Crossing Second Half of Life Thresholds
thresh·old /ˈTHreSHˌ(h)ōld/:
1) a point of entry or beginning
2) the magnitude or intensity that must be exceeded for a certain reaction, phenomenon, result, or condition to occur or be manifested.
3) the point at which you start to experience something, or at which something starts to happen
One cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of life’s morning; for what was great in the morning will be of little importance in the evening, and what in the morning was true will at evening become a lie. — C. G. Jung
When I shared with someone that I was facilitating a class on the second half of life, she said, “Just don’t call it the Second Half of Life. No one will come.”
The class sold out.
Four different decades were represented: 40s-70s. I wasn’t surprised we had such an interest, but I was taken back by a waiting list. I called the class Thresholds.
A threshold is a point of entry and an initiation. It’s a life experience that rattles you to the core. All your old ways of making meaning turn to dust.
The Unmentionables
As we gathered in our group, people had a chance to talk about the unmentionables. Unmentionables are existential realities that live in the shadows by day, but come out at 3 AM to remind us of their power over our lives. They drive our avoidances. They drive a culture that loves certainty and distraction.
I've learned over the past two decades that when given the chance and the right setting, not only are people courageous enough to discuss cultural taboos and unspokens, they actually long to: they actually feel relief in facing these challenging conversations.
What they don’t have are spaces to talk about it. Sadly, such open spaces for dialogue are few and far between. Thresholds is designed to create spaces for these conversations:
your shock at the death of a friend, parent, sibling or partner
cumulative grief and loss
your encroaching mortality
pervasive, unexplainable ambivalence in your relationship
dissatisfaction and disappointment at work
a “blink of an eye: experience that upended your life
the countless issues that come from being parents of teen and adult children
the brevity of time
an illness or accident
fear of aging and aloneness
a sense that the accumulation of your choices, actions and failures to act inhibited your freedom to be who you are
wondering whether you are living your life or someone else’s
Growing at the Threshold
The cultural directive is to stay comfortable, safe and secure in what we know. We cling to our outdated beliefs. All of us wrestle with resistance to the shock of a destabilizing personal or collective shock. Yet, the more I resist, the more amplifies. especially at night when I’m not working.
There is another way:
Face this threshold. Discover what teacher Parker Palmer calls “the precious inwardness of things. Learn. Always learn.
Irish poet John O’Donohue writes,
You are in this time of the interim
Where everything seems withheld.The path you took to get here has washed out;
the way forward is still concealed from you.The old is not old enough to have died away.
The new is still too young to be born.
After the shock and grief subsides I know something new arises out of the practice of facing it with the awareness of a clear mind, the courage of an open heart and the ability to feel the ground beneath our feet.
I’ve made my way through the dark times by facing it exposing its sharp edges, shadows, unfinished business and the humbling realization that I am small in the grand scheme of things.
Our bodies are finite, we will die and so will those we love most. I want to tell you not to lose heart, know you will. If you face it with courage, a felt insight will grow from deep inside of you. You will find that:
It’s actually these very conditions needed to weave our fractured selves back to the whole.
My name is Leslie Hershberger and Thresholds is a labor of love. If you have read to this point, it’s most likely for you.
We don’t have to give into the cultural madness of living in a second half body with a first half mindset. It doesn’t serve time or the world for us to pretend we are forever young on one end nor does it serve anything to give up in despair and distraction on the other end.
The soul is calling.
Each shock, each threshold is full of untapped creativity and energy that serves the larger whole.
Why subscribe? For now, there’s no paywall.
Your subscription helps get this conversation on the map. Personally, it helps me know someone is out there resonating with radical shift the second half of life thresholds bring.
Here’s what to expect:
wisdom, honesty, reflections from me and others
Pause practices along with poetry and contemplative images to support your Pause
books, music and podcast recommendations
Enneagram insights as relates to your type as it stands on a threshold
Slow your pace while here. Internal wisdom comes in slow time.
Take a breath. Sense your feet. Feel the weight of your body the quality of your beating heart.
Welcome to Thresholds…living the second half from the inside out.
