April 2, 2025 • 37 mins
This week, Claire Pedrick speaks with Helen Kewell about her book 'Midlife: Stories of Crisis and Growth from the Counselling Room.' They explore the complexities of midlife, including the intersection of aging and personal growth, the impact of menopause, and the societal perceptions of aging.
Helen shares insights from her counseling practice, emphasising the importance of recognising midlife as a time of transformation rather than decline. The discussion also touches on the experiences of men in midlife, the significance of death awareness, and valuable coaching insights for navigating these transitions.
Takeaways
- The aging process accelerates growth from mid-forties onwards.
- Midlife is often mischaracterised as a time of deficits.
- Menopause can be a catalyst for personal change and empowerment.
- Aging can bring a sense of freedom and authenticity.
- Visibility and invisibility are significant themes in midlife experiences.
- Men experience a different kind of invisibility in midlife.
- Awareness of death can profoundly influence our perspective on life.
- Coaches should recognize their own midlife transitions in their practice.
- Normalizing midlife experiences can help clients navigate their journeys.
- Transition is inherently linked to growth and self-discovery.
Contact Helen through Linked In or by email counselling@kewell.plus.com
Contact Claire by emailing info@3dcoaching.com or checking out her 3D Coaching Supervision Community
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If you’d like to find out more about 3D Coaching, you can get all our new ideas and offers in our weekly email.
Coming Up:
- Claire and Oscar are back with another episode of The Listening Experiment
- John Blakey will be talking about his new book: Force for Good
Key Words
midlife, aging, growth, menopause, coaching, personal development, invisibility, authenticity, death awareness, life transitions, Helen Kewell
We love having a variety of guests join us! Please remember that inviting someone to participate does not mean we necessarily endorse their views or opinions. We believe in open conversation and sharing different perspectives.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:13):
Hello and welcome to this week's edition of The Coaching Inn.
I'm your host, Claire Pedrick.
And today I'm delighted to be in conversation with Helen Kewell author of Midlife.
So listener Naomi contacted me and went, you two have to talk.
So here we go.
Welcome Helen.
Thank you.
Thank you for having me.
(00:35):
So midlife stories of crisis and growth from the counselling room, also great for coaches.
Before we talk about your book, tell us about you.
What's the journey that got you to this midlife place?
How long have you got?
The journey that took me to, I guess there's two things to say on that.
One is that the journey that took me to being a counselor, which is out of the corporateworld and into more of the one-to-one, interpersonal space, I suppose, which I think like
(01:08):
most people came about through various life transitions, traumas, growth.
opportunities, as I would like to say.
But drove me to think about looking at the micro rather than the macro, which is in myprevious and current career of being in the realm of organization and people change at
(01:30):
volume.
And I really wanted to come down to the what happens when two people have a conversationand it changes things, you know, down to that very small level.
So that was what took me to that.
And then to midlife, my
Specialism in my psychotherapeutic training accidentally became aging.
(01:51):
So my first book, which was on the topic of living and dying well, really focused on thelast decade or so of natural life, if we're privileged enough to reach that stage.
And I was cross because nobody was researching it, nobody was writing about it.
And yet it was just the most rewarding work I had found myself doing.
(02:11):
And in doing so,
and then approaching midlife myself in the last few years, actually realized that theaging process and the growth process actually really accelerates from mid forties onwards
as we come through all of these big life transitions and start working out who we want tobe when we grow up and the legacy we're going to leave as people.
(02:35):
So started to research and started to work more in that space.
And as is always the case, clients
that I worked with just happened to be bringing that into the work I was doing.
So it's this kind of wonderful moment of synchronicity if you believe in that stuff.
yeah.
Yeah, I love that you started with dying and then you're working backwards.
(03:00):
I think everything's about dying.
I we can get onto this topic, but you know, it is the thing that focuses us most on themeaning of life and the meaning of us and what we want to do with our time here as human
beings.
So I think it all starts and then it does all start and end there.
I agree.
(03:20):
I'm really passionate about dying and dying well.
And we're to talk about midlife.
But I'm sure, I'm sure there'll be some kind of crossover.
Yes.
So, so what have you discovered from these lovely people you've been working with?
Well, think I discovered a couple of things both with that, what I should say is, I'm sureit's the case for, or I hope it's the case for all practitioners, all the work that I do
(03:48):
with individuals changes me and vice versa.
And there's this lovely liminal space where everybody's growing and changing.
so I learned a lot about myself and I learned a lot about through that work, there's ashift in me as well.
So I think it's worth saying that.
I think what I learned, I to summarize it, I mean, there's and it's myriad, right?
(04:13):
But the main thing and the realization that really unlocked a lot of it for me was that wecan talk about midlife as a time of where the deficit starts in life.
we sort of, everything's just a bit less.
And that some of that is just natural because we may have
(04:35):
If we're lucky enough to have children or if we've chosen to have children, we might havechildren leaving the nest.
It's a kind of simple factor of mathematics, really.
They go to a certain point and they leave.
We may have friends around us who are becoming ill.
We may have parents that we're caring for who may then die.
We may have missed opportunities at work that we feel we won't get again.
(04:59):
So these are going to deficits, small deficits, which are badged as such.
in society and in our vernacular.
And I think the biggest realization for me was realizing that each of these shocks,earthquakes, lifequakes that we experience, from that, we grow.
(05:22):
Now, I know we know that on some level, but we don't hold that truth when we're talkingabout the aging process.
We talk about it as a sort of, I'm doing this with my hands, you this is kind of downward.
And so that's the most powerful thing I learned.
And if I'm able to just, because my book focuses on midlife and a lot of it is menopausebecause for 50 % of the population, there is a reality that midlife is associated with
(05:53):
menopause.
And the one thing that really hooked me into this work was that you'll remember, you mayremember there was a, and I can't even remember who to have,
attributed to but there's a piece of research that showed that a million women wereleaving the workforce because of the menopause.
And I was curious about that because I felt like it cast middle aged midlife womenapproaching the menopause in a very victim, in a place of being a victim of something.
(06:22):
And then I started to have conversations with clients and friends and myself and Ithought, is that, does that sort of does that?
statistic do us any good?
Because what it seems to play into is again, this deficit game of like, well, you know,there's these symptoms and you can't cope and therefore you have to leave work.
Those weren't the conversations I was having.
(06:43):
The conversations I was having were somethings, and this was my own experience, somethingschanging in me and I can't quite get my fingers around it.
I can't quite work out what it is.
But the way I showed up before and the things I tolerated and the things I wanted to doand the things that were around me just don't.
bit.
