Midlife Wake Up Call

Jody Brooks 0:01

You're not falling apart, you're waking up. If you're somewhere between 35 and 65, life feels like it's cracking open, the identity you built no longer fits, and the future feels terrifying. Nobody around you seems to get it. Welcome, I'm Jodie Brooks, and this is Messy Midlife. Because this isn't a crisis, it's a calling to connect. Welcome back to Messy Midlife. I'm Jodie and I'm glad you're here.

Week Two Begins

Jody Brooks 0:33

Today we begin week two, and this is where it starts to get really interesting. If you're brand new, a warm hello. You've not missed the boat. Everything on this podcast keeps circling back to one gentle idea that the mess in the middle of your life isn't a breakdown, it's a call. A call to come home to who you really are. So wherever you're joining from, you're here right on time. And if you were here with me last week, then you already know what we've been up to. All through week one, I asked you to become a kind observer of your own life. To notice the moments when you think, why did I just do that? We met the runaway bus and we stood in the pub. We opened the sat nav and saw that the loud, confident voice inside us is often reading directions from a map that stopped being accurate a long time ago. That was week one, noticing.

Ask Where It Comes From

Jody Brooks 1:29

This is week two. We go a layer deeper. Because once you've noticed the runaway bus, there's a very natural next question, and it's the one that's going to guide us all this week. Not why did I just do that? We've been living that one already. The question is quieter and honestly it's braver. It's this where does this response come from? Let me explain the difference because it's the whole shape of this week. Last week's question why did I just do that was about spotting the behavior, seeing the pattern, turning the light on, and that's essential. You cannot change what you cannot see, but noticing a pattern and understanding a pattern are two very different things. I could notice for years that I took control of every meeting, I could see it happening, I could even feel a bit embarrassed about it afterwards, but noticing it never once stopped it. Because I hadn't yet asked the deeper question. I hadn't asked where it came from. And until you know where a thing comes from, you're stuck just managing the symptoms of it. You're forever mopping up the water on the floor without ever looking for the source of the leak. That's what this week is. We're going to look for the leak. We're following the pattern back to its source. Not to blame anyone, not to get stuck in the past, but because understanding where a response was born is the thing that finally loosens its grip on you. Now before we continue, let's be clear about the word blame. I know some of you already be feeling a bit uneasy. Going back to where things came from can sound, on the surface, like we're about to spend a week blaming our parents, our childhoods, or the people who hurt us. And I promise you that this is not what we're doing. This is not about pointing fingers at anyone, including the people who genuinely got it wrong. It's not even about deciding they were villains. Most of the people who handed us our maps were just passing on maps they'd been handed themselves, doing their imperfect best with what they had. When I told you the story of my stepfather, I named it there. It's not about validation from others or about fault. It's about gaining clarity on your reality below the waterline. Understanding where a response comes from is not the same as blaming someone for it. It's simply seeing the truth of how you were built. So you can decide as a grown adult what you'd like to keep and what you'd like to gently put down. That's all. It's clarity, not accusation. Hold on to that because it keeps this work clean and most importantly, kind. So this week, when you catch yourself in a why did I just do that moment? I want you to add the new question gently. Where does this come from? Have I felt this before? Is this actually about now or is it about something much older? Now you don't have to have the answers, you just have to start asking a different, deeper question. The asking is the work.

Mismatch Signals The Past

Jody Brooks 4:49

Here's something that helps me every single time, and I want to pass it on to you. Whenever a reaction feels bigger than the situation deserves, that's your signpost. That's the flashing light on the dashboard telling you this isn't really about now. When someone makes a small, harmless comment and you feel a flare of rage that's completely out of proportion, when a tiny bit of criticism at work leaves you shaking for hours, when a friend cancels a coffee and you spiral into feeling utterly worthless and rejected. In each of those the size of the feeling is the tell. The present day thing is real, but it's small. The feeling is enormous. And that gap, that mismatch between the tiny trigger and the huge response is almost always the sound of the past knocking on your door. Something old just got activated. The situation in front of you isn't really the one you're reacting to. So this week watch for the mismatch. When your feeling is far too big for the moment, gently ask where does this come from?

