By Kat Skarbek

About This Session:

What if midlife isn't about reinventing yourself but about unravelling everything that was never truly you? If you're a woman standing at the crossroads of 'is this all there is?' and feeling like a stranger in your own life, this powerful 25-minute presentation will change how you see your second chapter. Join midlife coach Kat Skarbek as she takes you through the Three Reclamations of Midlife and reveals why your rage is sacred information, your grief is the other side of love and your buried desires are calling you home to yourself. Through live writing exercises and deeply personal sharing, you'll discover that midlife isn't the consolation prize but your initiation into the most potent chapter of your life. This isn't about becoming someone new; it's about excavating the fierce, authentic woman who's been waiting patiently beneath all the masks and expectations. You'll leave with practical tools, profound insights and the radical understanding that the woman you've always been is exactly who the world needs now. Because the second half of your life isn't about settling or surviving, it's about finally having the courage to stop performing and start living.

Hello, beautiful souls.
I am really glad you're here and that you are open to starting the journey of coming home to
yourself in midlife.
I want to start with something that might surprise you.
If you're watching this, the chances are that you've been told by, I don't know, maybe well meaning
friends or maybe endless parade of self help voices online that what you need in midlife is
reinvention.
A complete makeover to become a shiny new, new version of yourself.
Well, I'm here to tell you that that is complete bollocks.
What you need isn't reinvention the current buzzword for midlife?
I mean, who seriously has the time for all of that, for any of that?
What you need isn't reinvention, it's an unraveling, a sacred, messy, sometimes rage filled
unraveling and of everything that was never truly you in the first place.
I. I'm Kat and I'm a midlife coach.
And I've been walking this winding highway of midlife right alongside you.
I'm menopausal, I'm tired most days.
And I've spent the last few years trying to figure out who the h*** I am when I'm not being a mum
or a partner or a professional or a carer or any of the other thousands of roles that we wear like
masks.
And each one of those masks is a skin that I am finally shedding.
And I know something that you might not yet.
I know that the real magic is still to come.
And I know this because of my mother.
My mom spent over 20 years in a marriage filled with brutality, psychological, emotional and
physical violence.
My mum was Scottish and she was feisty and she fought back.
But for over two decades, she survived rather than lived.
We all did.
She had me late in life, 39, which is very late for that generation.
And when we finally escaped, I was four.
And we had nothing.
Not even a cup to drink from.
No furniture, just an empty house and our freedom, which it turned out, was everything.
But here's what happened next.
My mum created a new life for herself and us.
And by the time I was 10, she was back at night school, getting her O levels, then her A levels, and
then studying for her degree.
This amazing woman who started her educational journey at nearly 50, who had been told that she
was worthless for decades, discovered she was actually brilliant.
My mum became more fully herself in her 50s and 60s than she had ever allowed herself to be in
her 20s and 30s.
And she taught me that midlife is not an ending or a Consolation prize after your youth and your
beauty have fled.
It's actually a powerful new beginning and an initiation into the truth of who you really are and
what you really want.
Truthfully, we don't emerge from midlife or menopause the same women we were when we
entered.
And that's actually not the loss that we've been told to think it is.
That's actually the whole point.
What I've discovered through my own unraveling, through 25 years of holding space for women
just like us and through.
Through watching my mother bloom in her second half, is that midlife isn't about becoming
someone new, someone different.
It's actually about reclaiming who you've always been underneath all the noise.
So today, I want to take you through what I call the three reclamations of midlife.
These are the parts of yourself that you need to reclaim to come home to who you really are.
And I'm going to ask you to do this work with me right now as we go.
Before we start, though, can I ask you to take three deep belly breaths with me?
I know you're probably trying to watch this video, make dinner, scroll on your phone and deal with
your kids, your partner, the dog.
So just for a minute, I want you to be present, to come back into your body, to drop your shoulders
and feel the breath coming in through your nose and exhaling out through your mouth.