And, and I personally was filled with this really powerful rage, not that I put itanywhere in particular, but just like, no, I want to be different.
(07:13):
I want this to be different.
I want to do something different.
I saw things I didn't see before, injustices, maybe.
so I thought so.
So that's the second thing I learned that there's a sort of narrative that
that not everybody, in fact, nobody fits because there isn't, can't be a genericnarrative.
And, and that's helpful for social policy and that kind of thing.
(07:37):
But it's not helpful as an individual.
I think the shift that happens, particularly for women in menopause is that you becomesomething new.
And so you then have to start thinking about what's changing around you.
So that's not, it's not as simple as I just had to leave work because I was havingmenopausal symptoms, for example.
Sorry, long answer to your question, but if you can tell her.
(07:57):
I was on one then.
So many things to say, ask, wonder about.
I can remember when I was 30, a colleague of mine was 40 and she said, I'm loving being 40because now people believe I can do the things that I've been doing for the last 10 years.
(08:22):
And one of the things that I've noticed because I'm now 62 is I said to somebody the otherday, I don't care anymore.
And actually, that's such a gift.
It's an unbelievable gift.
And what did it unlock for you, that realization?
Did anything change in way that you operated or felt?
(08:43):
I I've got nothing to lose.
So I speak out in the profession because I've got nothing to lose because I haven't got myfuture careers not at risk.
And actually I don't think that I am losing the thing.
But there's that kind of fantasy fear, isn't there?
I can't do this because I've got something to lose.
(09:04):
And the menopause thing I think is fascinating because that was also a conversation I hadjust the other day with someone when I said,
You know, I went through the menopause too.
It wasn't spoken about like it is now.
And that was only like 10 years ago, 15 years ago.
And it wasn't a thing.
(09:25):
I mean, it was a thing, but it wasn't the thing thing that is now.
And so there's something for me that it's a really important life change and a transition,but there's also something that it's a bit of a marketing thing.
I 100 % agree with that.
And I think on that last point, there's this delicate balance of, and it's the right thingto do to raise awareness because on a very serious note, people are really, some people
(09:52):
suffer and some people suffer doubly because of social...
social constructs of what public health is for, depending on where you fit within thedemographics, you know, there are some really scary, and I'm not going to get into
political stuff now, but there's some very scary statistics around how women's healthreally differs depending on who you are in society, but that's a separate topic.
(10:21):
so it is a reality, and the more we raise awareness, ultimately the better it is.
However, I think what you're talking about is delicate balance because the more we talkabout it, potentially the less people listen.
There is what I call the Davina factor, which is everyone sort of slightly now and she'sdone an incredible job in raising awareness, but everyone's slightly, okay, here's the
(10:45):
minute pause thing again, know?
So there's this delicate balance, which is why it should always come down to each of ourown unique lived experiences of what's happening.
But your point about your friend or colleague in the 30s, when you were in your 30s,friends and colleague.
(11:06):
I felt something similar when I became 40, when I turned 40.
I wasn't, I was in training at the time, but I definitely wasn't, I didn't know myselfvery well at the time.
I was in that kind of beginnings of real self-awareness and I just did not want to be 40at all.
Didn't know it's hilarious.
I'm going to be 50 in four weeks time and I couldn't care less.
(11:28):
having a really big party.
the turning 40 was a real, a real fear of mine.
And I definitely remember the almost the next day turning up to work and going,
everyone has to listen to me now, because I'm a grown up.
I'm a grown up with 20 years experience, or thereabouts.
(11:52):
there's a permissioning that happens as we age.
And I think there's a really, that's probably my second learning is that by understandinghow we, how we are journeying through it, and where on what, where we're at, then you can
age with intent.
This is where I'm at.
And this is what and that's what that's what the coaching process and the counselingprocess can really
unlock the people.
(12:13):
This is who I am now and this is how I want to show up.
But something, if it's okay, I just want to pick up on something you said, because Ihaven't thought about it before.
And you jokingly said about me coming down the age brackets, now I'm like, maybe this is athing.
But maybe it's just as pressurizing and disorientating growing up in your 20s and 30s, onthe reverse, as it is in your 40s, 50s and 60s and 70s.
(12:42):
because of the, maybe you can't, maybe you don't have freedom to be yourself because youhave all the fear and the expectation of climbing whatever ladder or whatever, you know,
whatever kind of progression you're trying to find in the world.
And maybe you're not as free.
And that's, that's, that's, that makes me sad actually.
Yeah.
Yeah, and as you're talking, I'm thinking maybe as you're going up the ladder, yousometimes pretend to be older than you are and as you're coming down, you pretend to be
(13:11):
younger than you are.
Definitely think so.
So I don't know if it comes through on the recording, but I know I can think we both havesimilarly gray hair, right?
And then this is been three years, three years, about three years, two or three years,because I would sit in with the clients and I would say, aging is growth.
(13:33):
How do you want to grow?
Who do you want to be?
And we'd have these great conversations.
And then I'd run off to the hairdressers and have four weeks growth covered up.
I used to be dark as you know, dark, dark brown.
I was growing up and I suddenly, not suddenly, very, very obviously felt veryuncomfortable about that as a practitioner.
So I thought, I'll stop doing that.
(13:53):
And I've discovered I'm actually quite white in some places and quite grey in others.
And as soon as that happened, two things happened for me.
One,
I experienced what you experienced, is, I'm growing up now, people can, I can just do fivethoughts.
Cause I felt in my, I guess what I'm saying is my somatic experience of being my age was,I felt credible, credibly my age, instead of trying to pretend I wasn't, was that sort of
(14:28):
conflict within me, number one.
And number two, less positive, I suppose, in the grand scheme of things.
I'll occasionally catch myself in the mirror and think, what, what, you know, the, sort oflived experience of, you often hear people saying, don't, I don't think of myself as being
(14:48):
insert whatever age somebody is.
And there is that moment, that dissonance where I, you know, where it's kind of like areminder.
I don't know how you, I don't know how you've experienced it, but it's a bit of a shock.
And I suppose that is, that is midlife.
You're, you're facing one way and facing the other.
both at the same time.
a threshold.
My experience of it is the invisible grey woman.
(15:14):
And we came back from Spain on Saturday and on the plane, this young woman just walked allover me and another woman.
And I turned to, and I have really experienced being invisible.
And what's really odd about being invisible is that professionally I'm not invisible atall.
(15:35):
So I'm well known, you know,
people respect me, that's a really beautiful thing.
And when I'm just out there in the world as a woman with gray hair of a certain age andwrinkles, I am invisible.
In fact, if I ever write a novel, it will be called The Secret of the Silent InvisibleWomen.
