Midlife Crisis in Woman – 5 transformational books that will illuminate your Path…
Midlife Crisis in Woman is a difficult and disorientating place to be. How can you successfully navigate a midlife crisis as a woman? Support from other women going through the same thing and reading about their experiences is important. Finding deeper meaning in your life can help you come through the crisis even stronger. These 5 crucial transformational books will guide you…
Midlife Crisis In Woman… A Disorientating Experience…
A few short years ago I was going through an incredibly tough time in my life. I had just completed treatment for a serious illness which left me weak and incapacitated.
This threat to my life caused me to re-examine and question everything about where I was on my journey. The first half of my life was over and I was facing the second instalment {or Life Version 2.0 as I like to call it}. I was definitely heading into the storm of Midlife Crisis.
Midlife Crisis In Woman.
Menopause Craziness didn’t help…
Combined with the onset of menopause and the crazy hormonal disruption that accompanied it, safe to say that I felt extremely lost and confused. I was desperately in need of some guidance to help me sail the wild and stormy seas in which I found myself drowning.
What did I want to do with the [hopefully] remaining half of my life? What were my goals? What was the bigger picture? What did the universe have in store for me?
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My mind spun with trying to make sense of everything and pull together some direction for moving forward.
Books to the rescue
Luckily, in one way, my convalescence allowed me a delicious amount of reading time.
Lying in bed, propped up by cushions, I devoured a vast pile of books in my search for answers and direction.
Whist many gave a hint of the path to take, I narrowed it down to 5 magical books that made a huge impact on me and showed me a path out of the confusion and darkness. A way out of the dark forest.
These are the 5 books that illuminated that path through my own Midlife Crisis, {and a bonus one that I just couldn’t miss out}.
If Women Rose Rooted: A Life-changing Journey to Authenticity and Belonging
Sharon Blackie
I can’t say enough good things about this book, or indeed the author Sharon Blackie.
If Women Rose Rooted holds transformation at its heart, leading women to find their place in the world.
Sharon draws on native, particularly Celtic mythology to share stories of how women can re-root themselves in the land and their own lives.
Often we have grown disconnected from both ourselves and the earth. By midlife, we may not even know who we are any more. We spend years pouring our energy into others, gradually forgetting our loves and passions.
We become ever more distant from that which can nurture us. Deep in our hearts, we have a yearning for connection with something beyond ourselves but often struggle to know how to find it.
A beautifully written and nature-based book, If Women Rose Rooted is a passionate rallying cry for a rewilding of womanhood. A call for women to return to ourselves and find our place again in the land in which we are rooted.
Rise Sister Rise: A Guide to Unleashing the Wise, Wild Woman Within
Rebecca Campbell
Rise Sister Rise is a call to arms to awake the power in women that has laid dormant for too long. We have tried to fit ourselves into a patriarchal society, along the way giving away and suppressing our innate power.
There have always been wise women, healers, priestesses and visionaries but over the centuries we have learned to keep quiet and hide our wisdom.
This book takes a stand to say “No more”. It is a signpost on your spiritual journey and a guidebook to rediscovering your power and confidence as a woman. To listening to and trusting your wisdom.
Part workbook, part spiritual guide, Rebecca offers tools, calls to action, ideas and rituals for rediscovering your true magnificent feminine potential. As more and more women awaken to heal themselves we are also healing the world.
I found this book hugely helpful at a time when I felt lost and directionless. It gave me signposts and helped me evolve.
Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype
Clarissa Pinkola Estés
This book is an absolute classic, being first published in 1992. I have to admit that I first picked it up around that time and absolutely couldn’t get on with it. I didn’t get beyond the first 20 pages. But I think I just wasn’t ready for it. I was young and not ready for the message. Fast forward 25 years and it blew me away!.
Clarissa Pinkola Estés is a Jungian analyst who uses her own ancestral indigenous stories to weave a narrative of female empowerment and reconnect us with the wild woman archetype.
We are born with this wild power but society “civilizes” it out of us, leaving us lost, fearful, trapped and uncreative. The stories she tells illuminate the psyche and such understanding allows us to move away from victimhood and into our wild, creative and untamed strength.
The first section of the book is hard going but please don’t give up. It suddenly opens up into a majestic landscape of magic which you will return to again and again for further layers of wisdom. This book is powerful medicine for the soul…
“She who learns to howl will find her pack…” Clarissa Pinkola Estés
The Divine Matrix: Bridging Time, Space, Miracles, and Belief
Gregg Braden
Do you feel that there is something much bigger than yourself in the universe but you struggle to put your finger on exactly what it is?
Gregg Braden is a master at pulling together past wisdom with modern science and making sense of everything in an easily accessible way.
This profound book delves deep into quantum physics and ancient wisdom, to explain the web that connects all our lives and realities. Fully of fascinating stories about knowledge gleaned in the monasteries of Tibet and other ancient repositories of information, Gregg draws conclusions which point to the way reality and consciousness work.
I found this book hugely eye-opening and a very plausible explanation of a much greater reality than ourselves. It made me feel at one with the universe. I highly recommend Gregg’s thought-provoking online talks and lectures too.
The Crone: Woman of Age, Wisdom, and Power
Barbara Walker
Another classic of feminist literature and the book which inspired this blog.
Ancient matriarchal societies revered and honoured older women for their wisdom and power. As men assumed positions of power in religion, politics and everyday life, Crone was used as an insult to repress women and “keep them in their place”, robbing them of their value in society.
Walker’s book is a call to take back that power for contemporary women. To step up and reclaim their position with confidence and self-respect. To reclaim the word “Crone” and all that comes with it.
Although the book is a little dated and hasn’t aged well in places [It was first published in 1985}, I found lots of ideas to be inspired by as I was searching for an identity as I first entered midlife. It was the first thing that I read that made me feel that maybe my best and most powerful years were ahead and not behind me. Highly recommended.
BONUS
Women And Power
Professor Mary Beard
I love British classicist and documentary presenter, Mary Beard. She tells it like it is and refuses to bow to media pressure to look a certain way as she presents fascinating programmes on the classical world. She refused to dye her beautiful grey hair when under pressure from TV bosses. An inspiring mature woman.
This book is a summary of her lecture of the same name where she draws on classical stories from Medusa to Athena to explore the cultural underpinnings of misogyny and illustrate women’s relationship with power through time.
Check out her TV programmes too, many of which are available online.
I hope this selection gives you some ideas for your next inspiring book to curl up with. Which one will you choose to guide your way?
I would love to hear your recommendations for magical books that lit your path through Midlife Crisis in the comments.
Helen
