That's So Mid #3: The Power of Pause

Living with the results of my impulsive behavior over the years has made me hesitate, questioning my ability to know what to do next. 'Don't take the first think' has been a daily mantra

Hello Dear Readers,

It’s the middle of the month, and the moon is waxing gibbous, meaning more than 50% of it is illuminated and well on its way to being full. My boyfriend and I have been getting up at ‘first light’ each morning for an exercise that encourages being outside during the transition from dark to light. (It’s an exercise Wayne Dyer recommends, but he advises not to publicize it, so I’ll leave you in the dark on that one.)

The night before our first practice, we Googled the time for sunrise and set our alarms accordingly. But when we stumbled outside the next morning, bleary-eyed and far from bushy-tailed, we were greeted by a sky that was already lightening. Who knew that ‘first light’ and sunrise are about twenty minutes apart? That ‘first light’ is even a thing?

Sometimes, I find myself amazed—and forgive the vague platitude—that I learn something new every day. It flies in the face of the negative platitudes I grew up with, like “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks” or “It’s all downhill after 40.”

When I was twenty, I looked to my future like a giant blank canvas, asking myself, “Who do I want to be? What do I want to do?” Not long after, those questions expanded to include another person—my child. “What can I do while still being a mother? What are my options?”

Last year, as I approached the end of my 43rd year, I found myself staring at another blank canvas, asking the same questions, slightly adjusted: “Now that it’s just me, who do I want to be? What do I want to do?” This time, though, it came with a sense of urgency—and more vague platitudes.

“You’re not getting any younger… You’re running out of time…”

And then—nothing. No action. No decisions. No ideas.

Okay, maybe not nothing. It came with confusion, a sense of being ungrounded, and new questions:

“Who am I? What is happening to me?”

I’ve never been one to hesitate. On the contrary, I’m wired to leap and figure things out on the way down. A few examples:

• After running two miles one day and feeling on top of the world, I announced I’d run a marathon by the end of the year.

• Six weeks after my children’s father passed away, I bought one-way tickets from Hawaii to Austin, TX—a city I’d never been to—to start a new life for us.

• I decided that selling lingerie would be more fun than real estate, and without any money or a plan, I opened a shop called Teddies for Bettys in a city where I barely knew a soul.

In some ways, this has worked for me. In other ways, especially emotionally, it hasn’t.

You can’t make discerning decisions from a place of desperation. It’s not even decision-making at that point; it’s just jumping on a ride and letting your emotions dictate your actions.

And my God, have I been in energetic desperation over the years.

Desperate to be loved. Desperate to make money. Desperate to give my kids a ‘good’ life. Desperate to be seen. Desperate to be ‘somebody.’

I’ve fallen for “I’ve never met someone like you; let’s do this together” after three weeks, and for “We’ll loan you $10 today, but you have to pay us back $100 tomorrow.”

The list goes on and on.

Living with the results of my impulsive behavior over the years has made me hesitate, questioning my ability to know what to do next. To trust that I know the right answers. Truth be told, I have found myself repeating ‘don’t take the first think’ almost everyday since August of 2023.

You might be familiar with an activity called the ‘Word of the Year.’ Dating back to 1990 (which just dated me), the American Dialect Society came up with it, and since then, publications like Time Magazine and the Oxford Dictionary have had their own versions. It’s an exercise where a group reflects on and analyzes societal shifts in behavior, changes, and innovations over the past year, then chooses a word or expression to represent that year. Past words have included ‘selfie,’ ‘Covid,’ ‘enshittification,’ ‘they,’ ‘insurrection,’ ‘rizz,’ ‘app,’ ‘tweet,’ ‘bailout,’ ‘world wide web,’ ‘Y2K,’ and ‘metrosexual.’

It wouldn’t take a large group or much time at all to figure out my Word of the Year: Pause.

What has felt like much ado about nothing with a splash of panic has actually been a state of being in pause.

As biology would have it (and my sobriety), there’s a chemical and hormonal wash happening. As women enter their 40s, they start to undergo what Dr. Northrup calls a ‘cleansing,’ or as Dr. Louann Brizendine calls it, an “upgrade.” This transition in a woman’s body literally alters her thoughts, feelings, desires, and how she shows up in the world.

This period of reflection—stopping to look back before moving ahead, looking ahead knowing you won’t be the same person you once were—is evolutionary, not accidental.

I recently journaled about this space of pause I find myself suspended in and thought of Viktor Frankl’s words: “Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

In this pause, we can sense our past selves waning as a new version waxes forth into the future—much like the moon itself. Just as first light marks the subtle shift from night to day, this pause marks the subtle transition from who I was to who I am becoming.

And perhaps, this doesn’t have to be a struggle I find myself stuck in, but rather, the beginning of something illuminating.