Crossing the Midlife Threshold
tl;dr: If you find yourself on the midlife threshold and feel the ground shifting beneath your feet, you are not alone. This June, we’re hosting a five-day immersion to turn towards midlife like the rite of passage that is. To move through this pivotal stage courageously, honestly, consciously and in community.
Two quick things before we start:
First: Happy Lunar New Year! Let’s welcome the Fire Horse! Strong independence, intensity, bold change, and high energy.
Second: Tuesday Rivera (my wife and beloved!) just opened registration for the Luminosity Intensive. “A program for women who know that in shining our own light, we make the way for others to do the same.” Learn more here.
Now back to our regularly scheduled programing…
Last year, Tuesday and I sent out a probe to see how many of you are interested in crossing this midlife threshold together. We wanted to know if you want to turn towards midlife like it is a rite of passage.
We were heartened by the dozens of responses.
A couple of weeks ago we invited those of you who expressed interest to be part of an exploratory call. And we were moved by the depths that we touched together.
There is something that wants to happen.
To that end, we want to invite you to join us for:
Crossing the Midlife Threshold
A five-day immersion
At the Watershed Center in Millerton, NY
From Thursday, June 18 to Monday, June 22
This is not a small commitment. It is a deep and intensive process.
We are drawing on 20 years of experience designing and facilitating transformational immersions for leaders around the world.
We are conjuring a workshop that will help you:
Shed outdated identities. Release the “armor” that once protected you but now limits growth, authenticity, and intimacy.
Navigate the midlife initiation consciously. Recognize midlife not as a crisis but as a rite of passage. As a descent that leads to wisdom.
Find permission and courage. Affirm that breakdowns and unravelings are necessary for authentic transformation.
Discover a deeper “YES.” Notice what is emerging as old ways and patterns fall away.
Integrate through practice. Learn tools to help you live from presence and wholeness rather than fear or old conditioning.
Belong in shared experience. Be in community with others walking through midlife. We were never meant to do any of this alone.
Write back directly if you want to learn more.
We are also glad to hear from you if this is something you want to do, but the dates don’t work for you.
Midlife: Openings and Closings
When we gathered two weeks ago I was left with the sense that we share a recognition that we are standing at a threshold. People spoke about grief for lives that will never be. There is anger at the systems and histories that shaped us. Old wounds are resurfacing.
It is a time in our lives when our bodies are changing and our relationships are shifting. I felt the shared sense that midlife is not just a phase. It is a spiritual and relational passage that our culture does very little to support.
I’ve been considering the radical changes of midlife at the same time that I’ve been thinking about rites of passage for our boys. And my friend Kenzo An reminded us about what Richard Rohr has to say about the threshold into adulthood. He names five truths that traditional cultures tried to transmit deliberately, rather than leaving people to learn them through crisis and breakdown.
Life is hard.
You are not that important.
Your life is not about you.
You are not in control.
And you are going to die.
It seems to me like midlife is a good time to integrate the lessons we were supposed to be taught as we entered adolescence.
Age and experience begin to free us from the denial of life and its terms, from entitlement, and frantic striving. Life itself begins to initiate us into humility, responsibility, and reverence. Most of us are encountering these truths now, in midlife, without much preparation and without much communal support.
Midlife is not only a narrowing; it is also an opening.
Yes, there are doors that close. Ambitions soften. And identities fall away.
Unconscious fantasies about unlimited time and possibility have to dissolve.
But in their place, something else becomes available: a deeper coherence, a greater freedom from comparison, a more grounded sense of what actually matters. When the fever of becoming begins to break, we are given the chance to inhabit our lives rather than chase them.
There is also, paradoxically, a renewed vitality on the other side of honest reckoning. It is not the same as the vitality of youth, often driven by proving and striving. It is the vitality of alignment.
When we stop organizing ourselves around avoidance, when we allow grief and anger and tenderness to move through us, when we accept that we are finite and not in control, something deep within us begins to unclench. There is an opening. A change. There is the possibility of acting less from a place of fear and more from the heart of devotion.
We discover that we still have something to offer. Not because we are invincible, but because we have been broken open and did not turn bitter. Midlife, consciously met, becomes less about managing decline and more about stepping into earned authority, relational depth, and a more interconnected, more durable joy.
Join us this June.
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