Let's do it together.
It can be good to place your hand on your belly, on your heart, let those shoulders go, Let go of
anything that doesn't need to be attended to right now, and give yourself the gift of this next 15
minutes.
One more.
Okay, now that you're more fully present, let's start with something we're told that nice women
shouldn't have.
Rage.
Everybody's heard about menopausal rage, and perhaps you know it already.
Perhaps you were already p***** off at being taken for granted.
But the truth is, if you're in midlife and you're not at least a little bit furious, you're not paying
attention, you're allowed to be angry that you've spent decades putting everybody else's needs
before your own.
Even when you've done it willingly, even when you've done it out of love, you're allowed to be livid
about the roles you've been shoved into that have never quite fit you.
And you're allowed to be absolutely f****** incandescent about the fact that your body is changing
without your permission and that nobody prepared you for how brutal perimenopause and
menopause can be.
I want you to grab a piece of paper right now.
Really pause if you need to.
At the top of the page, write, I am so f****** tired of.
And then just let it rip.
I am so f****** tired of being the one who remembers everything.
I am so f****** tired of pretending I'm fine when I'm falling apart.
I'm so f****** tired of being tired all the time.
I'm so f****** tired of abandoning myself so other people feel comfortable.
Keep writing.
Let it all out.
All the resentments you've been swallowing, all the ways that you've been pushing through rather
than living.
This rage.
It's not something to be ashamed of.
It's information.
It's your inner wisdom finally getting loud enough to be heard over the noise of everybody else's
expectations.
Your rage is pointing you towards what needs to change.
It's showing you where you've been betraying yourself.
And once you can see that clearly, you can start making different choices.
But make no mistake, your rage is sacred and it needs to be expressed safely.
Because without addressing it, you are in danger of it spilling out all over those you love.
Or worse, all over your beautiful self.
Now we're going to dig a bit deeper.
We're going to go into some tender places, into the grief that lives in the spaces between your ribs,
the grief that wakes you in the middle of the night masquerading as anxiety.
Midlife grief is different from other kinds of loss.
It's quieter, it's more pervasive.
It's the grief for all the lives you thought you might live but didn't get to.
It's mourning the woman you were before life wore you down.
It's grieving the dreams that you put on hold that now might feel too late to pursue.
I remember the day I realized I was grieving my premenopausal body.
Not just because of how it looked, but because of what the changes represented.
Time passing options, closing the fantasy of infinite possibility, finally meeting reality.
All the bits that were spreading out and sagging and getting less firm.
And here's what nobody tells you about midlife grief.
It's not just personal.
You're also holding the accumulated sorrows of watching friends struggle, watching your parents
age, watching the world becoming more increasingly unstable.
Particularly at the moment you're grieving for your children's innocence, for the simpler world that
you thought you'd be handing them.
Now take that same piece of paper and write, I am grieving.
Maybe you're grieving the marriage that didn't work out the way you'd hoped.
Maybe it's the career dreams you set aside.
Maybe it's the woman you were before you became so tired all the time.
Do you even remember her?
Write it down.
Let yourself feel it.
Because grief that lives in the shadows grows twisted and bitter.
Grief that's acknowledged and honoured and given a voice becomes the compost for what comes
next.
And the thing about grief is, it's just the other side of love.
We only grieve what matters to us.
So even as it hurts, it's also pointing you towards what you valued, what you've cherished, what
has been sacred to you.
Grief's not an easy thing to explore.
This may bring up some tears.
It may bring up some deep discomfort.
You may revisit losses.
Personal, community, global.
Just take the time and sit with it and write it all out.
It's so important for women of our age to honour the grief that comes with this midlife journey.
And when you're ready, we're going to move on to Reclamation three.
Now we dig for gold.
We reclaim the desires you buried so long ago that you might have forgotten they even existed.
Because underneath all that rage and grief, there's something pulsing.
