By her own admission, Deb Lane loves a plan, which explains why she was caught off guard, when on the eve of her 55th birthday, she realized that she’d neglected to make one for the second half of her life.
This untimely oversight was compounded by the fact that it was both entirely foreseeable and wildly out of character, and yet notwithstanding that, it was also not all that out of the ordinary.
Like many midlifers, she’d always aspired to grow older, she’d just never imagined actually being older.
The first half of Deb’s life followed an interesting path, paved by her intellect, natural sense of adventure and intrinsic curiosity.
The daughter of two teachers, she excelled in school and gained entry to study medicine. But after eighteen months at college and with dwindling funds to support her studies, Deb’s life veered off the conventional course it was following.
She got married and bought an old leaky wooden sailboat, which she gutted, rebuilt and then proceeded to sail down the east coast of the United States. She and her husband put down anchor in The Bahamas, which became their home for the next eighteen months.
At 24, Deb returned to college.
She paid her own way through medical school, and secured a coveted position as an anesthesiologist at a large practice in Florida.
She built a life that she loved around her work and extended family, and for many years her career as a respected anesthesiologist came to define her.
Eighty-hour work weeks were the norm, and the ‘future’ was put on hold.
Delayed gratification became a way of life as the boundaries between purpose and passion became blurred. Deb learnt to ‘defer’ many of the things like travel, art, hiking and dance that made her heart sing.
She shut out that inner whisper that said “this doesn’t feel right” … slowly burying the real ‘her’ under layers of expectation, service and pretense and silencing that inner knowing that she yearned for something more
Then in 2017, her world was rocked by a series of consecutive and overlapping lifequakes.
Within the space of a few months, she lost her father, as well as another close friend, and she was faced with significant changes within the organization she worked for.
In his book, Life Is In The Transitions, Bruce Feiler talks about the idea of lifequakes, as forceful bursts of change that lead to periods of upheaval, tension and renewal, that oblige us to reimagine who we are and modify our life stories.
These lifequake events are high on the Richter scale of consequence and their aftershocks can resonate throughout our lives long after the original quake has subsided.
For Deb, the foundations of her life, her identity, her security and her visions for the future were all rocked, forcing her to reflect on and ‘fix the plot holes in her life story.’
This simple question was the portal that led her towards a deeper insight into what she was truly yearning for … a ‘good life’ full of meaning and balance."
It was around this time that meaning, and serendipity collided when Deb happened upon a podcast featuring an interview with Chip Conley.
She was instantly intrigued.
In a moment of uncharacteristic spontaneity, Deb booked herself into the first available MEA workshop in Baja and took off to Mexico armed with her Myers-Briggs test results and an inventory of business books.
Deb arrived at MEA burnt out and fixated on her objective, to uncover her next career move.
Needless to say, the first few days at MEA didn’t exactly meet Deb’s exacting, A type expectations. Shamans and ‘circle time’ were not part of her plan. But as she dropped from her head to her heart, she got the answers that even she didn’t know she needed.
Deb’s Baja A-HA came in the form of a question, posed by Chip Conley around day three.
“What is unlived and what is unloved in your life?”
This question opened the floodgate for Deb (both literally and figuratively) to truly excavate the foundations upon which her life was built.
This simple question was the portal that led her towards a deeper insight into what she was truly yearning for... a ‘good life’ full of meaning and balance, that allowed space for serendipity, curiosity and joy to enter – to open new doors and take her in directions she might never have imagined.
Deb came to the realisation that she was free to create the life she wanted.
She realized she was only held back by bars of my own making.
Deb came back from Baja with a plan to scale back her work commitments and retire by April 2020.
Then the covid pandemic his and she knew her skills were needed, and for the next 12 months, her job became her passion again as she learnt new things and made a difference to the lives of others.
Post covid, and Deb has made good on her personal pledge and is embracing this liminal midlife space and learning to straddle all the dualities that accompany it.
She is both excited by the prospect of going back to school and starting something completely new but is also passionate about remaining engaged in her career (part time) and mentoring others who are starting out.
She is committed to fostering deeper connections with both new and old friends but has also given herself permission to do some ‘editing’ of relationships that no longer serve her.
She is fostering her love of art, taking classes in drawing and painting, but has opted to keep that passion ‘pure’, just for her own enjoyment.
She is exploring options around the notion of ‘home’ and where and how she divides her time.
Deb is rediscovering her wild heart and adventurous spirit and is cultivating “all things that fill my soul.”
She is back in the driver’s seat, being intentional about curating an amazing second act, but is also allowing space for all the ‘joyous unknowns’ that lie ahead.
As Charles Baudelaire said; “through the unknown, we’ll find the new.”
- Ang Galloway, midlife writer and MEA alumni