The Middle
The magic & the mess
Pic: Treasures I collected this year
It is here, right here in the contested middle that we often learn that our maps, however elaborate, are not the whole picture or the terrain they pretend to represent. And that home is not simply the fixed dot at the end of dashed lines, motionless and given, awaiting the ones who come marching in… Everything begins in the middle. There are no beginnings that appear unperturbed, pristine and without hauntings. And there are no endings that are devoid of traces of the new, spontaneous departures from disclosure, and simmering events that are yet to happen. The middle isn’t the space between things; it is the world in its ongoing practices of worlding itself.
Bayo Akolafe (source: The Marginalian)
Hi friends.
We have just passed midsummer, and a heat wave in the U.K. Last week I wrote about the midsummer solstice as a starting still point, metaphorically standing on a summit with which to see back and cast forward. How quickly I lost any sense of clarity as I descended into a sweaty mess, and lay sweating as my blood boiled last week. I find that I must just do less, am so much more irritable and simply have to succumb to the heat. I am older now.
I want to tell you a secret - it’s not something I am proud of. I find myself still in liminal space after the death of my mum, my eldest moving out, my step father in a hospital. I find myself really wanting to run. I am really done with caring. I have a bubbling urgency to run away to a Greek Island like Meryl Streep in Mamma Mia or drive fast off a cliff like Thelma and Louise (without the death bit.) I wonder why it feels unacceptable to say I have had enough of caring ? Because it’s taboo for women to express not wanting to do the invisible labouring of caring? Like saying it means you don’t deserve love. It’s taboo to rest, too.
In the midst of the tiredness, there’s a rising vim I see and feel and I saw it at the Women’s Circle training I did earlier in June. Women I know who own their own businesses are tired of hustling, we are tired and furious of the upward funnel of money to techno-oligarchs, of the rich and famous rapists, of crimes against our planet. Good men I know and love are tired too.
Friends are saying they need to be in saunas with women, other carers I know are saying things like ‘I’m realising it’s not selfish to rest,’ Women are starting to gather intentionally, and when we do we want to talk, unmask and rest together. This is ancient and the loneliness we feel is the burden of carrying things that we always meant to be carried by the group. So - if it feels like a lot, it’s because it is a lot.
I am coming up to 10 years continuous sobriety this month or 13 years minus 21 days. I like to honour the whole of that time as it was all learning. The most amazing thing about sobriety for me is a) I never thought I’d manage it ( couldn’t get to 5 days before) and then the muscle power of the early days, to the freedom from the effort and mental loops …. but then this coming home to self. I find myself so much more expressed.
I didn’t know how much I was shrunken and masking - this is systemic stuff and alcohol is a tool of that - it was layers of toxic patriarchy in society, amplified within my own family system, undiagnosed neurodivergence, manifesting as anxiety and living in a female body in a system that demands constant productivity. Removing alcohol meant I could not tolerate masking any more - which has been such a gift, a threshold as life must organise itself differently and become one we don’t want to escape from, an nervous system that can flow and regulate not outsourced to the numbing effects of ethanol. So I find myself in my midlife return, feeling like a teenage in some ways and like the beginning is the middle and in the middle is the beginning just as Akolafe says.
This is the work I love to do with women - it is my special interest, my love, my passion… empowering women in midlife. For me quitting drinking was radical self empowerment although at the time I just thought I couldn’t face any more Hangxiety.
Putting down the wine is the first step, and but of course it’s preceded by a time of wilting, fatiguing and dying of the old habits which have become unsustainable. Then the pause, the threshold. Then we enter the beautiful wilding of the messy middle - this bit we are never meant to do alone - we need community - this could be circles, a coach or mentor. Early sobriety needs its NCT group. Ongoing sobriety needs community too, because we are meant to connect and share, not carry the stuff we do alone.
Shall we swim in the middle my friends? If not now, when?
Love Kate
Ways to work with me:
If you’re standing at a threshold — questioning your relationship with alcohol, navigating menopause, feeling lost in midlife, or simply sensing that something needs to change — a single conversation can bring remarkable clarity.
My Midlife Clarity Session is a 90-minute, one-to-one coaching session where we’ll explore exactly where you are, what’s keeping you stuck, and the next steps that feel most aligned for you.
If you decide you’d like to continue afterwards, the full cost of your Clarity Session will be deducted from my 12-week coaching programme, so it’s a gentle way to begin without committing before you’re ready.
Midlife Alchemy
If you’re sober and sensing that life is asking something more of you, Midlife Alchemy opens again this autumn.
This is a 12-week rite of passage for women ready to move beyond simply not drinking and into a deeper relationship with themselves. Together we’ll explore nervous system regulation, ritual, seasons, archetypes, boundaries, purpose and the wisdom of midlife.
Join the waitlist to be the first to hear when doors open.
LOVE this ❤️