Why Willpower Fails

Jody Brooks 6:01

That's the doorway. I want to talk to you about something that I think trips up almost everyone doing this work, and it's certainly tripped me up for years. It's this. Once you can see a pattern clearly, you expect to be able to stop it. It seems obvious, doesn't it? I can see I do this thing, I don't like this thing, so I'll just stop doing this thing. And then you try and it doesn't work, and you feel like a failure. Because surely if you can see it, you should be able to change it. If that's ever been you, please hear me. You're not weak and you're not broken. You are up against something genuinely powerful that I want to explain what it is. Because understanding it changed everything for me. I spent so many years in that exact trap. I'd have a quiet word with myself on a Sunday night, right Jody, this week you'll not take over every meeting, you'll sit back, you will let others lead. You will be calm, easy and relaxed. I really mean it. I'd almost shake hands with myself on it. And then Monday would come and I'd walk into a room, and before I'd even sat down, there I'd be again, leaning forward, taking charge, running the show, and on the drive home I'd feel that horrible mix of shame and confusion. I saw it coming. I promised myself how did I do the exact same thing I swore I wouldn't yet again. What is wrong with me? And I want to tell you, if you've ever had that drive home, that private sense of failing to be a better version of yourself, this next part is especially for you. Because there was nothing wrong with me, and there is nothing wrong with you. We were just trying to solve the problem at completely the wrong level. These old responses, the runaway bus reactions, are not decisions you're making in the moment. They feel like decisions, but they're not. They were decided a very long time ago, and they've been running underneath your conscious mind ever since on a kind of autopilot. And here's the thing that took my breath away when I first learned it. That autopilot is genuinely faster. It's already made its move before the thinking, reasoning, grown-up part of you has even arrived at the scene of the

