About - Yorkshire Girl's Midlife Diary

Hi, I’m Joanne, midlife Mum of 19 and 21 year old boys and right in the middle of my midlife crisis!

I’m a Pisces – I think a lot, dream a lot and live in my own little world.

In my blog I’ll share with you my adventures, ramblings and thoughts of a Mum in a midlife crisis. The views are entirely my own and I guess are my version of a diary, I hope they make you smile.

My views are not the answers to a midlife crisis – I’m still trying to work the answer out myself, but if they assure you that it’s perfectly normal to have a midlife meltdown then that’s all well and good.

So…….when did the crisis start? Well, when I reached the grand age of 50 really. Both boys left for University and I suddenly felt bereft. I realised that gradually over 21 years I had completely lost my identity. I had no idea as to what my purpose in life was anymore. I had reached a crossroads in my life and did not know which way to turn. For 23 years I had tried to be the best wife, for 21 years the best Mum and for 35 years the greatest employee. In other words I had spent more than half my life being the person that everyone else wanted me to be and not being me, so much so that I had actually forgotten who ‘me’ was. I was in a perpetual state of grumpiness and spent most of my day frustrated by the world and irritated by most people around me, including my own household who I was just desperate to escape as I seemed to be the load bearer and solver of everyone’s problems and the most underpaid Personal Assistant ever. They had successfully sucked the energy, life, and positivity out of me through no fault of their own, the problem was me, I had let them do it instead of telling them to row their own boat!

The Journey of Rediscovery

I hatched a plan. I’ve always been a bit of a wanderer, wanting to travel and learn about new and unusual places and I’d had on my bucket list for quite a few years the Camino Francis a 491 mile trek from France, across Spain to Santiago de Compostela. Originally done as part of a religious pilgrimage, but these days also completed by people as a challenge or as a break from everyday life and a journey of rediscovery. I definitely fell into the latter category.

Could this journey give me the time and space to wander, think and rediscover myself again!?!? To discover my purpose, my future aspirations and what I want to be when I grow up. Could this be the answer? But surely I could not embark on it on my own could I? Then the doubts crept in:-

It takes 5 weeks.
How will everyone manage without me at home?
What about work?
Am I fit enough?
Is it safe?

But one by one I answered those questions:-

I have 6 weeks off for summer.
Perhaps if I go they will learn to manage without me! They’ve left home anyway and I’m lucky if I get one message a week to assure me that they are still alive.
Work will still be there when I get back.
I’m reasonably fit and exercise most days so surely that should be enough.
It’s as safe as anywhere else and safer than most places – I’ve braved Friday nights out around the nightclubs of Barnsley in my lifetime, thrown myself down a mountain on skis, kayaked with alligators, been to the arctic circle, jumped off cliffs, climbed mountains, surely it can’t be any more unsafe than those can it?

In a moment of madness I booked the flights, there was no going back.

Then followed months of panic, planning and preparation. Now, for anyone that knows me they will tell you I ran a tight ship. Control is the word and every day was like a military operation. Plan, do, check, plan again, contingency plan, contingency plan for the contingency plan…………you get what I mean. You will however note I use the past tense as this journey has taught me to let go of all that.

I hardly told anyone of my plan, partly because I had doubts myself that I would actually get on the flight. I have an historic irrational fear of flying……………..I don’t have this now, this heightened sense of fear came immediately after having children (quite normal I’m told). However quite irrational as my fear of flying was again about that loss of control, I wasn’t flying the plane, however not having learnt to drive anything other than my Mini I appreciate now that we might have been safer with the pilot in charge rather than myself.

It was only when one of my friends said to me that she’d always admired my bravery, tenacity, determination and craziness that I actually thought that maybe I could do this after all. So the day arrived for my departure, tearful goodbyes were said at home …..the tears were all mine, everyone else in the house seemed quite glad I was going, which was quite worrying.

Now I knew that it was going to be no holiday and I knew that it was going to be physically challenging, but nothing could have prepared me for the mental meltdown I experienced on this rollercoaster of a journey. So from not having one spare second in the day and having to make time to even go to the toilet I now had 24 hours spare with nothing to do except walk and think.

