Speaker Series
Friday Speaker Series
February 6, 2004 (a past program)
Invitation to this program:
- “Dude, Where's My Life??? Finding Purpose and Passion in Midlife”
- With: Narrye Caldwell, MA, L.Ac.
The midlife years provide the most important opportunity for personal growth in the adult life cycle. But they can also be a time of alarming turmoil and challenge. Our ability to embrace this passage with grace, courage, and a sense of adventure can lead us into a second adulthood of passion, purpose, and joy.
Join Narrye Caldwell for a powerful interactive presentation on the midlife adventure. Drawing on the work of Joseph Campbell, Gail Sheehy, and others, Narrye gives an inspiring model for this critical journey, and some tips on how to use your middle years to uncover your passion and purpose.
About the Presenter:
Narrye Caldwell, L.Ac., is a Doctor of Traditional Chinese Medicine, shamanic healer and counselor, life coach, and astrologer. She studied spiritual psychology at the Institute for Transpersonal Psychology, and began a long-term study of shamanism with the Foundation for Shamanic Studies as part of her own midlife quest. Part of her passion in life is to help others turn difficult life passages into opportunities to find meaning and purpose. She has a private practice in San Jose. For more information on Narrye's services go to:
www.journeytowholeness.org
Review of this program:
SPECIAL OFFER TO ANYONE WHO ATTENDED THIS Friday Speaker Series: A $50 coaching session with Narrye (usually $80). Just let Narrye know you were at this presentation when calling for your appointment. (408) 489-8268.
DON'T FORGET, NEW MIDLIFE GROUP FORMING IN MARCH. See details on the RCI newsletter link "Questing Women", contact Narrye at Narrye@kepnet.com or (408) 489-8268
Narrye Caldwell spoke on the topic of finding purpose and passion at midlife. She drew on the work of Joseph Campbell, Gail Sheehy, and others. She began by showing a time line of the adult life cycle which divides adulthood into three stages: 18-30 (provisional adulthood), 30-45 (first adulthood), and 45-85 + (second adulthood).
Somewhere between our first and second adulthoods there is a transition that can be full of turmoil. This stage is marked by what Sheehy calls the "little death." This can be physiological change like menopause for women, or for any of us, things like job loss, divorce, children leaving home, crises of meaning.
Narrye pointed out that what's really dying at this middle passage of life is the illusion that we are the persona that we have built during the first half of life. What we are invited to birth for the second half of life is a more integrated self, a self that embraces our shadow and our unlived lives.
We then looked at Joseph Campbell's mythological metaphor of the hero's journey, and saw the ways in which each of us is invited to take this journey, particularly at midlife. It is an inward journey in search of purpose and passion, in search of our authentic selves. During the journey we encounter all of the helpers, tests, challenges, and threshold guardians that Campbell describes as universal themes cross-culturally. We talked about the kinds of things we each encounter as personal threshold guardians (resistance, fear, attachment, perfectionism, etc.) and how to work with those guardians by welcoming them, allowing them, and maintaining an ongoing dialogue with them.
We also talked about the "sacred marriage," which is the acceptance and integration of our essential self, including our shadow, and the "elixir" or gift that comes from that. The presentation ended with a discussion of how important it is for each of us to bring our individual talents, gifts, and wisdom back to our communities.