Wow, I'll definitely read that.
(15:58):
It's going to be that they're going to solve murders.
Yeah, nobody sees them at all.
And I was with my husband the other day and he's six foot two and he's older than me, hemeant it doesn't happen to men so much.
And I was walked over and he went, you've always told me that, but I didn't believe you.
(16:25):
And now I've seen it.
I've seen that you're not there.
So I'll walk along the pavement.
There'll be three young people coming the other way, usually girls, and they'll walkstraight into me.
There's a real physical manifestation of something that people often describe feeling, butactually to tick, gosh.
(16:46):
I I, well, I think I'm in the privileged position of really noticing it because I, becausein my professional life, it's really not there.
And then in my personal life, it really is there.
And I think, well, I'm the same person.
So that's a bit odd.
Do you react when that happens?
Obviously you have a reaction, but do you react outwardly?
(17:07):
No.
I fell off the pavement one day, really hurt myself because they just didn't live anyspace at all.
Incredible.
And that is a reality.
It is and as I was talking before you before you brought your story, as I was talking, Iwas thinking also when I said something about being, being gray and feeling like I could
(17:36):
own my space more, there is all I was thinking there is that is also there's anintersection with with your economic independence, right, because because I can inhabit
that space because I
you know, have confidence or, you know, have more economic power than the next person.
(17:56):
I completely recognize that that is a privilege.
So coming back to your point, there is also a reality in terms of career, careerprogression, jobs, you know, for women in particular, not just for women.
And I want to come on to men in a minute.
think it's really important, but because you mentioned your husband.
I thought, yes, we must talk about the men as well.
(18:19):
But there is a really stark reality of either not having that economic power, not havingaccess to jobs as we get older, but also, unfortunately, and particularly for women,
caring for, becoming carers.
(18:40):
and not being paid for that and not being recognised for that and being invisible inanother way.
So there is that reality as well.
Can we talk about men?
Well, I was interested in your husband's response, but the one thing that I wanted to sayis that depending on, again, it all depends on, it depends on a number of things, but my
(19:04):
experience of working with male clients in their
midlife is that conversely they do feel invisible.
And that is largely because of the loss of for men in midlife generally, there's a senseof loss of power loss of obviously loss of virility, and then loss of physical power,
(19:28):
which can then internalize a sense of feeling less than an invisible, even if in the thethe perhaps in the corporate layers, particularly in the senior corporate layers.
they tend to be seen as wise and more important and more integral.
If we leave that aside, there's a sense of, who am I now?
I don't have, because men's, typically, I think, men's psychological development throughlife tends to be quite linear until this stage, just more of the same, increasing.
(20:02):
And then when we get to midlife, I mean, it's the cliche, but it's the cliche for areason.
And so what I often notice is that clients will come, male clients will come withsomething very specific that they want to work with rather than a general feeling of
malaise and I don't really know why I am in the world and because it's very specific andit's normally physical.
(20:27):
So that might be sexual problems with a partner or it might be physical pain, you know,sort of...
feeling low because of physical pain.
And obviously that's an entry point.
And then as we open out, we're in the work of who am I in the world?
(20:47):
Who do I want to be in the world?
So I think it's a different dilemma, but it's still very embodied in the same way, but ina different way to women, I would say.
I really want to ask you, what do you think, and you might not be able to answer thisbecause it's a bit hypothetical.
(21:11):
I just wonder what would have been different if you'd come up the midlife book withoutdoing the death work first.
I think it's such a good question.
And I don't think I could have done.
is the general, that's the quickest way of answering that question.
Let me answer that in a better way.
(21:32):
I wrote Living Well and Dying Well when I 40, 40, 41, let's say I started writing projectswhen I was 40.
And I definitely came to that work.
and the writing of it with the conceited youth and feeling like I knew quite a lot aboutthe world.
(21:56):
That's what I'm gonna say.
And it felt like a really long, long way away for me, if that makes sense.
I was very much in, I felt very empowered in the work I was doing with clients because allof the research, in psychotherapy, I haven't checked it.
out as much in the efficacy and coaching relationships, but certainly in psychotherapeuticrelationships, the age range or the age gap is not a factor in success or failure of those
(22:27):
relationships.
The only thing is the relationship and the trust.
I never felt it to be a barrier.
But I think for the writing of it, I grew immeasurably in my understanding of the worldand
and I grew immeasurably through my work with profoundly old, my first time was 95 and Iwas 39, I think at the time.
(22:52):
So I needed, I guess what I'm saying is that I was entirely changed by the work I wasdoing and the writing process of writing the book, of researching it, but then also living
through it and my own reflections on it, immeasurably changed me.
I think.
I think that brought me a necessary humility within the aging process of my own andunderstanding what it's like to then think about what my midlife is, think about midlife
(23:21):
in the way that I do, or even to think about writing about it.
Do you know?
I needed to have that process, I would say.
Yes, to begin at the end.
Begin with the end in mind.
Yes, and I interviewed, she's now a psychotherapist, an author called Stella Duffy, who isnow a psychotherapist.
(23:42):
went through her own training and she's a prolific author, playwright, various otherthings.
And she is an amazing lady.
She's very, very straight talking and I very much enjoyed our conversations.
And I want to credit this quote to her.
And I want to show you what she did when I interviewed her because she said to me,midlife, when you're in your midlife, death comes up and says, hi.
(24:03):
She did this with her hands and I've never forgotten it.
Yes, the first time we really unless we if we're privileged enough to have not beenchronically ill or had illness or disease.
It's the first time our bodies go.
You know, death that way, it's coming.
I think it is one of the first times we really consider it.
(24:25):
So I think I think it.
it naturally follows.
It's just that we don't necessarily acknowledge that to ourselves.
It feels, it's not a language we use, but it is the first time really where we really facedeath as a possibility.
yet we may be trying to restore everything back to normal in quotes.
(24:48):
Yeah.
Oh, I want to be me again.
think a lot of people who say I'd like to feel like me again, I want to go back to feelinglike me, those that that language, particularly if menopause is with women has taken a bit
of a toll on the body.
And I think it's quite a it's important to be gentle and kind with the process of saying,because I just want to go, but who are you going to be?
(25:14):
That's what we want to find out.
We're gonna do that internally, put that over there and take it to supervision and thenwind back and start gently edging towards what the possibility could be now.
Because obviously if somebody is really, really feeling all of the symptoms of whateverthat be, they're not going to want to hear me with pom poms suggesting there might be a
(25:38):
newly emerged brilliant version of themselves and whether that takes time.
But
I think it's there all the time, the possibility of being something new.
