Midlife Redo: Riding the Wave of a Uncertainty

In this empowering episode of Stand Up and Redo we walk or more appropriately swim through the raw unfiltered journey of entering midlife dazed, confused and hitting that inevitable wall. Petra shares her story with uncertainty, feeling stuck and feeling like the waves are crashing down. But it is not about crashing it is about riding that wave, emerging from the depths, and finding solid ground. She walks you through how she will swim to shore stand tall and confidentially step onto warm sand, embracing the next chapter-strong resilient, and unapologetically alone, yet empowered. This episode is a testiest to growth, perseverance and the beauty of standing upright after the storm.

Transcript

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Welcome to Stand Up and Redo with Petra Demuse, the podcast where transformation isn't just possible, it's inevitable. If you've ever felt stuck, weighed down by past choices, or like life's chapters have been written in ink, think again. Here we believe every day is a fresh page, and you hold the pen. We're diving deep into real stories, bold insights, and life-shifting strategies to help you stand up, shake off the old, and rewrite your narrative with power and purpose. We're ready to rise, let's get started. Riding through a cycle in life. Or riding a cycle through life. This is old school podcast, just a recording. There's no video. I have two videos ready to go to be converted into audio. And I had a lot of technical difficulty tonight. So I went back to the my old school style podcast. Old school meaning there's no video. I'm just lying in bed here with my cell phone on a pillow while I talk into it about whatever. And tonight I honestly couldn't think about what to talk about. Usually I have my mind is so excited and I'm thinking about what I'm gonna talk about next. And I have all these topics that I want to talk about, but I just can't get myself together. And I realize I'm in a limbo place in my life. And I wonder if this is what they call um the midlife crisis. Midlife crisis, where I can't even say crisis, midlife crisis, where you're just lost a little bit, confused, dazed, and confused because you're essentially riding a cycle through life, right? It's like a wave. It just kind of ebbs up, it gets slowly larger until you're so on top of it, and then you just don't know what's gonna happen. Are you gonna crash down? Are you gonna ride that wave nice and smooth in? Are you gonna tumble through it, hit the sand at the bottom, and fail? It's kind of how you feel when you're in this weird cycle spot where you're like riding a cycle through life. And this cycle is numbing, I guess. It's kind of numbing because you go through life like go, go, go, run, run, run, you know, work, work, work. And then you hit a point where you're just dazed and confused. And that's where I am right now. I have a life now that is so sedate, honestly. And I know most people would be like, oh my gosh, I can't believe you're complaining about a quiet life. Can't even believe it. I think since I was a young woman, I have thrived on stress. Truly think I didn't have enough to do in my life every day. I would add one more thing to my plate. And I still like to do that. I found that that's kind of how I thrive. And today I just hit like a little bit of a wall. I came home from work a little bit, I didn't even I mean, I worked, and I don't know why I think a full eight hours somewhere at a center, I have to come back and put in two more hours or I don't feel stressed enough. I actually skipped going for my walk this evening, and I just went and sat at a little um restaurant called Mama Chow's and had a nice hot bowl of pho or faux. I can never say it right. I always get confused whether it's faux or pho. I'll say faux. I had a nice bowl of faux. It was delicious. But I realized I was actually just sitting there. I tried to work a little bit. I pulled my computer out. I couldn't quite get into it. I worked a little after working all day, and then I just shut my computer and I put my phone away and I just sat there and enjoyed every bite of the food. And I was in that restaurant. I can't even believe I was in there for so long. I was in there for like two hours tonight. I got the edamame for an appetizer. It was unbelievably delicious. I'm gonna eat it for breakfast, if anybody cares. And then I got the faux, and it was so delicious, and it was just spaced out perfectly. And then after that, the little um server, she was, I don't know if she was, she seemed so young. Oh my goodness, she looked like she was like 15. She was coming around, just continually filling the water, and she asked me if I was gonna get dessert, and she just had this huge smile, and she's like, the bubble waffles are my favorite, they're so good. So I never get dessert at a restaurant unless I can share it with someone, and I don't have anybody to share it with anymore, so I don't get dessert usually. But tonight I did. Tonight I got the bubble waffles with hazelnut ice cream on top, and it was so good. I brought half the waffle home for breakfast. So tomorrow I'll have a half of a bubble waffle with Adamame. Well, I got back and I had just enough time to catch the sunset in the car. So the sunset's about a half a mile from where I'm staying, so I drove over to watch the sunset along the Long Island Bay, and it was just beautiful. It was so pretty. But