Midlife Emergence: Free Your Inner Fire

by Jen Berlingo

Overview

Midlife Emergence is a revelatory memoir and an inviting guidebook; it is a compassionate companion that belongs on the bedside table of every woman who finds herself burning to reclaim powerful parts of herself that social conditioning locked away. Midlife doesn't need to be a crisis or an emergency-rather, it's an emergence, an opportunity to make those beautiful, unexpressed facets shamelessly visible.

Psychotherapist and coach Jen Berlingo guides those yearning to peel back acculturated, adaptive layers of identity as they soulfully construct their second act of life. Many women who have followed society's prescribed path to fulfillment seem to land in their forties with a dull emptiness and an inner voice that perpetually asks, "Is this all there is?" Underneath the stories of her clients, Jen clearly hears their soul's longings-each one unique, but all harmonized in their aching for so much more. They feel enticed to explore beyond the familial and social prescriptions, obligations, and expectations they've followed, a pioneering act that can be simultaneously terrifying and electrifying.

As Jen traversed her own midlife portal in her forties, she began to live more fully into her queer identity, experimented with ethical non-monogamy, and reframed divorce as an expansive form of love for her family and herself. Outside the specifics of her journey, she became a cartographer, marking the waypoints and pinpointing universal signposts so others would not have to walk this path alone. The vulnerability of Jen's story ignites a flame of recognition inside those who yearn to illuminate parts they may have buried in darkness. Throughout the narrative, Jen shares enlightening journaling and art prompts and potent, personal rituals designed to support the woman in midlife in freeing her own inner fire.

Midlife Emergence is both an inspiring, tender story and a wise, warmhearted guide for the woman in midlife who feels a gut-flipping longing she may not yet be able to name. It validates the adult in untangling her personal values from those imposed by family or cultural lineages. It embraces the parent ready to break out of habituated martyrdom to show her children how not to abandon themselves. It emboldens the woman who has come of age under the patriarchy to finally claim her sovereignty. It speaks to the person who has been conditioned into compulsive heterosexuality in exploring her intrinsic sexuality later in life. It empowers the recovering "good girl" and the drained people-pleaser in taking courageous steps toward unfurling into her full integrity for the second half of life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781954805460
Publisher:	Bold Story Press
Publication date:	04/11/2023
Pages:	300
Sales rank:	423,845
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.67(d)

About the Author

Jen Berlingo, MA, LPC, ATR (she/her) is a midlife coach, a licensed professional counselor in the state of Colorado, a nationally registered art therapist, and a master-level Reiki practitioner. She earned her graduate's degree in transpersonal counseling psychology and art therapy from Naropa University, a Buddhist-oriented school for experiential and contemplative education. For twenty years, she has used coaching, counseling, art psychotherapy, energy work, ritual, and ceremony to support women in becoming their most authentic, sovereign selves. Through her private practice, women's circles, and online programs, Jen has midwifed hundreds of women through life's turning points, as they rebirth and reparent themselves into more fully expressed, whole beings. While guiding clients through cathartic metamorphoses and quests for true alignment, Jen experienced her own profoundly transformative passage in her forties, where she was able to expand more fully into her queer identity and embrace other seemingly subversive aspects of herself. Jen's journey inspired her to write Midlife Emergence to accompany other women in traversing the midlife portal. She invites the often inconvenient, raw truth to come forward in service of alchemizing shame into powerful reclamation. In addition to her longstanding work as a healing practitioner, Jen is a visual artist who offers original paintings, prints, and oracle decks to collectors worldwide. She exhibits her fluid, abstract art locally in her beloved town of Boulder, Colorado. There, among the sunny foothills, Jen can be found making bottomless bowls of popcorn and snuggling on the couch with her unconventional family, her coven of close friends, and her Norwegian forest tabby rescues, Jinx and Juju. Learn more about Jen and her offerings by visiting jenberlingo.com.

Editorial Reviews

2023-04-06
In Berlingo’s motivational memoir, a married mother in her 40s decides to change her life.

At age 41, the author led a life that seemed nearly perfect. She had a successful psychotherapy practice; a loving husband, Craig, who had a lucrative job in tech; a happy 10-year-old child; and a beautiful, sprawling house complete with a pool. So why did she feel like she was about to explode? “It was as though a tectonic process had taken over my solid, internal landscape, moving the plates of my identity enough to expose peeks at my molten core,” writes Berlingo in her introduction. “Much like a dormant volcano, from the outside my life appeared stable, peaceful, and lush, but a fiery magma brewed deep within, yearning to see the light of day.” An invitation to a monthlong retreat for female healing practitioners in Colorado led Berlingo on an unplanned journey toward rediscovering herself. In doing so, Berlingo became fascinated with the concept of the midlife crisis (or “midlife emergence,” in the author’s preferred parlance) so much that she reoriented her practice toward helping women go through similar rediscoveries of their own. The book is meant to assist readers in recognizing and satisfying that craving for “more” that may develop as they enter their 40s. The author explores concepts from psychotherapy—as well as New Age concepts including chakras, energy, and the like—while discussing her own experiences with chronic pain, queer desire, an unspooling marriage, parenting, and getting her nose pierced. The author’s prose is generally smooth and ebullient, as here when she describes agreeing with her husband to try an open relationship: “I was ready to tear down the walls I had built around my heart. Once Craig and I opened ourselves to the idea that we would venture into this together, I immediately felt my heart expand and the container widen. I felt more whole, more full, more loving.” There’s a lot of spiritual lingo involved (chapter titles include “Quaking Within” and “Honoring the Ebb”), but midlife readers who like a bit of mysticism with their self-help will find in Berlingo a nonjudgmental guide.

An open-hearted manual of self-discovery for seekers of a certain age looking for a change.

Kirkus Reviews