I often say to people in there, and I say it just to get a rise, but people who I workwith in there, let's say eighties, mid eighties, I'll just say, what do want to be when
you grow up?
And then we all laugh and then we come back.
(26:01):
But I'm not joking.
I think our growth potential is exponentially higher at this second half of life.
Because we know ourselves so much better.
Yeah, and we have different opportunities available to us depending on our economiccircumstances.
Absolutely that.
Yes.
(26:23):
Yes.
So I think I was interviewed recently for an article, I'm not going to name it becauseit's not out yet, but the journalist who interviewed me was trying to get a quote from me
to say that if we're negative as we age, we become negative and people won't like us andthey'll ignore us more, I'm paraphrasing wildly.
(26:54):
And I, and I, it was a really interesting interview because I spent the whole time movingus out of that conversation into a expansive conversation, but it didn't fit the narrative
of the, of the article, which was, you have to be positive as you're aging, otherwise,basically what I just said.
And it was a really interesting exercise for me to really butt up against.
(27:22):
what I write about in terms of how social construct works.
It was there in practice, if that makes sense.
And I felt quite frustrated that I couldn't, I was kind of frustrated with myself anddisappointed in myself that I couldn't, you know, somehow get this person to see, I
suppose, what I was trying to say, but it was just this force, yes, yes.
(27:45):
But if we don't, you know, if people are negative, then surely we're not meant to want tobe around them.
said, well.
It's our, you know, you can imagine how the conversation went.
I'm not going to replay it, but it was a really, yeah, it was a, it was an interestingexercise for me to come to really see that up, up close.
That's sense of negativity and deficits on the press, well, from, you know, the modernconstruct, I guess.
(28:13):
Yeah, and it makes me think about other views of difference, whether it's views about raceor views about gender or views about whatever.
It feels like that's coming from a...
Yeah, a place of judgment.
I think judgment and I think with aging in particular, There's a reason why people, I'mnot suggesting there's a good reason why people would ignore you personally, but there's a
(28:48):
reason why we make older people invisible.
it isn't them and us.
Aging isn't them and us, it's all of us, all the time.
And so it's a way of kind of boxing off and forming.
mean, it's a way of forming an understanding, but it's a way of boxing off and making safefrom things we don't understand or want to see or can't access.
(29:16):
It's kind of lazy.
You often hear that.
I often have that, I feel that challenge, particularly when it comes to race.
like, need, it's my job.
understand this better so that I'm I'm not saying I'm lazy, but it it reflects on me if Ican't cross that bridge of understanding.
(29:37):
And in that, but it's so surprising to me that we don't do it particularly with agingwhen, when for those of us who are privileged enough to live into older age, it's
happening to all of us.
Yeah, what an amazing conversation.
What are two or three things that you've learnt that you'd want listeners to hear who arecoaches?
(30:02):
Yes, no, that's a really good question.
want, I'd say what I said earlier around holding the idea that as coaches, we exist in aworld that is trying to do all of the things that I just said.
It's very seductive.
And honestly, in the, with the best supervision, with the best internal supervisor, withthe best will, with the no amount of processing and writing and
(30:31):
we are still going to be pulled into those, we like it or not.
So just remembering that means that the work is free of it.
Secondly, depending on your own journey, I'm making, I actually did some research on thisand I should have refreshed it before I came on, but certainly I can speak for
(30:54):
psychotherapy.
The demographic as a distinct,
bell curve in the middle age bracket.
most practitioners are going to be approaching their midlife transition or through it.
and, and well into, you know, aging wealth, let's say.
(31:15):
so all of our stuff is in the room as well.
and I would say that is both a blessing and a curse.
So no, what's yours.
as I said earlier, the, when I was talking about my pom poms, that's all mine.
Right?
It's partially mine.
It's partially mine.
And it's partially my hope for my clients, but it is, you know, part of mostly mine.
(31:39):
So know that that's in the room, work back from it, but also use it.
My midlife transition brought anxiety.
I didn't know until that point that I had never felt anxiety.
And I am so privileged to have not known anxiety until I was in my late...
my early 40s.
I know that now.
(32:00):
I thought I was anxious.
Then I felt it and I was like, this is alien.
And I do think that that's a touchstone for me for understanding when, when, when my,clients I'm working with bring something, it's not the same.
Of course it's not, but it helps me to, to as a frame of reference and knowing what'syours, being able to, you know, pull that to one side, but also use it.
(32:26):
use it in service of client work would be number two.
And number three is to whole, I would wish that everybody held the idea.
And I think we probably all do.
I can only imagine that all coaches would feel this way, that all transition is growth.
(32:47):
And
we have to, I'm certainly in psychotherapy, we have to hold clients in their pain and thentheir loss.
And of course we do hold that space, but we hold, we also hold hope and transition isgrowth.
And so we can hold the idea that through this and out of this, there's, there's more.
(33:08):
And if we hold that, then something will change and shift.
And so can I have four?
Because one just came to me.
The other one is, so my training is rooted in existentialism.
I'm an existentially informed humanistic counselor in my full title.
(33:31):
What that means is I love philosophy, it's mostly, and that's why death features a lot inthe work I do.
But the underpinnings of that is that
If we can come back to meaning and to purpose and our place in the world, that can anchorus.
And I do think that the midlife transition can be very disorientating.
(33:57):
So much is changing and almost imperceptibly until we're in crisis.
And then we're not really sure what happens.
It's the sort of boiling frog thing where you're suddenly in crisis and you're not reallysure how you got there.
So helping clients to
locate the meaning of that for them.
Again, not straight away, not like, I hear you, you know, not that, but just what's inthis for you, what, and what might be in this for you and how, what do you, what do they
(34:26):
feel about their place in the world now?
And that's, I find that that can be quite grounding at a time when everything's swirling abit and quite helpful.
So there we are, there's four.
Thank you.
Thank you.
And there's something isn't there that midlife is normal, it happens to for all of us inthe same way that dying is normal and happens for all of us.
(34:46):
Yes, you're absolutely right.
And to name it.
Because actually, if you haven't asked me this question, but now I'm reflecting on it, ifI think about the clients that I work with who were in their midlife years, I don't think
a single one came in and said they wanted to talk about their midlife transition.
(35:08):
was clients who've been with me for quite a long time who suddenly
had a new found anxiety that they didn't have before or fears they didn't have before orrelationships that had changed.
after a while, and one in particular who was in her early 40s and was suddenly noticingthat although she'd chosen not to have children and didn't want to have, indeed did not
(35:40):
want to have children, was finding all of this sort of biology coming up.
was very so so these it doesn't come with a fanfare and a flag is what I'm saying sonaming it in the way you just did and saying well this is what this may be what's
happening can be really powerful because and then normalizing naming and normalizing Isuppose those two things
(36:01):
Well, thank you.
