If the Shoe Fits Don't Wear It

How Maturity Reshapes Coping Strategies

“What if I’ve made a horrible mistake in moving here?”

This is not the kind of question one wants rattling around in their head after disposing of all one’s furniture, selling one’s business and moving halfway across the world with their teenager.

We all have coping mechanisms.  Those weird default strategies for how to deal with stress and uncertainty.

Even though we may be walking around in 50 some odd year bodies, inside we’re a small child on the first day of school desperately looking around for our blankie.

Some women shop; others eat, when in doubt I move.  I don’t mean move as in move my body I - M-O-V-E – move as in geography.  Yes, yes, I know the adage wherever you go there you are but somehow deep inside me when life feels stuck or uncertain my brain thinks I can solve it best by pulling a geographic.

This, of course, is a strange habit for a girl from the suburbs of Philadelphia whose parents still live in the same house I grew up in. I wasn’t an army brat.  My Dad never worked for the State Department and yet, at every major juncture (read: crisis) of my life I made a major move.

When I had no job prospects after University I moved to Hong Kong, a city of seven million strangers, with no more than a backpack, a briefcase and a dog-eared copy of Lonely Planet.

When I was questioning corporate culture and the rat race, I quit my job at a Big 6 consulting firm, sold my house, put all my things in storage and moved to Kernville, CA to work as a rafting guide.

When my business collapsed after the 2008 crisis – I packed up the kids and moved to Indonesia. 

After three years there, when my marriage finally failed, I moved to Seattle, yet again a new unexplored location.

I must have RLS - rest legs of the soul*. I have lived in seven countries not including the US and I believe at latest count twenty houses since I graduated from university.

Yes, I have issues, and yes, in case you’re wondering, I’m saving for my kids’ therapy fund.

Why is this important you might ask?  How does it relate to you?

Because there is nothing more terrifying then when you realize that your coping strategies no longer fit who you are as a person. 

This is not the same as saying the strategies themselves don’t work.  It’s far scarier to realize that your identity – the core of – “this is who I am and how I show up in the world” has fundamentally changed.

Welcome to my crisis.

“What if I’ve made a horrible mistake in moving here?”

Once again: the voice.

But how can that be?  Moving has always been a good idea.

It’s funny, isn’t it?  I, like so many women, flock to transformational programs.  Whether it’s a retreat in Bali or shelves full of self-help books, I’ve spent years trying to become better version of myself.  It should follow then that at some point I should be excited to say, “Hey look, I’m finally different!”  “Woo hoo – it worked.” All those hours of therapy have finally paid off.

Why then is it so confronting to have arrived in Portugal and have thoughts that maybe I don’t belong here?

I have RLS - restless legs of the soul.

I first moved to Europe when I was 18 and worked in Paris for three months in between school semesters.  11 years later, I did my graduate degree in France and afterword lived and worked in Amsterdam for four years.  When I was sitting on my kitchen floor in Seattle having one of my signature “cries after the kids have gone to bed” I dreamed about how much I missed Europe.  The cafes, the history, the culture, the wine. 

“Hang in there, kid” we’ll get back there someday.

The 2016 election started my internal countdown timer.  Ready.

The inflation caused by our spiraling national debt got me planning my escape.  Set.

And then Ulvalde. Go.

I don’t want to live like this.  In a country that values the right to own a deadly weapon over the right to collective safety.  When will my small town be next?  I wasn’t going to find out. I didn’t need to wait and read Kirsten Powers’ article to know that something was not normal with America.

I moved to Portugal sight unseen in August 2022.

Fast forward to today.  Portugal has delivered on its promises of safety, affordability and reasonable political sanity.  So, what’s the problem you might ask?

I feel like I’m constructing the start of a breakup speech: “It’s not you, it’s me…”

You see my dreams of Europe were based on the memories of a woman in her early thirties – no kids, lots of disposable income, a more robust liver, a brain that could learn new languages faster.

I am now 53 and I am … different.  I find even one glass of wine at dinner wreaks havoc with my sleep quality. 

I passed my residency qualifying language exam in less than a year, but I am a lover of words and nuanced language.  Yes, I am elated when I can get my oil changed and never switch to English but what I really want is to have sophisticated, deep and meaningful conversations with my local neighbours which would take years at this point.

I still love the idea of proximity to the rest of Europe and yet more and more travel just exhausts me.  I appreciate the simplicity and routine of my own bed and being at home in a way I never thought possible.  I’ve begun asking myself bizarre questions like “if I could never travel again where would I be happy to live and never leave?”  Never and travel?  I didn’t know those two words could even coexist.

More than anything however I am longing for belonging.  I used to find that in expat communities.  Just like an alcoholic can show up in any city and find belonging in a 12 Step meeting, I was part of a special modern tribe of nomads.  In every city I could find my people.

I adored the adventure and the specialness of feeling more at home everywhere than anywhere. I belonged because I didn’t belong. 

However, that is different than having deep roots to a place and people.  I think of the horrific conflict in the middle east and of people that would rather die than leave a patch of dirt that is deeply meaningful to them.  What would it be like to be so committed to a place and a people that even if it was a dumpster fire, I would be willing to watch it burn holding the hands of my beloveds.

I watch films like A Man Called Otto and get weepy. 

There are many “mid-life awakening” modalities that encourage you to answer the question of “what next” by getting in touch with some lost or buried passion or identity from our youth.  As if I came into life with a suchness that had merely been lost to the grime of living.  Pull out the psychic window cleaner and there I will be again.

I understand the theory behind that strategy.  Perhaps we all have fragments of identity from the innocence and exuberance of youth that hold some buried secret to the meaning and purpose we are seeking in mid-life.

I wonder though.  If I clean the mirror of the last thirty years of living, I am shocked not to see the “woman in my head” as Jody Day calls her but a strange woman with wrinkles and greying hair and what do we even call what’s happening to my neck? How did she get here?

I am shocked when I look in the mirror not to see the woman in my head but a strange woman with wrinkles and greying hair…

Does this woman really want to resuscitate younger Maureen’s dreams and passions? 

Heck, I used to have a crush on Sean Cassidy.

I am not that girl.  I’ve lived a lot of life. I’ve lost a lot.

Midlife is not a blank canvas.  I am a mother.  An Aunt. A have long time friends.  I did not come here on Noah’s ark.

But it’s more than that. 

It’s not a calling.  That would be too boisterous. 

It’s not a yearning.   That would be too direct. 

It’s more like a whisper: I’m not done growing.  

I don’t want to create the next chapter of my life using the comfortable strategies of the past thirty years.  Frankly, that sounds boring as F and maybe even a little bit pathetic. 

I’m scrappier than that.

I’m ready to lean into the places that scare me.

I know how to leave. 

I’m actually very skilled at it.

What if my growth edge is learning how to stay?

*genius expression created by my friend and coach Jamie Morris