Brain As Prediction Machine

Jody Brooks 8:36

crime. Let me give you the picture that finally made this lamb for me. I'll keep it light because I promised you at the start of this season that the science on this podcast would always be here to serve you, never to show off. There's a wonderful neuroscientist called Lisa Feldman-Barrett, and one of the ideas she's known for is this. Your brain is not really a reacting machine, it's a predicting machine. We tend to imagine it works like this, something happens out in the world, and then we react to it. Event, then response. Simple. But that's not actually what's going on. What your brain is really doing all day, every day is predicting. Before something even happens, your brain is running ahead using everything it's ever experienced to guess what's about to come and get your body ready in advance. Let me make that really ordinary because it's easy to make neuroscience sound like it's happening to somebody else in a laboratory. Think about picking up a cup of coffee. You reach out and before your hand touches it, your brain has already predicted how heavy it's going to be, and it's told your muscles exactly how hard to grip and lift. You don't think about any of this, it just happens. And you know it's a prediction because of what happens when it's wrong. If the cup is empty when you expected it to be full, your hand flies up in the air and coffee or air goes everywhere, and you get that funny little jolt of surprise. That jolt is the sound of the prediction being wrong. Your brain guessed heavy. Reality was light, and for that split second, the whole system had to scramble to catch up. That's your brain predicting all day long about everything, not just coffee cups, about people, about rooms, about whether you're safe, whether you're wanted, or whether you're about to be hurt. Your brain is constantly asking based on everything that's ever happened to me, what's most likely to happen next, and how should I be ready for it? And it does this using the map, the old map, the one drawn from every experience you've ever had, especially the one from when you were very, very small and everything landed hard. So when I walked into a meeting room, my brain wasn't calmly waiting to see how the meeting would go. He had already predicted, faster than thought, this is a room where I could be judged and humiliated. This is like the pub, get ready. And it got my body ready. Heart rate up, muscles tense, take control, now instinct armed and loaded, before a single word has even been said. Before the meeting had even properly begun, the prediction had already fired. Notice how clever and how unfair that is. My brain wasn't seeing the meeting room in front of me, it was seeing the pub laid over the top of the meeting room like an old photograph, held up against a window. The colleagues sitting there perfectly friendly, wanting nothing more than to get through the agenda and go home, my brain had quietly cast them as the customers in that pub bar. The ones who laughed. It matched the pattern, room, people, and possibility of being judged. Close enough, far the old response, and the maddening thing is it does this silently. It never announces by the way, I'm reacting to 1988 right now, not to this meeting. It just floods you with old feelings and the old urge and leaves you to explain yourself afterwards why you've behaved the way you did, which is exactly why for years the best explanation I could come up with was I suppose that's just how I am. It wasn't how I was, it was how I was predicting. And there's a piece of research that puts a number on just how far ahead this happens, and it's genuinely startling. Studies of the brain have found that the brain can commit to a decision up to seven seconds before you become consciously aware of having decided anything. Seven seconds. Now, I bet that pause felt like a lot more than seven seconds. I promise I've checked this fact carefully because I don't put anything in front of you that I haven't, and if I'm honest, I didn't believe it the first time I heard it. Up to seven seconds earlier the decision was already made, down in the machinery, and only later does the conscious get told about it and think Yes, that was my choice. Now I'm not sharing that to make you feel like a passenger in your own life. Quite the opposite. I share it because it explains something that used to make me feel like a total failure, and once I understood it, I could finally be kind to myself. It means that when you snap, withdraw, overgive, or take control, you're not doing so on purpose in the moment. The moment is far too late. The prediction fired seconds ago, before you were even aware there was a decision to make. So beating yourself up for the reaction is a little bit like shouting at yourself for a reflex. It's like telling yourself off for blinking when something flies at your eye. You wouldn't do that, would you? You wouldn't sit there afterwards ashamed thinking I really must have more willpower about that blinking. You'd understand that blinking is protection. Faster than thought and there's no shame in it. Well, so is snapping, so is withdrawing, and so is that yes you didn't mean to say. Faster than thought, protection, no shame in it. And I really want that to land because I carried so much shame about my reactions for so long. I thought my inability to just stop controlling was proof of some deep weakness in my character, a moral failing, something rotten in me, and learning that it was happening faster than my conscious mind could even get to the scene, that was one of the most healing pieces of understanding I ever came across. It didn't excuse the behaviour, and it didn't mean I had no responsibility for putting it right, but it lifted the shame, and once the shame lifted, I could finally look at the pattern with curiosity instead of self-hatred. And curiosity, as we know on this podcast, is where all the change lives. This is why willpower alone so rarely fixes these patterns. You cannot out willpower something that happens before you're even conscious of it. You cannot use the slow thinking part of your brain to catch something the fast predicting part has already done and dusted. What I also came to realise was that the actual trigger, the situation, words or feelings that caused the trigger was not the one I was feeling in the moment I became aware of the trigger as my bus gained speed. It was all in what had happened previously, not just the distant past, just moments before, in that seven second

