Monthly Archives: June 2011

Midlife Transition: Career change

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by Diane Topkis…

To paraphrase the Cheshire Cat “If you don’t know where you are going any path will do.” Or this quote from Yogi Berra “If you don’t know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.”

That’s how many of us women got to our current career. At midlife, that’s no longer enough. It’s time we find the path to our true career.

How do you start down your own path? It’s best to turn toward something positive – your vision, as opposed to turning away from something. You’ll have more of a reason to stay focused and ignore distractions. But it’s harder to know what you want than what you don’t want.

Once you know where you are headed, don’t just choose an end point and then plan the fastest way to get there. Instead, with the end in mind, choose a starting point. Your path might zig-zag a bit in the beginning. Recognize and act on warning signs if you move away from your values and priorities. Create milestones or markers along the way as check points to correct or adjust your route.

Leave room for opportunities that might come up that you could not have planned for when you started. That will allow you to continue developing yourself. But in time as you’re further along, your true path will emerge and deepening your commitment to just one path will be more rewarding than keeping all options open and just floating on the surface.

Your chosen path will need to include both short term and long term plans. To make it manageable, break your long term plan into smaller bits that can be integrated into your daily short term plan. Celebrate those smaller accomplishments to stay motivated. It’ll keep the momentum going so you don’t abandon or get discouraged.

Even if your short term plan is focused on being sure you can pay your bills while in transition, life will be more tolerable since you will still be on the path and making progress toward that longer goal. It brings your future into the present little by little.

Rachel Naomi Remin – spirituality of aging advice

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“What if I never marry or have children?”

Rachel Naomi Remen, MD, 67, clinical professor of family and community medicine at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine and author of Kitchen Table Wisdom and My Grandfather’s Blessings: “I have encountered two of women’s greatest fears: I’ve been single all my life, and I’ve had Crohn’s disease [a chronic inflammatory bowel disease] for the past 51 years. I always wanted to be a mother. I was one of the girls who played with dolls until I was 12 or 13 years old. I had the names of all my children picked out. Having a family was a major life dream. When I was diagnosed at age 15, it became clear that dream might not play out. Then as the clock ticked down toward 40, it was even more clear I probably wasn’t going to be a mother. Because of my illness, it was very difficult for me to maintain a relationship. Men of my generation were looking for someone to take care of them, and I needed someone to take care of me.

“I hear women say, ‘If it doesn’t turn out the way I planned, what then?’ Life is basically full of broken eggs. The whole art of this thing is finding your own recipe for making sponge cake. My mother’s final words were ‘I am satisfied.’ How do we live so that at the end of our lives we can say those words? I have done that. I have learned that I can be a mother in many different ways. The people who are unhappy are the people who get stuck in one way of doing it. You have to have a sense of possibility. Of course it’s a remarkable, life-altering experience to have your own biological children. As a former pediatrician, I’ve seen people transformed by this profound experience. But you can still grow people, even if they don’t come from your own body. There are so many who haven’t had parenting. You can be a mother to them. For the thousands of medical students I’ve worked with, I have done that.”