Lindsay L. O'Connor

“Lindsay, when you run, you FLY!” The memory of my father’s words to me, 35 years ago or more, makes me smile. It also seems a little laughable now to think that my young, fit dad would have complimented the athletic prowess of his least athletic child. Even now, while he is in his 70s, I have to work hard to keep up with his stride.

“I wish I had their energy!” the adults around my siblings, cousins, and I would say as we ran about, catching fireflies, choreographing dance routines, and playing hide and seek. Other times, my parents cheered with gusto as I demonstrated my flexibility by doing the splits. As a child, I remember being surprised and delighted by others’ admiration of the things my body could do with so little effort. 

Now, at 42 years old, I am on the other side of the equation, admiring the things my children can do with such apparent ease. I know from my own experience and that of my friends that women of a certain age are absolutely exhausted. The reasons for this increasingly intense chronic fatigue are both personal and systemic, but that’s a conversation for another day. (Capitalism wants to fix us, for a fee of course, instead of dismantling the systems that have sapped our energy and robbed our health for half a lifetime, but I digress.)

When I meet with women in their 40s and 50s for spiritual direction, as well as when I meet with my own therapist and spiritual director, a common theme is that we are realizing we are unable to continue operating as we always have. As frustrating as this may be, our bodies often offer wisdom before our minds catch up. We notice ourselves acting, thinking, and feeling differently, and the people around us might be just as confused and uncomfortable with us as we may be with ourselves. The self we have known for decades is acting up and causing problems, but we don’t know exactly why.

We may have difficulty articulating it at first, but with a compassionate reflective listener, we realize that we simply do not have the energy to continue living our lives and relating to others in the ways that we have always done before. Our bodies are getting louder amidst perimenopause, illness, autoimmune diseases, mental health needs, and other emerging health conditions, preventing us from continuing at the same pace and volume of our caretaking and work in the world (including the well-documented mental load that falls disproportionately to women). Our fatigue may be accompanied by a small (or large) side of anger and frustration as we realize the myriad ways our boundaries have been routinely violated by people and systems.

I used to think of growth in wisdom and maturity as a mostly intellectual exercise, but now I see that it is an embodied process that is more like an unfolding than a linear journey. Rather than thinking our way into wisdom and maturity, there seems to be a developmental stage when we (especially women and folks with other marginalized identities) are simply too tired to carry on as we have been doing for so long. My sometimes-startling new boundaries are partly the fruit of intentional learning, therapy, and inner work, but they are also born of exhaustion. I simply cannot keep up with my younger self anymore. And my oh my, do people notice!

There is a larger conversation to be had about the systemic reasons for our fatigue and subsequent anger (two good places to start include Walter Brueggemann’s book Sabbath as Resistance and Tricia Hersey’s work through The Nap Ministry), and we can’t always control the larger forces at play or change them in the here and now. However, we can notice and name what is happening and find ways to tend to our weary souls.

One of the questions we explore in spiritual direction is, What do you no longer have the energy to do? When we respond to this question thoughtfully and honestly, at a soul-deep level, we may be surprised by the answers that arise. We also may benefit from noticing and naming the resistance that undoubtedly arises any time we begin to identify our habitual patterns of behavior and finding support to honor and respond to this new awareness. Below, I’m sharing a poem followed by questions to ponder, either through journaling or with the help of a spiritual director.

Maybe midlife fatigue is not a problem to solve but a growing wisdom to embody. The process of growth includes a painful stripping away as we let go of some of the ways we have protected ourselves, and new freedom is often accompanied by grief—grief for the reasons we have had to protect ourselves and all that that guardedness has cost us, grief for who we could have been and the unmet needs that have become too loud to ignore, and grief for the ways we have been shaped by unfreedom. Alongside the grief, freedom, joy, and a clarifying sense of purpose arise as we honor our bodies and tend to our souls.

Questions to consider…

1. What do you no longer have the energy for?
2. When you consider the response to the question above, what resistance arises? What does the resistance have to say? What does it feel like in your body?
3. What would you like to let go? What would you like to hold onto?
4. Finish the sentence: In a perfect world, I would…
5. What support do you need? What support is available to you?
6. Who is someone (real or imagined, living or deceased) who embodies the wisdom you need right now? What would they say to you?
7. Consider any new awareness that has arisen. How would you like to honor and respond to it?