Redrawing The Map

Jody Brooks 16:19

pause. So what do you do instead? You do exactly what we're doing this month. You go back in the calm, in the quiet, not in the heat of the moment, and you update the map. You look at the predictions your brain is making, and you gently ask, is that prediction still true? Is this meeting room really the pub? Is this person really a threat? Is this actually dangerous? Or does it just feel dangerous because it rhymes with something much older? You cannot change the prediction after it fires in those split seconds, but you can over time, in the quiet work of understanding, change the map from which the predictions are drawn. And when the map changes, the predictions change, and when the predictions change, the reactions change all by themselves, without any white knuckle willpower at all. That's the whole game. That's why we do this gently and patiently and away from the heat of the moment. Now that brings me back to the satnav. Because this is the same truth wearing different clothes. Last Friday I opened up the Satnav picture, the old map, the confident voice reading out directions from roads that don't exist anymore, turn left when there's a wall, straight on when there's a road closed, and I said the destination, your true self, never changed. Only the directions got old. Now put the prediction machine and the satnav together because they're the same thing. Your brain's predictions are the sat nav's directions. They're generated automatically, confidently, and just like the satnav, they were completely accurate once. When I was twelve in that pub, the prediction, rooms full of people can hurt you, take control or get hurt was not a malfunction. It was a brilliant, life-saving read of the actual situation I was in. The map was right. The trouble is nobody updated it. So thirty years later, the same prediction fires in a meeting room full of colleagues who have absolutely no intention of humiliating me. The road changed, the danger passed, but the sat nav keeps calling out the same old turns because that's the only map it's got. Here's the bit I really want you to hold on. This is why you cannot just decide to be different. The sat nav isn't waiting for your permission, it's already talking before you've woken up. Changing your reactions isn't about arguing with the voice in the heat of the moment. It's about slowly and kindly redrawing the map underneath it. So the voice has something new to read from. Instead of standing there saying, Well I'm sure this is the right road. I know it is, we came this way before. It's saying, I guess the roads have changed. Let's check the map and set a new route. That's the work of understanding. That's the road block we're looking at this week. The block isn't you being difficult. The block is an old map faithfully followed. Now I can almost hear some of you asking the obvious sensible question, so let me answer it. Because it's a good one. If the reaction fires in seven seconds before I'm even aware of it, and I can't argue with it in the moment, then what on earth is the point? I'm just doomed to keep doing this thing forever. And the answer is a beautiful no. Here's why. Every time you go back afterwards in the calm and you gently ask where that reaction came from, you look at whether the old prediction was actually true. You're doing a tiny bit of map redrawing. You're not catching the reaction in the moment, you've given up on that because we know it's impossible. What you're doing instead is slowly editing the source material, and do it enough times kindly, patiently, and something remarkable happens. One day the situation that used to fire the old response just doesn't fire it anymore. Or it fires it more weakly. Or it fires it and you notice and there's a little gap now. A breath, where before there was none. That gap is everything. That gap is freedom, and it doesn't come from fighting the voice, it comes from patiently, lovingly, change what the voice has to read from. Drip, drip, drip. Sunrise, remember, not lightning bolt. For me, I did a bit of reverse engineering. In these moments I accepted that the trigger had fired, but I realized that if I paused for seven seconds and took a breath, I could interrupt the loop in real time. If I control the next seven seconds with calm and safety, in seven seconds, my response will begin to change, and the conscious and the subconscious will catch up with each other. I'm sure like me, you've been in a situation where someone has said, Calm down, catch your breath, take a moment, and you become even more infuriated at that. In the moment it seems so dismissive and a little patronizing to say the least. It only makes the bus get faster. But when you say it quietly to yourself, with this knowledge. Knowledge and understanding, the results are truly life-changing.