That was the purpose of the journey, but when the lid came off the box of thoughts, I tried so hard to slam it back shut. However, once I finally let go, what followed was probably the greatest journey of my life, even though it did cost me small fortune in tissues to dry my eyes.

So on Sunday 28^th August 2022 I arrived in Santiago de Compostela after completing 33 days of walking interspersed with a few days for rest and to nurse a sore ankle.

So what were my learnings which I will take forward and which will form the basis of this blog:-

You have to learn to rediscover yourself, but more importantly to love yourself. Be the person who you are, not the person that everyone else wants you to be! Until you learn who you are and learn to love you it is hard for you to love anyone else and for them to love you in return.
Like a roller coaster, life has ups and downs. No-one would like to ride a flat roller coaster. Life is a beautiful ride, let go and enjoy it.
Life is at its purest when you share emotions, especially when you cry, so I did the very un-British thing and cried lots and lots. Now us Brits are known for having a ‘stiff upper lip’ – heaven forbid if we show we are not coping or feeling anxious or depressed about a looming crisis. But why do we do this??? I’m convinced I’m not from British ancestry, my upper lip is not stiff – have a good cry, I promise you, you will feel better afterwards.
Everything seems complicated in the beginning. Keep on going one step at a time. Don’t be afraid of the journey, be afraid of deciding not to make that journey. If I had thought I had almost 500 miles to walk in the heat of Spanish summer I possibly would have thrown the towel in early on. Think one day at a time, or think even smaller than that. On bad days I thought only as far as the next coffee, plate of churros or an ice cream. But all those coffees, churros and ice cream added up to the completion of a journey, and a very unhealthy diet which has been rectified on my return!
I learnt what is important in life, and by important I mean what is truly important. I went without a hairbrush, without my makeup, without my usual shampoo, without my nice clothes, without my jewellery and all those other things that I thought were important in my life and for 5 weeks I can honestly say I missed none of them, although my hair did! I had 6.5kg of essentials in my rucksack, two pairs of underpants, walking clothes, one change of clothes, first aid, some basic toiletries and other small essentials (a number of which turned out not to be essential at all). I did not miss my car, even when the walking got tough. I did not miss my house and my feather duvet and pillow as I had somewhere to shelter and was not bound by the everyday cycle of housework. Neither did I miss work, which has always been high on my list of priorities. What I did miss were individual people and family……. those true friends who provide love and friendship. However, I met plenty of people on my journey that provided both of these but it became clear to me looking back on the journey that the times I enjoyed the least were those times where I was on my own for a prolonged period of time and felt at a distance from love and friendship. I concluded that love, friendship, the means to provide shelter and food and the 6.5kg in my rucksack were what is important, everything else is superfluous to happiness and I missed none of it.
I learnt that fear is good, the only thing you have to fear is fear itself as it will stop you obtaining what you desire. Do the thing you fear, be brave, and fear will subside, you will grow to be a better person. In the words of Nelson Mandela, “I learnt that courage was not the absence of fear but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid but he who conquers that fear”.
Say “no” to the things that don’t make you happy. Very important!
And the most important lesson! You only get one life so enjoy it and say yes to adventure………every day. Live in the moment, only today matters, live every day as if it’s your last. Adventure for me now comes above the chores of daily life, they can wait, bring on those adventures and those weekends!! Steve Jobs, founder of Apple said a couple of really poignant quotes which stick in my mind: “Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life” and “Your time is limited so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.”

So that’s it in a nutshell for me. If you had told me previously that I would walk this journey without all my little luxuries I would never have believed you. I would have still been towing the line, living someone else’s life, saying yes to everything. Things feel different now, it’s time for change, it’s time to love me more, to say ‘no’ more, to live, to love, to laugh, to adventure and to grow old disgracefully.

So watch this space as I share what I get up to, my thoughts, my feelings, the trouble I get into, what I’m listening to, what I’m reading as I navigate my way through these exciting times.