LifeQuakes - Navigating the Storms of Change
3 lessons I've learned from my guests on Stretch Marks Podcast
Over the last 12 weeks I’ve spoken to 12 women in their 40’s (almost, Laura Nolan Horgan isn’t quite there just yet) and each one had a story of extraordinary change to tell. Each one has navigated life stuff - just as you and I have.
None suggested that they had it all together or any of it figured out, but by sharing what they’d each been through, those sudden moments that change the course of their world, their foundation of safety and their personal story it is clear that “Lifequakes” are likely and when they happen we should be more prepared with the tools required to live through them.
LIFEQUAKE: a major life change, from internal or external disruption, that precipitates personal evolution or rebirth
Sounds almost fun and aspirational. It’s NOT.
From experience and from interviewing 200 women for my podcasts, I can tell you that the disruption is painful, powerful and for a time you feel like your life is a fucking mess.
I’ve had my own LifeQuake or two.
Both of which have left indelible marks on who I am as a person, how I think and feel about things, how I protect myself from risk and - most importantly, both set me on a new timeline into the life I wake up living today and without these events happening this life wouldn’t be either.
I’m not a user of the “Everything happens for a reason” quote because I have interviewed far too many parents who have lost a child to cancer for whom that quote is not just pointless but harmful. What reason could ever justify it?
But time and time again life keeps showing me little why’s for the shit storms what have imploded my own life and clarity as to why they had to happen, why that part of me had to fall away, that job, that person, that belief - how they had to be severed for today to exist just as it is.
This season of Stretch Marks Podcast was a deep dive in the 40’s Stretch.
A defining decade where women’s lived experiences are so under represented and ignored, but through talking to women on the pod it’s clear that it is a decade of huge change and common Quakes!
Our 40’s seem to be built on tectonic life plates. From Hysterectomies, Divorce, Grief, Anxiety to Career change and a lifestyle revolution and bring seismic shifts for who we are as women and the days ahead.
But the lessons are stunning. And necessary.
1. We can lose ourselves
How Laura Nolan Horgan talked about the identity loss following her diagnosis with the BRAC1 gene followed by the removal of her ovaries, womb, cervix, fallopian tubes and breasts will stay with me. Waking up from this life saving and life changing surgery in a body that no longer held where she grew and fed her babies or which so often defines our womanhood was as painful as the surgery scars.