Pub Story Deeper Roots

Jody Brooks 22:05

So let me take us back to twelve year old me and to that pub. Because I promise you this story would deepen every single week. This week is where we genuinely start to ask where does this come from? Still gently, we're not taking it fully apart today. That proper careful excavation comes next week, in week three when I hand you the actual tool, but we can start to look underneath. Last week I told you what had happened. My stepfather in front of a room full of customers called me the fat son that couldn't tell one screwdriver from another, and they all laughed, and I told you what I felt in my body, the hot neck, the flushed cheeks, the tight chest, the sick drop in the stomach, and the desperate urge to disappear. This week the question is different, not what happened, not what did it feel like, but where did this response come from? Why did that particular moment land so hard and dig in so deep that it was still steering me decades later? Here's where it gets interesting because the honest answer is that moment on its own probably couldn't have done all of that. One sentence, however cruel from one man on one afternoon, that's painful. But on its own, it's not usually enough to reprogram a whole life. What makes a moment like that land so hard is that it doesn't land on empty ground, it lands on top of something, it confirms something that's already half built. When my stepfather said what he did, it went so deep because some part of me was already wondering if it might be true, already half believing I wasn't good enough, already scanning for evidence, and that sentence in front of all of those people felt like the proof, like the world agreeing with the quiet fear I had already carried. Nothing really happens in isolation. My father abandoned me equals rejection, and you're not good enough. You're the stepchild, you don't fit in. It equals you're different, you don't belong. And I was truthfully the fat kid, no denying it, and the school bullies and now my stepfather were making that clear. Understanding was beginning to light a different path to the truth. Think of it like a splinter of ice going into water that's already cold. If the water were warm, the ice would just melt away and be forgotten. A child who felt completely unshakably safe and loved might have heard that same cruel sentence, shrugged it off, and thought what a horrible thing to say, and skipped off to play entirely untouched. The words would have melted on contact, but my water was already cold. There was already a chill in me, a readiness to believe I wasn't enough, laid down by a hundred earlier moments I couldn't even name. So the ice didn't melt, it went straight in, froze solid, and stayed. That's why the same event can devastate one person and barely register for another. It's never just the event, it's the event plus the water it lands in. It's the moment plus everything that came before that decides on the temperature of the water. That's how these things work. The big dramatic moment we can point to, the one we remember, is very often just a moment a much older, quieter belief got confirmed out loud. The pub wasn't where the belief was born, the pub was where it got its official stamp. On the map no longer a draft in pencil, this was now recorded in permanent ink, and that's really important distinction because it means the response doesn't come from that one afternoon, it comes from a whole slow accumulation of moments of which I can't even remember, that had already been quietly teaching a small boy that he had to earn his place, that he wasn't safe just as he was. I'm not going to dig into all of that today. That's deeper water than a Monday needs. I want you to sit with the idea this week, because it applies to you too. That thing you do, that runaway bus of yours, it probably doesn't come from the one dramatic story you'd tell if asked. It comes from underneath that story, from the slow, quiet accumulation of a thousand small moments that taught you what you had to do to be safe, or loved or accepted. The dramatic moment is just the one your memory kept, because it was the one that hurt the most or confirmed it the loudest. It simply became the destination confirmed on the map. The predictions and directions up to that point were now confirmed as correct.

Blocks Are Old Protection

Jody Brooks 27:21

Let's take a moment to reframe the word blocks. It can sound like a bad thing and I don't want you walking around this week thinking you're full of faults that need demolishing. A block, as I mean it, is not a flaw. A block is an old protection that's outdated, and it's welcome. Every single one of these patterns started as a form of protection. The controlling started as a way to stay safe from humiliation. The people pleasing started as a way to keep love from being withdrawn. The withdrawing started as a way to avoid conflict that once felt dangerous, and the perfectionism started as a way to go beyond criticism. Not one of them began as a flaw. Every one of them began as a frightened, clever child finding a way to survive the situation they were actually in. The block is what happens when the survival strategy keeps running long after the danger's gone, when the thing that once protected you starts quietly to cost you. The control that kept me safe in the pub started decades later to damage my relationships and exhaust me. The very thing that saved me became the very thing that was slowly harming me. That's a block, not a flaw, a protection that stayed far too long at the party. And I find that reframe so freeing because it changes the whole feeling of this work. We're not here to demolish parts of you. We're not here to fix what's broken. We're here to thank an old protector for its service and to gently let it know the danger has passed and it can finally stand down. You don't fight a block, you understand it, and understanding it is what lets it at least relax its grip.

