you need to do this procedure?”

The mood had shifted and suddenly their very integrity hung in the balance.

“What you’re telling me is you think I’m an idiot, not knowing what I’ve been doing for the past twenty years.”

Whoa. We were going there.

“No, I think that it would help to get a second opinion. I’ve never known anyone who goes to the dentist more than you do. You must have the most problematic teeth on the planet.”

The sarcasm and frustration shot out of my mouth from the depths of my tight solar plexus. I tried to pull myself together and steer the conversation back to neutral ground.

“Have you asked if your teeth are good enough the way they are for now? So you can have a break?”

But the hurt arrow had left the bow and it was game over. We hung up and I’ve been wrestling with my part in all this.

I flip and I flop.

Flip: It’s their teeth and if they want to make their dentist visits into a decades long run-on sentence, then so be it.

Flop: That dentist should be in jail for elder abuse!

Flip: If this is what they want, I need to respect their decisions.

Flop: The dentist google reviews say he has an “authoritarian” attitude and doesn’t listen to what the patient wants. I need to get them to another dentist!

The sad part is I haven’t landed on anything that feels great. Letting things happen is not my natural inclination. Letting others get taken advantage of is NOT my go to.

I know this is a lesson for me and it’s not about teeth, dentists, manipulation or discernment. It’s about me being available for others if they need help. It’s about taking care of myself and telling that part of me that needs to save and fix and rescue, that all is well.

And when I move into my body, into my core, I can be of service to others and take care of myself at the same time. And that’s all I can do.

Power. We all have it, but you’d think it was a hidden gem buried in some far away land. Since there are gatekeepers to power, we obsess over it and spend our lives wondering: Who has the power? How do I get some?

We think of power as a thing you get. Or something you earn. Being a coveted thing, it’s easy to fall for the narrative that it can be given or taken away. For example, you may have been told growing up that you don’t have any (and never will). Or you might’ve been taught that you have no choice (a cousin of power).

You’ve spent your life looking for power. You looked high and low, near and far. Under the rock of beauty, or over the hill of fame. You might have sniffed it in the air, losing the scent as someone else traveled too quickly ahead of you.

Or perhaps in school when they gave out power awards for smartness or coolness, you skipped that day. And continued your search for many years, post high school, with the same insecurities and uncertainties that kept you stuck in a power struggle of your own identity.

And then one day, out of sheer luck, you spotted power on a pedestal and snatched it up. You held onto it for dear life. You squeezed it so tight. Nothing could make you give this up. You felt safe and possibly whole, for a time.

Slowly this power began to drain out as family members tugged on your emotions, placed blame or dished out back-handed compliments. Until one day you opened your hand and it was empty. Where did the power go?!

Now you’re in midlife, with life-sized scars running the length of your soul. You see the power for what it is. You see power for who it is.

You begin to turn inward for the search and find an endless field of daisies. All the power you’ve ever wanted. Your own True Power within. Nothing you need to grasp or prove or buy or sell or trade or accomplish or do unspeakable things for. You remain intact. You continue to be yourself.

Only now you are a factory of self-generating power. You are your own generator. You never have a power outage. You are fully self-sufficient. Your only “job” is to go back to the field for fresh daisies, as often as you like, for the pure joy of it. Fresh daisies that regrow and flourish and pollinate themselves. A place of eternal power in a field of your own making.

With a view of the horizon and the promise of home.

Or do you get angry, whipping yourself into a frenzy over the astronomical price of avocados?

Do you go on a mission to help your spouse, taking all your time and pouring it into the minutiae of their problems?

What do you do when you have a pain in your heart?

Do you sit and observe quietly?

To let the poisonous betrayal pour out in front of your crossed legs and all over the rug.

Or perhaps you take it in your cradled hands.

And softly pet and soothe the abandoned parts of you.

How do you respond to a pain in your heart?

Add another meeting or to do to your list?

Do you rev up your schedule like a bellowing metal hog, so you can drown out any whispers of the hurts and aches?

What do you do when you have a pain in your heart?

Why not listen, and soften and allow?

Can you welcome the expression with open arms?

Why not be with the pain as much as you dance with the anger or disgust?

The bodyguard is the anger.

The disgust is the distraction.

This is hiding the main event: the pain party!

In midlife the pain doesn’t seem so longlasting.

The pain doesn’t carry such a threat.

My pain is earned and all mine.

I honour the pain and release it with a joyful gratitude.

Hats off to you! Thank you for being in the trenches for me.

Until we meet again, pain in my heart, I applaud your courage.

I’m a GenX 1974 baby. I grew up with Buddhist parents and branched out into the world of New Age early on. I remember playing with my friends’ parents’ Tarot cards as a child. Incense, brown bread and prayer flags were commonplace (if you can believe it, no one in my high school circa 1987 came to school with brown bread sandwiches except for me)!

When I was in my twenties, loyalty was the greatest badge of honour. I grew up in a rough neighbourhood, so it was very important for self-preservation and safety. As I got past my teens, I felt the urge to change, grow and become softer, and more at peace; I felt increasingly out of place in my friend group. I couldn’t relate to my female friends the way we had always communicated: through aggression and the graphic focus on sex and female body parts.

