Week Three: I've Lost My Sense of Purpose
52 Narrative Shifts to Reinvent Your Midlife
1It's time for a reinvention! You’ll bust one limiting belief every week and re-write your empowering narrative. I’ll provide reflection prompts and fun, doable action steps to keep you moving forward. Use 2025 to reclaim the starring role in your own life story. You’ll be more confident, more curious, and more ready than ever to embrace what’s next.
It’s like Glinda said, “You’ve had the power all along, my dear. You just had to learn it for yourself”
Desperate for change? Yearning for adventure? You have everything you need to live the life of your dreams within you. You just need a little nudge, that’s all!
Have I told you about my trip to Antarctica?
I promise this is relevant to your sense of purpose, or lack thereof.
My husband is a history fanatic. Like, he should have been a history teacher fanatic. Me? Unless it has the word "Tudor" in it, I'm not interested. For my husband, the idea of sailing across the most dangerous sea crossing in the world (The Drake Passage) to walk in the footsteps of great explorers like Ernest Shackleton was a dream come true. For me? A total nightmare.
He'd been begging me for the prior ten years, basically since we could afford it, to make the trip with him. For the prior ten years, I had been saying no. I get seasick (Who am I kidding? I get land sick too. Put me on a windy road in the back seat, and you'd better have leather upholstery, is all I'm saying). I'm terrified of boats. I hate the cold. Why would you want to take me on a trip that involved all three in large quantities?
But then a memorable trip came up. It was the 100th anniversary of Ernest Shackleton's death. This expedition would be Shackleton-focused with a special Shackleton dinner. His granddaughter and descendants of his crew would be joining us. We would be recreating his six-mile hike over the wilds of South Georgia. If possible, we would land on Elephant Island, where he left his 22-member shipwrecked crew. We would toast the man himself with Shackleton scotch at his gravesite in Grytviken.
How could I say no?
Heroine - it was the most amazing trip of my life.
After the harrowing Drake Passage crossing (they say you get the Drake Lake or the Drake Shake, and we definitely got the shake). We began our zodiac landings. Every day, we would dress in our twenty bazillion layers of clothing and venture, Michelin Man-like, out to board the zodiacs in groups of eight. That first day, we landed on King Haakon Bay, just as Shackleton had more than one hundred years before. We crunched up the pebble beach in our mud boots and followed the red flag markers set before us by our guides. As we wandered through the seal herds, the larger ones barked and fake-rushed us while the tiny seal babies scampered across the sand, eager to meet the strange new arrivals who certainly didn't belong on their beach. An albatross sailed across the sky, a lone penguin hopped around in the gentle surf, and it was magical.
When we returned to our cabin, and before I could even remove my boots, I turned to my husband, hugged him, and burst into tears. I said, "Thank you for making me do this. I never would have done it without you." We were on that expedition for twenty-one days, most of which included a landing or zodiac cruise. Can you imagine the wonders?
Why is this story essential to the lesson of purpose and how you and it can evolve to discover your extraordinary life? I'm gonna tell you, aren't I? I'm not one to leave you hanging, Heroine!