Smoke Alarm Metaphor

Jody Brooks 29:14

I think of it a bit like an old smoke alarm that's become oversensitive. You know the kind, it's been on the ceiling for years and now it goes off every time you make toast, every time you run a hot bath and every time you so much as light a candle, screaming, deafening, and your instinct in the moment is to grab the tea towel and flap at it furious, shouting at it to shut up. But here's the thing, that smoke alarm isn't broken in the sense of being useless. It was fitted for an extremely good reason. Its whole job is to keep you safe from fire, and once upon a time, maybe there really was a fire, and it did its job magnificently. It just can't tell the difference anymore between actual danger and a bit of burnt toast. It's oversensitive and it's stuck on high alert for a threat that has long gone. Now you don't rip the alarm off the ceiling and stamp on it, however tempting it is in that moment, at seven in the morning with a smoking toaster and a screaming ceiling. It's been trying to protect you. What you actually do is take it down. Gently, you take the battery out so the noise stops, you open the kitchen window, you have a proper look at it, and you notice maybe it's fitted a bit close to the toaster. So you clean it, you move it a foot or two along the ceiling and you put it back up with a fresh battery ready to do its real job. Of course, you could just leave it on the side battery out and hope it's never needed again. Plenty of us do exactly that in life. We take the noisy old protection down, we relieve the screaming stopped, and we quietly decide we'll deal with it later. And sure enough, that works right up until the day there's a real fire, and then standing in the smoke, you'll never ever forget how much less damage there would have been if you'd just taken the time to fix the alarm and put it back where it belonged. That's what we're doing with these old protections this month. Not tearing them out, not leaving them on the side with the battery out either, and hoping for the best, taking them down kindly for long enough to understand them, cleaning them off, moving them somewhere they can actually tell the difference between toast and a real fire, and then trusting them to stand guard in the right place for the

This Week Practice

Jody Brooks 31:40

right thing. So here's what I'd love you to carry through the rest of this week. It builds on last week, so if you are with me, you'll recognise the foundations. Keep noticing your runaway bust moments and the smoke alarm screaming. But this week when you catch one, add the new question, where does this come from? And then if you feel ready, one gentle step further, when was the first time I remember feeling this way? Not the worst time, not the most dramatic time, the first time you can find. Because the first time is usually closer to the source. The first time is often a much younger you in a situation you'd half forgotten, learning the lesson that became the map. You don't need to do anything with what you find, you don't need to analyse it or fix it or even fully understand it, just find it. If you can, and be tender towards whoever you find there. Remember they were only ever trying to keep you safe. And if nothing comes, that's completely fine too. Sometimes just holding the question where does this come from is enough to let something start to surface in its own time. This isn't a test, it's an invitation, the gentlest kind. And sometimes the answer arrives days later, in the shower or on a walk or just as you're drifting off to sleep, long after you stop consciously asking. The mind keeps working on these questions in the background quietly once you've handed them to it. So ask and let it go. Trust that in asking the question has been received. And I'll give you one more gentle tool for the week, because I know some of you like something practical to hold. If a memory does surface and you find yourself face to face with a younger version of you, try this. Don't analyse them, don't interrogate them. Just in your mind, sit down next to them and ask them one soft question What did you need back then that you didn't get? Not what did you do wrong, not why did you react like that? Just what did you need? Because underneath almost every one of these old protections is a simple unmet need to feel safe, to feel that you mattered, to be seen, to be allowed to make a mistake and still be loved. And when you can name that need, gently, without drama, something in you begins to soften. Because a need that's finally been named is a need that can at last begin to be met, often by you. The grown up you, the one who's here now, listening to this, ready to give that younger self what nobody could give them then. Be careful with yourself this week, because where does this come from can stir up more than why did I just do that? That's normal and it's often a sign you're getting close to something real. Go at your own pace, there's no prize for going fast, there's no such thing as behind, and if it all feels like a bit much on any given day, you have my full permission to close the notebook, put the kettle on, and just be an ordinary person having an ordinary Tuesday. The work will keep, it always keeps. So let me gather up where we are because you've come a long way already and I don't want you to miss it. Last week you learned to notice. This week you started asking where it all comes from. You've learned that your old reactions aren't decisions you're making in the moment, they're predictions firing before you're even aware, drawn from a map made long ago. You've learned that this is why willpower alone doesn't work and why kindness and understanding do. The pub, and whatever your version of the pub is, isn't where the belief was born, it's where an old acquirator belief got confirmed. And you've learned that a block isn't a flaw, it's an old protection that stayed too long, and it can be thanked and it can now stand down. That's a huge amount of understanding for a Monday. And notice we haven't fixed a single thing. We're not trying to.