Something that's been patiently waiting for you to remember that it even exists.
Your desires.
Not the sanitized, socially acceptable wants you've been allowed to have.
The real ones.
The wild ones.
The ones that make you feel slightly uncomfortable because they're so very completely yours.
Maybe it's the creative project you've been putting off for someday.
Maybe it's the relationship you've been afraid to ask for.
Maybe it's the adventure you've been talking yourself out of because you think you're too old, too
tired or too late to the party.
Turn that paper over at the top.
If I was brave enough, I would.
And then write down everything that makes your heart beat a little faster.
Everything you've been telling yourself is impossible or impractical or too selfish.
Don't edit yourself.
Don't shut yourself down.
Don't worry about how you'd make it happen.
Just let yourself want what you want without apology.
Because here's what I've learned.
The second half of life can be the most potent half.
Not because we have to reinvent ourselves, but because we finally have the courage to stop doing
what we think we should or. Or have to.
And we can start actually living the life that we want to live.
Those dreams that are still bumping up against your ribs even at this age, they're the ones that
matter, the ones that are calling you home to yourself.
So here's what I want you to understand.
The aliveness that you're seeking isn't out there ahead of you somewhere.
It's not in some future version of yourself you need to create.
It's already here, waiting beneath all the masks and identities, beneath the performance and the
politeness and the comfort of compliance, the comfort zone, the rut that you're in.
Before you became all these different versions of yourself, the good daughter, the perfect mum,
the capable professional, you were already here, already breathing, already aware, already
enough.
Maybe the real journey isn't some dramatic transformation, despite what Instagram might have
you think.
Maybe it's the subtle, ordinary miracle of unbecoming what you never really were in the first place.
Your body isn't failing you.
It's guiding you back to what you never truly left.
This, your initiation.
You will not emerge from this the same woman who entered it.
And that's not something to mourn.
That's the whole beautiful, messy point.
That rage that you just reclaimed, that's your fierce protector.
Finally awake.
The grief you acknowledged.
That's your tender heart still capable of priority.
Profound love.
The desires you uncovered, that's your truest self ready to live.
This isn't the end of anything.
This is your initiation into the most potent chapter of your life.
But only if you're willing to do this reclamation work.
Only if you're brave enough to stop performing and start unraveling.
Beautiful woman, whoever you are, wherever you're watching this, I need you to listen.
I need you to really take this in because it's really important.
It is not too late for you to live the life you've always wanted to.
You are not too old.
You are not too tired to create a second half of life that feels deeply, authentically yours.
Just ask my mum.
The woman you've always been is still there, underneath everything you think you have to be.
And she's waiting for you to reclaim her, to welcome her home and to finally let her live.
The work isn't easy, but it's worth it.
Because on the other side of this unraveling lies the most potent, powerful, authentic version of
yourself that you've ever been.
And the world needs that woman.
Now.
If you're sitting there thinking, and this is all great, but I've got absolutely no idea how to actually
do the work, I get it.
I've been there. Actually, I'm still there some days.
This reclamation work, it's not a one and done thing.
It's a practice, a ritual, a slow sacred process of coming back to yourself again and again.
This work, it's depth work.
And sometimes we need help with the going deeper.
This is why I created Midlife Magic, a five module journey that takes you deeper into this work.
And if you're not quite ready for the full course, you can download the free reclamation
toolkit@catskarbeck.com toolkit.
It includes expanded versions of today's exercises, guided meditations, somatic practices, and a
complete coming home to yourself ritual.
That's very beautiful.
The most important thing though, take that piece of paper you wrote on today and don't you dare
throw that away.
Those words matter.
That rage, that grief, those desires are your roadmap home.
It has been my absolute pleasure to be here with you today, to take you through a little bit of the
work that I do with women just like you every day, and to share a little bit of my own journey here
with you.
I hope you have a beautiful day and I look forward to getting to know you all better.