I feel we should be drinking glass of wine with Naomi Ward.
I mean, think if you and Naomi and I ever got on one of these together, I think we'd haveto do a long form.
think you're right.
So Helen, your book's Midlife stories of crisis and growth from the counseling room byHelen Kewell I'll put the link in the show notes.
(36:24):
Thank you.
How do people get in touch with you they want to follow that?
Probably the easiest and quickest way is to find me on LinkedIn.
So it's just my first name, surname on LinkedIn.
Yes.
And yeah, that's I'm on there a lot.
So that's the easiest.
Okay.
Thank you so much.
It's been so good to talk to you.
(36:44):
And you, so thank you Helen Kewell for coming to the Coaching Inn and thank you everyonefor listening.
Bye bye.
Hello and welcome to this week's edition of The Coaching Inn.
I'm your host, Claire Pedrick.
And today I'm delighted to be in conversation with Helen Kewell author of Midlife.
So listener Naomi contacted me and went, you two have to talk.
So here we go.
Welcome Helen.
Thank you.
Thank you for having me.
(00:35):
So midlife stories of crisis and growth from the counselling room, also great for coaches.
Before we talk about your book, tell us about you.
What's the journey that got you to this midlife place?
How long have you got?
The journey that took me to, I guess there's two things to say on that.
One is that the journey that took me to being a counselor, which is out of the corporateworld and into more of the one-to-one, interpersonal space, I suppose, which I think like
(01:08):
most people came about through various life transitions, traumas, growth.
opportunities, as I would like to say.
But drove me to think about looking at the micro rather than the macro, which is in myprevious and current career of being in the realm of organization and people change at
(01:30):
volume.
And I really wanted to come down to the what happens when two people have a conversationand it changes things, you know, down to that very small level.
So that was what took me to that.
And then to midlife, my
Specialism in my psychotherapeutic training accidentally became aging.
(01:51):
So my first book, which was on the topic of living and dying well, really focused on thelast decade or so of natural life, if we're privileged enough to reach that stage.
And I was cross because nobody was researching it, nobody was writing about it.
And yet it was just the most rewarding work I had found myself doing.
(02:11):
And in doing so,
and then approaching midlife myself in the last few years, actually realized that theaging process and the growth process actually really accelerates from mid forties onwards
as we come through all of these big life transitions and start working out who we want tobe when we grow up and the legacy we're going to leave as people.
(02:35):
So started to research and started to work more in that space.
And as is always the case, clients
that I worked with just happened to be bringing that into the work I was doing.
So it's this kind of wonderful moment of synchronicity if you believe in that stuff.
yeah.
Yeah, I love that you started with dying and then you're working backwards.
(03:00):
I think everything's about dying.
I we can get onto this topic, but you know, it is the thing that focuses us most on themeaning of life and the meaning of us and what we want to do with our time here as human
beings.
So I think it all starts and then it does all start and end there.
I agree.
(03:20):
I'm really passionate about dying and dying well.
And we're to talk about midlife.
But I'm sure, I'm sure there'll be some kind of crossover.
Yes.
So, so what have you discovered from these lovely people you've been working with?
Well, think I discovered a couple of things both with that, what I should say is, I'm sureit's the case for, or I hope it's the case for all practitioners, all the work that I do
(03:48):
with individuals changes me and vice versa.
And there's this lovely liminal space where everybody's growing and changing.
so I learned a lot about myself and I learned a lot about through that work, there's ashift in me as well.
So I think it's worth saying that.
I think what I learned, I to summarize it, I mean, there's and it's myriad, right?
(04:13):
But the main thing and the realization that really unlocked a lot of it for me was that wecan talk about midlife as a time of where the deficit starts in life.
we sort of, everything's just a bit less.
And that some of that is just natural because we may have
(04:35):
If we're lucky enough to have children or if we've chosen to have children, we might havechildren leaving the nest.
It's a kind of simple factor of mathematics, really.
They go to a certain point and they leave.
We may have friends around us who are becoming ill.
We may have parents that we're caring for who may then die.
We may have missed opportunities at work that we feel we won't get again.
(04:59):
So these are going to deficits, small deficits, which are badged as such.
in society and in our vernacular.
And I think the biggest realization for me was realizing that each of these shocks,earthquakes, lifequakes that we experience, from that, we grow.
(05:22):
Now, I know we know that on some level, but we don't hold that truth when we're talkingabout the aging process.
We talk about it as a sort of, I'm doing this with my hands, you this is kind of downward.
And so that's the most powerful thing I learned.
And if I'm able to just, because my book focuses on midlife and a lot of it is menopausebecause for 50 % of the population, there is a reality that midlife is associated with
(05:53):
menopause.
And the one thing that really hooked me into this work was that you'll remember, you mayremember there was a, and I can't even remember who to have,
attributed to but there's a piece of research that showed that a million women wereleaving the workforce because of the menopause.
And I was curious about that because I felt like it cast middle aged midlife womenapproaching the menopause in a very victim, in a place of being a victim of something.
(06:22):
And then I started to have conversations with clients and friends and myself and Ithought, is that, does that sort of does that?
statistic do us any good?
Because what it seems to play into is again, this deficit game of like, well, you know,there's these symptoms and you can't cope and therefore you have to leave work.
Those weren't the conversations I was having.
(06:43):
The conversations I was having were somethings, and this was my own experience, somethingschanging in me and I can't quite get my fingers around it.
I can't quite work out what it is.
But the way I showed up before and the things I tolerated and the things I wanted to doand the things that were around me just don't.
bit.
And, and I personally was filled with this really powerful rage, not that I put itanywhere in particular, but just like, no, I want to be different.
(07:13):
I want this to be different.
I want to do something different.
I saw things I didn't see before, injustices, maybe.
so I thought so.
So that's the second thing I learned that there's a sort of narrative that
that not everybody, in fact, nobody fits because there isn't, can't be a genericnarrative.
And, and that's helpful for social policy and that kind of thing.
(07:37):
But it's not helpful as an individual.
I think the shift that happens, particularly for women in menopause is that you becomesomething new.
And so you then have to start thinking about what's changing around you.
So that's not, it's not as simple as I just had to leave work because I was havingmenopausal symptoms, for example.
Sorry, long answer to your question, but if you can tell her.
(07:57):
I was on one then.
So many things to say, ask, wonder about.
I can remember when I was 30, a colleague of mine was 40 and she said, I'm loving being 40because now people believe I can do the things that I've been doing for the last 10 years.
