When Midlife Awakens You: What Week One of The Artist’s Way Revealed to Me
There are moments in midlife where something inside us begins to stir, quietly at first, like a soft tapping beneath the noise of everyday life. And if we’re honest, many of us try to ignore it.
We’re busy. We’re needed. We’ve learned to hold everything together.
But eventually, the tapping becomes impossible to overlook.
For me, that tap came in the form of a gift:
A book placed in my hands at exactly the right time, The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron.
A 12-week creative recovery journey.
I didn’t pick this book; it picked me.
And in the first week alone, it gently unraveled truths I didn’t even know I was still carrying.
What I discovered surprised me, humbled me, and ultimately, awakened something.
The First Week: A Tender Undoing
Week One of The Artist’s Way is focused on “Recovering a Sense of Safety”, and of all the things I thought I had outgrown, this one knocked the wind out of me.
Safety?
At this age?
After everything I’ve lived through, healed through, overcome?
Yes.
Safety.
Because I realized, painfully and clearly, that so much of my adult life has been shaped by self-sabotage disguised as protection.
Patterns I thought belonged to my younger self were still running quietly in the background, influencing the way I create, dream, express, and show up.
And once I saw it…
I couldn’t unsee it.
The Pattern I Didn't Know Was Still Living in Me
Here’s what surfaced through the journaling, the morning pages, the quiet reflection:
A belief that I am not enough, and the fear that if I try, I will fail.
Not enough to finish what I start.
Not enough to be fully seen.
Not enough to take up space without apology.
Not enough to trust my voice, my gifts, my desires.
This belief didn’t shout, it whispered.
It whispered when I quit projects that mattered to me.
It whispered when I shrank from opportunities.
It whispered when I told myself I was “too tired,” or “too busy,” or “not ready.”
It whispered every time I held back the most honest, soulful parts of myself.
Self-sabotage wasn’t the enemy.
It was the strategy.
A deeply rooted protective mechanism.
One that no longer serves the woman I am becoming.
Midlife Has a Way of Calling Us Out of Hiding
There is a reason so many women feel a shift around this age.
Not because we’re lost but because we’re being pointed toward the places we abandoned long ago.
Midlife is not a crisis.
It’s an unveiling.
It reveals the unconscious contracts we signed with ourselves decades ago:
I won’t try too hard.
I won’t be too visible.
I won’t risk being misunderstood.
I won’t outgrow what others expect of me.
But something happens in midlife:
Our soul gets louder.
We begin to hear the truth over the noise.
We begin to feel that internal tug calling us back to ourselves.
We begin to sense that the time for shrinking is over.
Week One of The Artist’s Way cracked open a door inside me, one that had been sealed by years of fear, perfectionism, and quiet self-doubt.
Behind that door is the woman I’ve always been, but rarely allowed myself to become.
The Homecoming I Didn’t Expect
The book calls it “recovering the artist,” but for me, it feels like recovering the woman, the Queen, if you will.
The one who used to create just because it fed her soul.
The one who believed in possibilities instead of limitations.
The one who didn’t yet know the world could bruise her and created anyway.
She’s still in here.
And she is waking up.
This journey is showing me that reclaiming our creativity is synonymous with reclaiming our self-worth.
It’s a spiritual return.
A reclamation.
A remembering.
And I think so many midlife women are standing at this same threshold, feeling the same pull:
To return to what feels true.
To revive what has gone dormant.
To rekindle what has been silenced.
To come home to themselves in a way they couldn’t before now.
What This Week Taught Me
Here’s the truth that landed in my body this week:
Self-sabotage is not a flaw.
It is an outdated survival strategy.
And midlife is our invitation to retire it.
We are not failing.
We are awakening.
Awakening to the parts of ourselves that have longed for permission.
Awakening to the truths we’ve avoided.
Awakening to the creative, powerful, intuitive woman within us.
This journey isn’t really about art.
It’s about liberation.
And I’m just at the beginning.
If You're Feeling the Stirring Too…
Maybe you’re here because something inside you is also tugging, whispering, asking:
Is there more for me?
Is it my time now?
Am I allowed to rediscover myself?
Yes.
Yes.
And absolutely yes.
If you feel curious about the book that’s opening all of this for me, you can explore it below:
👉 The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron
Just an invitation, nothing more.
Midlife is not your ending.
It’s your return.
Your rising.
Your reclamation.
And I’m honored to be walking this awakening alongside you.
XOXO-
Jennifer
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