Ep. 5 - Feeling Stuck After 50? The Grief No One Talks About (And How to Move Through It)

Welcome back to Tea With Sophie.

Today, we’re talking about something that so many women experience but rarely name.

Feeling stuck. Flat. Disconnected. Like something has shifted—but you can’t quite explain it.

Often, this isn’t a lack of motivation. And it’s not something “wrong” with you.

It’s grief.

Not just the grief of obvious loss— but the quieter grief that comes with midlife:

• The loss of identity
• The loss of who you used to be
• The feeling of being untethered or uncertain
• The sense that something inside you has dimmed

In this episode, we explore:

• The two types of grief women carry in midlife
• How grief shows up physically, emotionally, and even in the gut
• Why so many women feel stuck, listless, or disconnected
• The importance of naming and feeling what’s actually there
• Simple ways to stay connected to life—even in difficult seasons
• And how to honor your grief without losing yourself inside it

Because grief is not something to rush or fix. But it does need to be acknowledged.

And when you learn how to meet it with compassion, it can become a doorway—not a dead end.

If you’re listening to this and thinking, “I feel stuck… and I’m not sure how to move forward,” please know—you don’t have to navigate this alone.

I offer a complimentary session that I call a Breakthrough Session, where we gently explore what’s going on and help you find your next step forward.

You can learn more and book your session at:
👉 sophieuliano.com/podcast

And if you’re moving through a season of grief or transition right now, I’m holding you in so much softness.

Be very gentle with yourself.

And if this episode supported you, be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss our next conversation.