(08:22):
And one of the things that I've noticed because I'm now 62 is I said to somebody the otherday, I don't care anymore.
And actually, that's such a gift.
It's an unbelievable gift.
And what did it unlock for you, that realization?
Did anything change in way that you operated or felt?
(08:43):
I I've got nothing to lose.
So I speak out in the profession because I've got nothing to lose because I haven't got myfuture careers not at risk.
And actually I don't think that I am losing the thing.
But there's that kind of fantasy fear, isn't there?
I can't do this because I've got something to lose.
(09:04):
And the menopause thing I think is fascinating because that was also a conversation I hadjust the other day with someone when I said,
You know, I went through the menopause too.
It wasn't spoken about like it is now.
And that was only like 10 years ago, 15 years ago.
And it wasn't a thing.
(09:25):
I mean, it was a thing, but it wasn't the thing thing that is now.
And so there's something for me that it's a really important life change and a transition,but there's also something that it's a bit of a marketing thing.
I 100 % agree with that.
And I think on that last point, there's this delicate balance of, and it's the right thingto do to raise awareness because on a very serious note, people are really, some people
(09:52):
suffer and some people suffer doubly because of social...
social constructs of what public health is for, depending on where you fit within thedemographics, you know, there are some really scary, and I'm not going to get into
political stuff now, but there's some very scary statistics around how women's healthreally differs depending on who you are in society, but that's a separate topic.
(10:21):
so it is a reality, and the more we raise awareness, ultimately the better it is.
However, I think what you're talking about is delicate balance because the more we talkabout it, potentially the less people listen.
There is what I call the Davina factor, which is everyone sort of slightly now and she'sdone an incredible job in raising awareness, but everyone's slightly, okay, here's the
(10:45):
minute pause thing again, know?
So there's this delicate balance, which is why it should always come down to each of ourown unique lived experiences of what's happening.
But your point about your friend or colleague in the 30s, when you were in your 30s,friends and colleague.
(11:06):
I felt something similar when I became 40, when I turned 40.
I wasn't, I was in training at the time, but I definitely wasn't, I didn't know myselfvery well at the time.
I was in that kind of beginnings of real self-awareness and I just did not want to be 40at all.
Didn't know it's hilarious.
I'm going to be 50 in four weeks time and I couldn't care less.
(11:28):
having a really big party.
the turning 40 was a real, a real fear of mine.
And I definitely remember the almost the next day turning up to work and going,
everyone has to listen to me now, because I'm a grown up.
I'm a grown up with 20 years experience, or thereabouts.
(11:52):
there's a permissioning that happens as we age.
And I think there's a really, that's probably my second learning is that by understandinghow we, how we are journeying through it, and where on what, where we're at, then you can
age with intent.
This is where I'm at.
And this is what and that's what that's what the coaching process and the counselingprocess can really
unlock the people.
(12:13):
This is who I am now and this is how I want to show up.
But something, if it's okay, I just want to pick up on something you said, because Ihaven't thought about it before.
And you jokingly said about me coming down the age brackets, now I'm like, maybe this is athing.
But maybe it's just as pressurizing and disorientating growing up in your 20s and 30s, onthe reverse, as it is in your 40s, 50s and 60s and 70s.
(12:42):
because of the, maybe you can't, maybe you don't have freedom to be yourself because youhave all the fear and the expectation of climbing whatever ladder or whatever, you know,
whatever kind of progression you're trying to find in the world.
And maybe you're not as free.
And that's, that's, that's, that makes me sad actually.
Yeah.
Yeah, and as you're talking, I'm thinking maybe as you're going up the ladder, yousometimes pretend to be older than you are and as you're coming down, you pretend to be
(13:11):
younger than you are.
Definitely think so.
So I don't know if it comes through on the recording, but I know I can think we both havesimilarly gray hair, right?
And then this is been three years, three years, about three years, two or three years,because I would sit in with the clients and I would say, aging is growth.
(13:33):
How do you want to grow?
Who do you want to be?
And we'd have these great conversations.
And then I'd run off to the hairdressers and have four weeks growth covered up.
I used to be dark as you know, dark, dark brown.
I was growing up and I suddenly, not suddenly, very, very obviously felt veryuncomfortable about that as a practitioner.
So I thought, I'll stop doing that.
(13:53):
And I've discovered I'm actually quite white in some places and quite grey in others.
And as soon as that happened, two things happened for me.
One,
I experienced what you experienced, is, I'm growing up now, people can, I can just do fivethoughts.
Cause I felt in my, I guess what I'm saying is my somatic experience of being my age was,I felt credible, credibly my age, instead of trying to pretend I wasn't, was that sort of
(14:28):
conflict within me, number one.
And number two, less positive, I suppose, in the grand scheme of things.
I'll occasionally catch myself in the mirror and think, what, what, you know, the, sort oflived experience of, you often hear people saying, don't, I don't think of myself as being
(14:48):
insert whatever age somebody is.
And there is that moment, that dissonance where I, you know, where it's kind of like areminder.
I don't know how you, I don't know how you've experienced it, but it's a bit of a shock.
And I suppose that is, that is midlife.
You're, you're facing one way and facing the other.
both at the same time.
a threshold.
My experience of it is the invisible grey woman.
(15:14):
And we came back from Spain on Saturday and on the plane, this young woman just walked allover me and another woman.
And I turned to, and I have really experienced being invisible.
And what's really odd about being invisible is that professionally I'm not invisible atall.
(15:35):
So I'm well known, you know,
people respect me, that's a really beautiful thing.
And when I'm just out there in the world as a woman with gray hair of a certain age andwrinkles, I am invisible.
In fact, if I ever write a novel, it will be called The Secret of the Silent InvisibleWomen.
Wow, I'll definitely read that.
(15:58):
It's going to be that they're going to solve murders.
Yeah, nobody sees them at all.
And I was with my husband the other day and he's six foot two and he's older than me, hemeant it doesn't happen to men so much.
And I was walked over and he went, you've always told me that, but I didn't believe you.
(16:25):
And now I've seen it.
I've seen that you're not there.
So I'll walk along the pavement.
There'll be three young people coming the other way, usually girls, and they'll walkstraight into me.
There's a real physical manifestation of something that people often describe feeling, butactually to tick, gosh.
(16:46):
I I, well, I think I'm in the privileged position of really noticing it because I, becausein my professional life, it's really not there.
And then in my personal life, it really is there.
And I think, well, I'm the same person.
So that's a bit odd.
Do you react when that happens?
Obviously you have a reaction, but do you react outwardly?
(17:07):
No.