I had no desire to exercise, and I'm a big exercise nut. I feel like every night when I come home after dinner or sometimes before dinner, I have to do something, whether it be a three-mile walk, lift weights. I just started running again, so I'm gonna ease into running though, just now twice a week, eventually three times a week. I should have brought my bike here, but I'm a little nervous to ride alone on these roads here because they're very um, there isn't really much of a berm and the roads are really windy, and I just don't know these roads. So I didn't bring my bike with me, which I could have. It would have fit in the rental car. Could have done like an hour bike ride at night. But I'm a little bit worried about myself for the fact I'm worried about myself. Is that even like proper English? I'm concerned about myself because I'm struggling to feel motivated to um, I don't know, to to do anything, like anything with gusto. I'm going through the motions, and I guess I'm riding a cycle in life, and I guess I'm like kind of on that wave, and I'm up now at the top of it, and I'm either gonna come crashing down or I'm gonna get myself together and I'm gonna ride the wave in. Does that make sense? So I'm riding a cycle through life. Well, I'm riding the cycle through life. I'm riding through a cycle in life. I'm actually riding a cycle through life. I'm not riding through it. I am on it, in it. I have no control of it. I honestly don't, and I think that's what it is right now. I feel uncertainty and that it's a weird feeling. Don't know how to describe it. I feel like I'm striving to do things. I know I have a lot of little travel trips planned. Um, I have a trip to see my brother in a couple months in California. And then I have a uh driving trip where I'm gonna go work from my friend's house who just moved away from me and just sit in her dining room and work to see her for a few days. And then I have um plans to travel somewhere amazing. I really want to go to Italy, although I don't know if I'll go to Italy now, maybe like in a year. I have all these desires and things I want to do for myself. But it's lonely. You feel like you're making these plans without another person, and it's really odd because when you get to be this age, you have friends who also are the same as you. They're going through cycles in life. They're either um, okay, I am gonna continue with this podcast this evening, and the reason is is because I want to get this out every single week until July. I made a goal to do this until July, and I am going to come hell or high water. I'm getting this podcast out. So tomorrow I will publish this. And but I want to take me, take you back to where I was just talking about purpose and feeling like I was riding a wave out in the ocean. And I'm gonna do something. My mom was a hypnotherapist, a nurse hypnotherapist. When I was younger, she went out to Seattle and went to training, and she even used it in the hospital setting. And I'll never forget her doing nurse hypnotherapy for um smoking cessation, weight loss, and stress management. And it was really neat because she would sometimes do it to me for practice, and I would always fall asleep because at the time she was she was training for it or learning about it or becoming um, I guess she became certified in it. Um, I was in my 30s and had, well, I was late 20s and had young children and worked full-time. So if I sat still for any length of time, I would instantly fall asleep. But I remember one of the um things that she did was she did like for someone who wanted to stop smoking, they would come to her. And actually, she had pulmonologists that would refer their patients to her as well, because um, she was really helpful for people who were trying to stop smoking. And she did her smoking sensation hypnotherapy thing on me. I I wasn't a smoker, but I remember she was just sharing it with me because she was excited about something that she created. Because we lived in a fishing community, like, you know, a lot of fishermen would come to her who um wanted to stop smoking. So she did like a really neat hypnotherapy session where she would explain to the person who was trying to quit smoking that their body was essentially like a vessel. And to imagine it needing to be cared for as you would care for a fishing vessel. You know, you would never let it get rusty. You'd pull it out of the water, you know, you'd clean it up and you'd paint it, and you'd take really good care to keep that fishing vessel in great shape. And she did a really neat um hypnotherapy um session where she would just use this analogy for them to quit smoking. And I remember the joy she would have in telling me that she felt like she really did help some people to quit smoking. Um, she wasn't sure if it was because they had made the decision in their head already when they came to see her or whatever she did, she said she felt like it did help them. She said she struggled a little more with weight loss, um, trying to help people lose weight. And I don't know, I don't remember talking much about stress management, but I do feel like when you go to hypnotherapy, um, just from what she did with me, it was it relieved me so much. So I'm gonna do right now, I just did my last um YouTube video on mental imagery and the and manifestation, and that's the one that I was excited to convert into audio and put onto this podcast this week. But I kept I can't get