Grief And Tenderness

Jody Brooks 36:11

Remember, it's not a lightning bolt, it's a sunrise. And I want to name something you might be feeling, because I felt it too at this stage. There can be a strange grief in this work. As you start to see where your patterns came from, as you meet those younger versions of yourself and understand what they went without, it can make you sad, genuinely sad. You might find yourself mourning a little for the child who had to become so watchful, or so pleasing, or so in control, just to get through. That grief is not a sign that something's gone wrong, it's a sign that something's going right. It means you're finally letting yourself acknowledge that it mattered, that it was hard, and that it cost you something. We so often skip straight past that, don't we? We minimise oh it wasn't that bad, others had it worse, I should just get over it. But part of understanding is letting yourself feel at last that yes, actually, that was hard, and I did my best and I deserve some tenderness for what I have carried. So if you feel a bit tearful this week, let yourself tears are just love with nowhere else to go. Let them come and know that they're a part of the healing, not a detour from it. So let me leave you where we always begin. You're not falling apart, you're waking up. This week you're learning where your responses come from. You're learning that the fast predicting part of you has been reading from an old map, making its moves before you've even arrived, and you're learning the most freeing thing of all, that you were never weak for not being able to just stop. You were simply up against something that lives deeper than willpower can reach, and understanding, gentle understanding is how you finally reach it. So be kind to whoever shows up this week, to the younger you who first learned the lesson, to the older protection that stayed too long, they did their best, they kept you safe, and now slowly you're learning to let them rest.

Whats Next And Wrap Up

Jody Brooks 38:25

Now, before I go, I want to tell you about what's coming on Wednesday. I have the most extraordinary guest for you. Her name's Catherine Christani, and Catherine knows the far end of where does this come from, in a way that will stop you in your tracks. She spent years abandoning herself, pushing through, holding everything together until it all came apart at once. A business collapse, a divorce, and a breakdown so complete she describes ending up on the floor, curled in a ball, rocking back and forth. And out of that, out of the very bottom of it, she rebuilt a whole new life. And now she helps other people find their way back to themselves. Her story is week two in Living Colour, the blocks, the collapse, and what's waiting on the other side. You will not want to miss it, and you don't just have to listen to Messy Midlife, you can watch it too. Every guest episode is there for you on Apple, on YouTube and on Spotify. Or over on the Messy Midlife homepage, whichever way feels right for you. And if today has stirred something in you, if you're ready to stop doing this alone, I'd love for you to come and join us in the Messy Midlife community. It's warm, it's honest, it's completely free from judgment, and it's where all the free tools and worksheets live. It's the space where the mess becomes the beginning, in good company with people walking exactly the same rate as you. It's completely free to join. Come and find us, we've saved you a seat, and the link is in the show notes below. So, until next time, stay curious, stay kind, and keep coming home to who you really are. Thank you for spending this time with me on Messy Midlife. If this episode resonated, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who might need to hear it today. You can find the show notes below and more resources at authenticcoaching.me. And just a little gentle reminder, Messy Midlife is here for information, reflection and personal growth. It isn't a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, treatment, therapy, or any other professional healthcare support. If you have concerns about your physical or mental health, please reach out to a qualified professional. Until next time, take good care of yourself. And remember, midlife might be messy, but it's not a crisis, it's a calling to connect.