I fell off the pavement one day, really hurt myself because they just didn't live anyspace at all.
Incredible.
And that is a reality.
It is and as I was talking before you before you brought your story, as I was talking, Iwas thinking also when I said something about being, being gray and feeling like I could
(17:36):
own my space more, there is all I was thinking there is that is also there's anintersection with with your economic independence, right, because because I can inhabit
that space because I
you know, have confidence or, you know, have more economic power than the next person.
(17:56):
I completely recognize that that is a privilege.
So coming back to your point, there is also a reality in terms of career, careerprogression, jobs, you know, for women in particular, not just for women.
And I want to come on to men in a minute.
think it's really important, but because you mentioned your husband.
I thought, yes, we must talk about the men as well.
(18:19):
But there is a really stark reality of either not having that economic power, not havingaccess to jobs as we get older, but also, unfortunately, and particularly for women,
caring for, becoming carers.
(18:40):
and not being paid for that and not being recognised for that and being invisible inanother way.
So there is that reality as well.
Can we talk about men?
Well, I was interested in your husband's response, but the one thing that I wanted to sayis that depending on, again, it all depends on, it depends on a number of things, but my
(19:04):
experience of working with male clients in their
midlife is that conversely they do feel invisible.
And that is largely because of the loss of for men in midlife generally, there's a senseof loss of power loss of obviously loss of virility, and then loss of physical power,
(19:28):
which can then internalize a sense of feeling less than an invisible, even if in the thethe perhaps in the corporate layers, particularly in the senior corporate layers.
they tend to be seen as wise and more important and more integral.
If we leave that aside, there's a sense of, who am I now?
I don't have, because men's, typically, I think, men's psychological development throughlife tends to be quite linear until this stage, just more of the same, increasing.
(20:02):
And then when we get to midlife, I mean, it's the cliche, but it's the cliche for areason.
And so what I often notice is that clients will come, male clients will come withsomething very specific that they want to work with rather than a general feeling of
malaise and I don't really know why I am in the world and because it's very specific andit's normally physical.
(20:27):
So that might be sexual problems with a partner or it might be physical pain, you know,sort of...
feeling low because of physical pain.
And obviously that's an entry point.
And then as we open out, we're in the work of who am I in the world?
(20:47):
Who do I want to be in the world?
So I think it's a different dilemma, but it's still very embodied in the same way, but ina different way to women, I would say.
I really want to ask you, what do you think, and you might not be able to answer thisbecause it's a bit hypothetical.
(21:11):
I just wonder what would have been different if you'd come up the midlife book withoutdoing the death work first.
I think it's such a good question.
And I don't think I could have done.
is the general, that's the quickest way of answering that question.
Let me answer that in a better way.
(21:32):
I wrote Living Well and Dying Well when I 40, 40, 41, let's say I started writing projectswhen I was 40.
And I definitely came to that work.
and the writing of it with the conceited youth and feeling like I knew quite a lot aboutthe world.
(21:56):
That's what I'm gonna say.
And it felt like a really long, long way away for me, if that makes sense.
I was very much in, I felt very empowered in the work I was doing with clients because allof the research, in psychotherapy, I haven't checked it.
out as much in the efficacy and coaching relationships, but certainly in psychotherapeuticrelationships, the age range or the age gap is not a factor in success or failure of those
(22:27):
relationships.
The only thing is the relationship and the trust.
I never felt it to be a barrier.
But I think for the writing of it, I grew immeasurably in my understanding of the worldand
and I grew immeasurably through my work with profoundly old, my first time was 95 and Iwas 39, I think at the time.
(22:52):
So I needed, I guess what I'm saying is that I was entirely changed by the work I wasdoing and the writing process of writing the book, of researching it, but then also living
through it and my own reflections on it, immeasurably changed me.
I think.
I think that brought me a necessary humility within the aging process of my own andunderstanding what it's like to then think about what my midlife is, think about midlife
(23:21):
in the way that I do, or even to think about writing about it.
Do you know?
I needed to have that process, I would say.
Yes, to begin at the end.
Begin with the end in mind.
Yes, and I interviewed, she's now a psychotherapist, an author called Stella Duffy, who isnow a psychotherapist.
(23:42):
went through her own training and she's a prolific author, playwright, various otherthings.
And she is an amazing lady.
She's very, very straight talking and I very much enjoyed our conversations.
And I want to credit this quote to her.
And I want to show you what she did when I interviewed her because she said to me,midlife, when you're in your midlife, death comes up and says, hi.
(24:03):
She did this with her hands and I've never forgotten it.
Yes, the first time we really unless we if we're privileged enough to have not beenchronically ill or had illness or disease.
It's the first time our bodies go.
You know, death that way, it's coming.
I think it is one of the first times we really consider it.
(24:25):
So I think I think it.
it naturally follows.
It's just that we don't necessarily acknowledge that to ourselves.
It feels, it's not a language we use, but it is the first time really where we really facedeath as a possibility.
yet we may be trying to restore everything back to normal in quotes.
(24:48):
Yeah.
Oh, I want to be me again.
think a lot of people who say I'd like to feel like me again, I want to go back to feelinglike me, those that that language, particularly if menopause is with women has taken a bit
of a toll on the body.
And I think it's quite a it's important to be gentle and kind with the process of saying,because I just want to go, but who are you going to be?
(25:14):
That's what we want to find out.
We're gonna do that internally, put that over there and take it to supervision and thenwind back and start gently edging towards what the possibility could be now.
Because obviously if somebody is really, really feeling all of the symptoms of whateverthat be, they're not going to want to hear me with pom poms suggesting there might be a
(25:38):
newly emerged brilliant version of themselves and whether that takes time.
But
I think it's there all the time, the possibility of being something new.
I often say to people in there, and I say it just to get a rise, but people who I workwith in there, let's say eighties, mid eighties, I'll just say, what do want to be when
you grow up?
And then we all laugh and then we come back.
(26:01):
But I'm not joking.
I think our growth potential is exponentially higher at this second half of life.
Because we know ourselves so much better.
Yeah, and we have different opportunities available to us depending on our economiccircumstances.
Absolutely that.
Yes.
(26:23):
Yes.
So I think I was interviewed recently for an article, I'm not going to name it becauseit's not out yet, but the journalist who interviewed me was trying to get a quote from me
to say that if we're negative as we age, we become negative and people won't like us andthey'll ignore us more, I'm paraphrasing wildly.
(26:54):
And I, and I, it was a really interesting interview because I spent the whole time movingus out of that conversation into a expansive conversation, but it didn't fit the narrative
of the, of the article, which was, you have to be positive as you're aging, otherwise,basically what I just said.