It’s as if taking back our sexual power and agency over our bodies turned into a game of outdoing men who degraded us as GenX women (examples 2 Live Crew; Eminem). If we talked like them it was ok because we were saying it. My experience is that cringe is always cringe no matter who says it. I never want to call a friend a bitch or slut as a “term of endearment.” Hypocritical moment: At 16, I loved the music of my time and listened to it on repeat flying down the road in my boyfriend’s Chevy Impala. Also, I wore rage like a favourite jean jacket.

Although I love Chelsea Handler, Sarah Silverman and Amy Schumer for being strong, empowered women, I feel very cringe about their comedy. Can’t women be funny without resorting to lewd or salacious comedy sets? Is that just me? Where do we draw the line and step into our power without trying to best our male counterparts?

I have other hangups about making friends: feeling like a weirdo flower child still lingers. If I’m in a room of women my age (I’m 52), I immediately grasp for palatable topics like:

-Vacations
-Home renovations

In the past ten years I’ve become a little bit braver about expressing who I am. I’ll bring up Reiki, and I don’t get as many “what is that?” questions anymore. In 2008 when I first started my Reiki journey I got a lot of blank stares. Now it’s usually something like “Oh, I love Reiki!” or “I have my level 2”, which is so inspiring!

I also moved around a lot. I left my hometown and traveled around the world spending time in Ireland, New Zealand, Australia, Bali and Kenya. Eventually, I moved from my home base of Vancouver, Canada to Toronto and lived there for ten years. I lost touch with friends from high school and had to find new friends.

I went into holistic health and found my peeps in Toronto! I had a wonderful bunch of female friends from all walks of life. My thirties were the golden era of friendship for me. For ten years I had weekend trips to the cottage, nights out dancing and meetups for coffee. We took trips to Montreal and I went to Ottawa for a work trip. I felt fulfilled and happy with lots of warm fuzzy friend hangouts.

Then when I turned 42, I started having panic attacks. This went on for weeks with no improvement no matter what supplement I stuffed in my mouth or healer I went to see. By the way, it would take me almost 10 years to get a handle on what was the start of perimenopause! After it became impossible to work at the health food store or go out in public very much I made the hard decision to go back home.

Landing in East Van again (now called the East Village) was a culture shock I wasn’t ready for. Trendy coffee shops, cannabis shops and breweries filled every block of my old neighbourhood. And again I felt discouraged and out of place. I don’t smoke weed or eat gummies or vape. I hate beer. I was at a disadvantage again. Why did I always feel like I had to get on board the train of going unconscious to take the edge off? Don’t get me wrong, I still love wine and cocktails, but these trends seem like something you’re supposed to do every day at all hours.

I’m at a point in my journey where I want to be fully awake. I want to be in touch with my body, gentle with myself and loving who I am. I want to get to know myself more and more everyday. And you can’t do that with a handful of gummies and a beer chaser. Everyone has their own path and I understand the desire to zone out all too well. I don’t mean to sound judgemental or critical. I just want to find other women who are down to earth, want to know each other as they are and connect. Can anyone relate? Any other women out there who feel displaced, out of place or disoriented in their midlife power era? I would love to hear from you. Thank you for reading this surprisingly rambly confession as to why I’m so hopeless at making friends at 52.

Overnight I went from being an intuitive dating coach for women over 40, to a perimenopausal woman having a panic attack on the phone when I thought my IT person was trying to rebuild everything I had just lost. Because underneath the loss, panic and shock of being digitally violated, I felt a deep sense of relief. Calm. Space. Almost excitement.

Calling all GenX women to subscribe and
take this crazy midlife journey with me!

Subscribe now

And I finally understood what the expression “all out of fucks” means in a practical sense. All my drive had folded like a house of cards. My ambition, my building, building, building, doing, doing, doing mantra collapsed on itself leaving me standing in the rubble of my identity.

I am very happy and grateful for the past eight years being an intuitive dating coach for midlife women. I loved what I created except… looking back I started to feel a restriction in my chest and a nagging sense that I was shrinking, and becoming smaller, and smaller and smaller. I couldn’t shake the feeling of being out of alignment. Like I had more to share and I needed a much larger container. Parts of me beat my chest like a drum, to give them a voice.

So, here I am. Taking my gems of wisdom and moving forward on my journey that spans two decades in the personal development and healing space. Taking all that is relevant, useful and necessary. Returning to my roots of tuning into my wisdom and deeply connecting to my true self. Expressing my hard-earned wisdom as an offering to all those who are meant to hear it.

I’m activating my voice as a woman who was silenced as a child, and all the scars that come with that. I’m activating my voice around the struggles and triumphs of being a recovering people pleaser, survivor of parental narcissistic abuse, intuitive, fierce, independent, gogetter, typeA, multi-passionate! I am here to shine bright. I am Truly Eleanor. And I’m so glad you’re here.

Calling all GenX women to subscribe and
take this crazy midlife journey with me!

Subscribe now

I’ve been a coach and healer since 2008. You may know me as the Intuitive Dating Coach and host of the Stop Chasing Unavailable Guys podcast. For the last eight years I showed up specifically for women navigating love after 40. That work was real, it mattered, and it came from the deepest part of me.

And now something deeper is calling.

I’m Truly Eleanor. Writer + Creator. A healer with boots on the ground. And this is my next chapter: reflections on finding my way through midlife, and back home to my true self. I would love you to join me on this adventure/soft place to land.

Calling all GenX women to subscribe and
take this crazy midlife journey with me!

Subscribe now