12 Jul It’s Never Too Late …

In the lead up to my 50^th birthday, I was hit with some major life-quakes that rocked the foundations of my world. I moved countries, my mum got sick and died, I got divorced and both my kids left home. A combined ‘solid ten’ on the Richter scale of consequence. I found myself floundering in the liminal moosh of midlife and so I decided to take matters into my own hands. I devised my own midlife rite of passage in the form of a Golden Gap Year. My plan was met with mixed reactions. Occasionally it felt like I was sharing my ambition to climb Everest blindfolded, nude and without oxygen, such was the collective astonishment that a woman ‘of my age’ should be planning a solo adventure. And I get that it’s not necessarily the ‘norm’ for a fifty-year-old woman to take off unaccompanied on a Golden Gap adventure… but that’s the point. The ‘norm’… occupying less space and acquiescing into silent obsolescence, was what I was desperately trying to avoid. Over the course of 2019, I visited 14 countries. I trekked in Bhutan, rode a bike from Prague to Budapest, walked the Camino Pilgrimage, sailed in the Greek Islands and turned 50 in New York.

I appreciate that the idea of a Golden Gap rite of passage sounds like an extravagance (and one that I may be paying off for many years to come). But after twenty plus years of juggling parenting, partnering, careers and caring, surely we (midlifers) are equally, if not entirely more deserving of a rite of passage to reflect, reboot, re-energise and regroup in preparation for the start of our own new chapters. For me it was about acknowledging this (mid)life  transition with a rite of passage that took me to places less familiar. An opportunity to step into the unknown, full of curiosity and wonder, and reimagine what life could look like. A pause to reflect, reboot and return with a renewed passion and sense of purpose. Perhaps the idea of a Golden Gap (in whatever form it might take) should become as embedded in our societal script as a twenty-first or any one of the myriad of commonly accepted rites of passage from the first half of life. A time to celebrate new beginnings and set sail on new journeys that might uncover a raft of opportunities we could never have imagined.