And it was a really interesting exercise for me to really butt up against.
(27:22):
what I write about in terms of how social construct works.
It was there in practice, if that makes sense.
And I felt quite frustrated that I couldn't, I was kind of frustrated with myself anddisappointed in myself that I couldn't, you know, somehow get this person to see, I
suppose, what I was trying to say, but it was just this force, yes, yes.
(27:45):
But if we don't, you know, if people are negative, then surely we're not meant to want tobe around them.
said, well.
It's our, you know, you can imagine how the conversation went.
I'm not going to replay it, but it was a really, yeah, it was a, it was an interestingexercise for me to come to really see that up, up close.
That's sense of negativity and deficits on the press, well, from, you know, the modernconstruct, I guess.
(28:13):
Yeah, and it makes me think about other views of difference, whether it's views about raceor views about gender or views about whatever.
It feels like that's coming from a...
Yeah, a place of judgment.
I think judgment and I think with aging in particular, There's a reason why people, I'mnot suggesting there's a good reason why people would ignore you personally, but there's a
(28:48):
reason why we make older people invisible.
it isn't them and us.
Aging isn't them and us, it's all of us, all the time.
And so it's a way of kind of boxing off and forming.
mean, it's a way of forming an understanding, but it's a way of boxing off and making safefrom things we don't understand or want to see or can't access.
(29:16):
It's kind of lazy.
You often hear that.
I often have that, I feel that challenge, particularly when it comes to race.
like, need, it's my job.
understand this better so that I'm I'm not saying I'm lazy, but it it reflects on me if Ican't cross that bridge of understanding.
(29:37):
And in that, but it's so surprising to me that we don't do it particularly with agingwhen, when for those of us who are privileged enough to live into older age, it's
happening to all of us.
Yeah, what an amazing conversation.
What are two or three things that you've learnt that you'd want listeners to hear who arecoaches?
(30:02):
Yes, no, that's a really good question.
want, I'd say what I said earlier around holding the idea that as coaches, we exist in aworld that is trying to do all of the things that I just said.
It's very seductive.
And honestly, in the, with the best supervision, with the best internal supervisor, withthe best will, with the no amount of processing and writing and
(30:31):
we are still going to be pulled into those, we like it or not.
So just remembering that means that the work is free of it.
Secondly, depending on your own journey, I'm making, I actually did some research on thisand I should have refreshed it before I came on, but certainly I can speak for
(30:54):
psychotherapy.
The demographic as a distinct,
bell curve in the middle age bracket.
most practitioners are going to be approaching their midlife transition or through it.
and, and well into, you know, aging wealth, let's say.
(31:15):
so all of our stuff is in the room as well.
and I would say that is both a blessing and a curse.
So no, what's yours.
as I said earlier, the, when I was talking about my pom poms, that's all mine.
Right?
It's partially mine.
It's partially mine.
And it's partially my hope for my clients, but it is, you know, part of mostly mine.
(31:39):
So know that that's in the room, work back from it, but also use it.
My midlife transition brought anxiety.
I didn't know until that point that I had never felt anxiety.
And I am so privileged to have not known anxiety until I was in my late...
my early 40s.
I know that now.
(32:00):
I thought I was anxious.
Then I felt it and I was like, this is alien.
And I do think that that's a touchstone for me for understanding when, when, when my,clients I'm working with bring something, it's not the same.
Of course it's not, but it helps me to, to as a frame of reference and knowing what'syours, being able to, you know, pull that to one side, but also use it.
(32:26):
use it in service of client work would be number two.
And number three is to whole, I would wish that everybody held the idea.
And I think we probably all do.
I can only imagine that all coaches would feel this way, that all transition is growth.
(32:47):
And
we have to, I'm certainly in psychotherapy, we have to hold clients in their pain and thentheir loss.
And of course we do hold that space, but we hold, we also hold hope and transition isgrowth.
And so we can hold the idea that through this and out of this, there's, there's more.
(33:08):
And if we hold that, then something will change and shift.
And so can I have four?
Because one just came to me.
The other one is, so my training is rooted in existentialism.
I'm an existentially informed humanistic counselor in my full title.
(33:31):
What that means is I love philosophy, it's mostly, and that's why death features a lot inthe work I do.
But the underpinnings of that is that
If we can come back to meaning and to purpose and our place in the world, that can anchorus.
And I do think that the midlife transition can be very disorientating.
(33:57):
So much is changing and almost imperceptibly until we're in crisis.
And then we're not really sure what happens.
It's the sort of boiling frog thing where you're suddenly in crisis and you're not reallysure how you got there.
So helping clients to
locate the meaning of that for them.
Again, not straight away, not like, I hear you, you know, not that, but just what's inthis for you, what, and what might be in this for you and how, what do you, what do they
(34:26):
feel about their place in the world now?
And that's, I find that that can be quite grounding at a time when everything's swirling abit and quite helpful.
So there we are, there's four.
Thank you.
Thank you.
And there's something isn't there that midlife is normal, it happens to for all of us inthe same way that dying is normal and happens for all of us.
(34:46):
Yes, you're absolutely right.
And to name it.
Because actually, if you haven't asked me this question, but now I'm reflecting on it, ifI think about the clients that I work with who were in their midlife years, I don't think
a single one came in and said they wanted to talk about their midlife transition.
(35:08):
was clients who've been with me for quite a long time who suddenly
had a new found anxiety that they didn't have before or fears they didn't have before orrelationships that had changed.
after a while, and one in particular who was in her early 40s and was suddenly noticingthat although she'd chosen not to have children and didn't want to have, indeed did not
(35:40):
want to have children, was finding all of this sort of biology coming up.
was very so so these it doesn't come with a fanfare and a flag is what I'm saying sonaming it in the way you just did and saying well this is what this may be what's
happening can be really powerful because and then normalizing naming and normalizing Isuppose those two things
(36:01):
Well, thank you.
I feel we should be drinking glass of wine with Naomi Ward.
I mean, think if you and Naomi and I ever got on one of these together, I think we'd haveto do a long form.
think you're right.
So Helen, your book's Midlife stories of crisis and growth from the counseling room byHelen Kewell I'll put the link in the show notes.
(36:24):
Thank you.
How do people get in touch with you they want to follow that?
Probably the easiest and quickest way is to find me on LinkedIn.
So it's just my first name, surname on LinkedIn.
Yes.
And yeah, that's I'm on there a lot.
So that's the easiest.
Okay.
Thank you so much.
It's been so good to talk to you.
(36:44):
And you, so thank you Helen Kewell for coming to the Coaching Inn and thank you everyonefor listening.
Bye bye.
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