it to um convert to audio on my iPad. I think it's my iPad or something's too something's going on with it, and I don't have the time to figure it out because I don't really have a lot of time to spend on this this evening. I need to go to bed. It's almost 11 o'clock for crying out loud. But I actually do want to go back to where I was just telling you about how I feel like I'm on a wave. And I want to do it in a way that I'm doing like mental imagery and combining maybe a little bit of hypnotherapy into this. So this might be the time in your life when you decide, I don't know if I'm gonna be listening to Petra's podcast anymore. And you know what? I can't help it because I think this might help you if you're in the same situation as me, if you're in like that time of your life where you've just kind of hit a wall and you're in limbo and you're dazed and confused. Well, I want you to take your body and I want you to imagine it way out at sea. You're floating in the ocean, and it's just like a calm, overcast day, but there's just these big swells of waves far out in the ocean that are just coming up, and your body is just rising up on one of those swells, and you're getting higher and higher, and your body's just kind of like hanging there at the mercy of the water as you lift high up into this into the air. You're looking forward, and you're gonna go down, and you're gonna crash down, you're gonna ride down slow, you're gonna swim, or you're gonna just uh sink. And as that cold wave lowers you lowers you back down to the just the even surface of the water, you start to swim. And at first you just start to do a slow, easy breaststroke in the cold water, and it's kind of like overcast, right? There's not a lot of sun, and you just swim and you swim stronger and stronger, and behind you is just like dark overcast clouds and just gloomy water, and you're just slowly swimming in a breaststroke. And then as you swim in that breaststroke, you start to feel stronger. Your legs are pushing you with more force, your shoulders and your arms are just like making larger and stronger scoops in that water, kind of scooping your body forward. And then suddenly you lift up your back legs and you start to go into a freestyle swim. Your legs start kicking stronger and they splash up to the surface of the water, and you start lifting one arm out at a time in full circles, just out of the water, pulling yourself forward, and you're getting stronger and stronger, and you're swimming towards the shore. And as you swim towards the shore, you feel the sun come out and you feel it hit the back of your shoulders, and the water is just slowly getting warmer and warmer as you swim and swim towards the shore, and it's getting clearer, the water is getting clearer, the sky is getting bluer, and the sun is getting hotter, and as you swim, the water is just calm and peaceful. It's a calm day, there's no wind, and you're just swimming in the water until you open your eyes, and the water is so clear that you can look down and you can see the sand, and the sand is just a soft, soft brown color with pretty stones and a few shells scattered about. And as you see the stand sand, you just stretch your legs down and you touch the sand with the tips of your toes, and you feel it, and you just keep swimming towards the shore, and you can stand up in the sand, the sun shining on your whole body as you walk slowly to the beautiful white sand, and you walk tall and strong and forward, and you walk forward and you walk forward, and what you're walking into, you don't know, but you know you're gonna walk into it strong and tall with the sun on your back, and there's my hypnotherapy session for you. And as you approach life, alone maybe, maybe with another person, but in a transition state. Okay, I'm gonna say it in a midlife. I want you to think about how you're gonna stand up and redo. And I'm gonna tell you right now, I don't know what I'm walking into, but I know I'm gonna walk strong and tall, and I'm gonna have the sun on my back, and I'm going right in, and I don't know what it is, but I'm gonna trust, I'm gonna trust God, I'm gonna trust God, and I'm gonna trust that I can stand tall and move forward and not look back, not flounder and not feel bad for myself. Like I've made bad decisions that have put me in a situation to feel alone. I'm gonna stand tall, I'm gonna walk forward alone, and I'm gonna just figure it out. And that's my stand up and redo. And thank you. This podcast is a work based on the personal experiences, reflections, and memories of the speaker. The events described are true to the best of the speaker's knowledge and recollection. Some names, locations, identifying characteristics, and timelines have been changed or altered to protect the privacy of the individuals involved. In some cases, composite characters have been created or dialogue has been reconstructed based on memory. The intention of this podcast is not to defame, malign, or harm any individual or entity. Rather, it is to share the speaker's journey with honesty, vulnerability, and integrity. Any opinions expressed are solely those of the speaker and are not intended as statements of fact regarding any person, group, or organization. Listeners should keep in mind that human memory is inherently subjective and selective, and while every effort has been made to ensure accuracy, this podcast reflects the speaker's perspective and truth. Thank you.