Hey lovely woman. I see you there.

If you are one of my people you are in mid-life, running a business, bringing up children. Most, although not all, of the people that I work with can be described that way.

You’re not as slim as you used to be, you’ve had a couple of kids. Everything’s a bit more wobbly now right? Sometimes you get very emotional, and you’re not always sure why. You get irritable too, and snappy. You don’t really have much time to look after yourself. You’re always running around, looking after everyone else, looking after your clients, running your business. Always very busy. Always feeling under pressure.

You had dreams, didn’t you? You had things that you wanted. You had ideas and ambitions. You had romantic dreams. And then life happened and you persuaded yourself, or the people around you persuaded you, that those dreams were unrealistic. A fantasy. Head in the clouds stuff, not real life. So now you’re living a ‘real life’. This supposed ‘real life’ is imperfect and frustrating and disappointing. That’s just how it has to be right?

Wrong.

I see you. You’re in a relationship with a man who may once have been fantastic. Or maybe never really was. Either way, he’s not fulfilling your needs now is he? He doesn’t light your fire. You’re not really sure what does to be honest. Is he stressed all the time? Does he blame his moods on work? Does he blame your moods on you being too much? Too needy, over emotional? Have you both accepted that you’re a bit crazy and he doesn’t have the emotional capacity to love you the way you want to be loved?

Are you going to let this continue for the rest of your lives?

This is often what it means to be in midlife. Having worked through the stress of having small children everybody feels a little bit lost. Sometimes the answer is to reconnect, communicate. Discuss each other’s needs. Find out more about who you both are now, as you come out the other side.

Sometimes the answer is to move on from a relationship that is no longer, or perhaps never was, what you need.

I cannot tell you what is the right thing to do. But I can tell you that living half a life feeling dissatisfied, disappointed and resentful does not have to be your reality for a moment longer than you allow it to be.

I can also tell you that there are some things you should not be putting up with:

• Nobody should be shouted at in their own home.
• Nobody should be spoken to like a naughty child when they’re an adult. (Possibly not when they’re a child either, but that’s another discussion.)
• Nobody nobody nobody should be hit, shaken or in other ways physically hurt.
• Neither should they be emotionally hurt.

We all make mistakes and sometimes the people closest to us have to tell us that we’ve done something less than ideal. That’s fine. That’s life. But how they tell us is important. If anybody in your life is shaming you, and making you feel like you are naughty or a bad person, that is not acceptable. You do not have to put up with that. No matter what you have done. You may have grown up believing that mistakes or imperfections deserve punishment but that is not true. Nobody should be punishing you. Ever.

You do not need to put up with being told that you are stupid or incapable or kept small because it makes somebody else feel big. You are a grown woman, my love, and you can do anything you set your mind to. And by the way, you are absolutely beautiful. I don’t mean in the ‘beauty is on the inside’ way. I mean that a grown woman who has brought forth children and who knows her own mind and who runs her own business is a beautiful, sexy, desirable woman. I don’t care how many things wobble on you. You are a stunner. Your life experience makes you incredibly desirable, and anyone who doesn’t see or appreciate that should not have access to your gorgeous self.

Are you ready to make a change? Are you ready to show up for yourself and live the life that you want to, guilt free?

If the answer is a resounding yes, come and speak to me. I don’t know what you need to do. But I know the questions to ask to help you to figure out your own unique answers. All I know is that you deserve as much joy, passion, freedom and adventure as everyone else that I work with. No matter what your story.

Helen Calvert
The No Bullsh*t Coach
April 2023