Mid-Life awakening for women

Sharing an article which i liked. Im in my 30's but i already identify with it.

Mid-life awakening for women

Vinita Dawra Nangia
29 April 2012, 09:00 AM IST

The mid-life crisis is no longer bad news for women. It’s an opportunity for new opportunities

Are you a woman in your 40s struck by strange restlessness, angst, and a feeling of something missing? Wonderful! You have hit the mid-life crisis, which today is nothing short of an opportunity to reinvent your life and live the way you wish to.
Kids flew the nest? Marital problems? Bored with your job? Lonely? Or, just irritated with the sameness of everything? You could be facing questions in your personal or professional life, or accosted by existential queries — do not just go with the flow. Get a grip on life and lead it where you want it.

I recently attended a Life Alignment group healing session with healer Jeff Levin in Delhi. Whether or not I managed to align my life through his revolutionary healing system is a moot point, but the day did turn into an interesting session that included therapy, some confessions, non-religious chanting and vibrational healing.

This group had almost all women in their middle years. The themes that emerged were: being taken for granted, forced to conform to social conditioning, arrested dreams, and unfulfilled aspirations. As Jeff encouraged each woman to speak, what reveal;ed itself was a group of women, who have purportedly lived a wonderful existence, undisturbed by major upheavals. They all considered themselves a happy, blessed lot with caring families — and yet there was a feeling of something vital missing.

Most of them had led protected lives, conforming to societal expectations. As one woman put it revealingly, “I went to college, got married, had children….and my husband has never restricted me. Yet, I always wanted to be an architect, and now I think it is too late.”

This panicky feeling of having done one’s duty to others, but not enough for oneself is a repeated motif in the lives of women of a certain age in India. As the years move on inexorably, women start feeling deprived. They have lived as daughters, wives, mothers and friends, but not really as themselves. What is it that you really want for yourself? What is the true purpose of Your life?

A tough question for women, especially Indian women, who grew up before the media explosion that brought in Hannah Montana and Lady Gaga into our living rooms. Few of us were lucky to have enlightened parents, who taught us to think for ourselves. For the rest, submission was the norm; rebellion, very rare.

Thankfully, today when mid-life crisis strikes, there are still a good many quality years left. Good education and independent incomes have ensured that women at this stage can still bring in powerful changes that give a new wonderful twist to their lives.

As natural creators and lifelong multi-taskers, women are far better equipped than men at reinventing their lives. But deep emotional attachments make it tougher for them to move on. Reaching for what you want involves a trade-off and so we tend to stick to our comfort zones.

However, so long as you are clear what you want, it is never too late to salvage a dream — so what if we can live out just certain aspects of it? And so, if not an architect, what stops you from creating beautiful spaces around yourself ? If you wished to be a doctor and couldn't, what stops you from healing now?

After all, what’s in a name?