Transcript

Recording Started

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Hello, everybody, and welcome to tea with Sophie. Today, I am drinking, I'm almost more than halfway through, a delicious cup of green tea with magnolia leaves. This is a beautiful Chinese tea, and it's very soothing and restful and at the same time a tiny bit uplifting, if that makes sense. That's why what I love actually about green teas is that you get a lot of theanine, which is very, very, very soothing. And you get a tiny little bit of lift because there's a little bit of caffeine. Um, and just know that when you brew, if you have really good quality loose tea tea leaves and you brew whether it's green, white, oolong, the second and the third brew, which, if it's good quality, you should be able to get a few brews out of just one, you know, your first tablespoon of leaves. Um, then there's a lot less caffeine in it. So that's what I'm drinking. I hope you're sitting down with a beautiful beverage, maybe a cup of tea, maybe a glass of water, and we are gonna dive right or something else. Um, we're gonna dive right into this week's episode. So the title of this episode is The Grief That We Carry in Midlife. And I'm gonna be talking about the grief that so many of us carry in midlife and how not to lose yourself in it. So that's what I'm going to go over in this episode because it's a very, very real thing that I see with so many women around me, friends, peers, and women that I work with. So I really think it's something that we cannot ignore is um is the process of grief. It's going to happen. Nobody is immune from it, nobody is going to escape it. And the women who I work with, mainly in their 50s, 60s, and 70s, obviously, there are times, always times in our life where we are going to experience loss, but it tends to pile on. Um, and there's a lot more of it at this stage of life in midlife and beyond. Um, and so I'm going to be talking about two different kinds of grief. Um, and so it really is the grief that we carry, so many women carry, and we rarely speak about, and we rarely speak about openly. So this is just a really quiet session, take a few breaths, become really present for this grief. So it's not just one kind of grief because in midlife, we are very often holding two very different experiences at the same time. So there's the grief that comes from real loss. There's very few women who I work with that haven't experienced some kind of and sometimes really big and tragic losses. So it could be losing a partner. It could be obviously losing parents, family members, a friend, um, sometimes even a child, uh, a beloved pet who has been part of your daily life for many, many years. In either way, it changes you. It changes you, this kind of grief. Obviously, it's absolutely gut-wrenching, and it changes you. And you are different pre that loss to how you are after it. And that is just part of how we are molded. It's that it is that rich tapestry of life that makes us deeper and more present and more compassionate as long as we don't close down. And then there's the other kind of grief, and thank you for sharing, everybody who's sharing. Then there's the other kind of grief, and it's the quieter kind, and it's one that doesn't have a name. So it can be the grief of I've lost myself, I've lost my youth, I've lost who I was, I've lost my identity, I've lost my spark, I've lost my body, I've lost lost my sense of direction and purpose. I've lost my sense of meaning. I've lost, and then there can be very practical things for, again, women at this stage of life, is I've lost, I've lost my way, I've lost my career, I've aged out of my career. Or a lot of this speaks to a loss of identity. And I speak so much about identity because everything that I teach, that those of you who are in my community, clients that I work with, very much you know that if you're working if you're in Ignite, we talk all the time about identity, becoming. But it has to be intentional. It's not just going to happen. It's an intentional, it's an intentional um uh transformation. Um, so many of the women I work with are carrying both these kinds of grief. Now, how does it show up? How does this grief show up? And this is what I want to go into in this episode, and then I want to show you how to navigate through it. But I think the most important thing is to first know how it shows up, because it can show up in very unexpected ways. Um, it's not always obvious grief of like, oh my gosh, I'm grieving. In fact, some it can be, obviously, if you suffered an enormous loss, then it is. But other kinds of grief, you don't actually even realize it's grief. You just don't. You feel just really off. You feel stuck, you feel listless, you feel flat, you feel as if life has lost its shine, even at times, like life has lost its meaning. And that's stuck. It is it can be so deleterious. It's almost like I spoke to a lady recently who said it's almost like a kind of soul sickness. And I said, I know exactly what you are talking about. It's like there's a darkness that you can't quite explain, but you can feel it in your body. And when we are the age that we are, if you are menopausal, post-menopausal, um, or even perimenopausal, but when we get stuck in this and it has this deleterious effect on our body, it can be a cascade, it can be a domino effect because the worse we feel, then it affects our body. And the worse we feel in our body, we feel sluggish, we feel heavy, we feel unmotivated. Maybe our body hurts. Grief can literally hurt. Um, and as somebody who is a gut health specialist, now there is new and emerging research to show how grief affects your gut microbiome, which actually, when I really started delving into this research, it came as no surprise to me because depression affects our microbiome, anger, irritation, chronic stress, all of our emotions affect our microbiome. We have this living community, you know, within. And it listens, every cell of your being listens to you, to your to your emotions. Your body keeps the score. You've had that before, but your gut really keeps the score. And that's sometimes when you're going through grief, whatever kind of grief, whether it's acute grief through loss, or whether it's this other kind of grief that I've been speaking to, suddenly your um gut, your digestion can feel really, really off. And then this can lead all of this and not feeling good and feeling and stuck in a rut, and you're unmotivated and you can't pull yourself out of it, then of course, can lead to just becoming inactive, more sedentary, eating a lot of comfort food because you're just sort of, you know, eating those feelings, you're trying to get some kind of comfort. And there is nothing wrong with that. The worst thing that you can do is to judge that and shame yourself around that if that is you, because you're just trying to get some relief and you are trying to get comfort. And and there is a way, then those of you who are working with me in Ignite know that that we can learn to meet those needs at a higher level, not ignore those needs, worst thing you could ever do in those emotions, but to to process them and then meet your needs differently in a way that is healthy and nourishing. So I want to offer you a way to begin navigating this without rushing it and without losing yourself inside it. It's very easy to lose ourselves inside it. So the first step is to name it. So can you name what you are grieving? I always say you sort of name it to tame it, but can you name it not just, oh, I feel off or I feel, you know, I'm sort of grieving the loss of, but can you really name what's going on so that it doesn't stay vague? Because this is how you really validate it. And sometimes naming it can be really as if you're describing, you know, that emotion. Well, I'm feeling this, this is it. And this is really, really what's going on. And what can help you is to anchor into where are you feeling it in your body? You know, do a little bit of a body scan. Where is it sitting? This is really powerful. And again, this is a lot of the work that I do with my clients. We do many, many different kinds of body scans. We come home into our body because that's really where the work and the healing happens. So sometimes it's useful to go, well, I I name it, and where am I feeling it? Is it this very heavy feeling in my literally my heart? You know, there's a there's a reason why the word heartbroken uh is there, you know, sadly people die of heart attacks after intense grief. So is it here? Is it in my solar plexus? Is it between my shoulder blades, which is also part of your heart chakra? Um, this whole area, is it in my throat, my neck? Am I clenching my jaw? Am I feeling it? Am I carrying it? Am I carrying it if it's that kind of grief of losing yourself and losing your identity and just being so stressed trying to pull yourself together? Sometimes you feel it in your neck and your shoulders. Maybe it is, I'm feeling it in my gut. My gut is off. It's really off. Either you're constipated or you have it's sort of almost like IBS symptoms. So just that's a way of really getting very grounded in what is going on. But do let it be felt. Okay. So the first step is to name it. This is the grief. This is what I'm going through. This is specifically what it is. And then the second step is to feel it, not just thinking about it, but feeling it, because so many women that I speak to say, they say, Sophie, I haven't had a good cry in years. In years. Sometimes I speak to women on the phone, I do it, we'll do a session, and literally the tears will just start that you know, falling. Um, and so having a good cry, and I think you really feel that when you're really heard by somebody and somebody is really there for you and really holding space for you. Because the thing, when we're going through grief, many of those around us, even those who are close to us, maybe they're processing their own grief and they're doing it differently to you. Or maybe you feel very misunderstood with the grief that you're going through, particularly if that if it's that kind of silent grief that you can't quite pinpoint is not necessarily loss, but it's loss of identity, loss of youth, loss of who you were. That's hard to articulate, isn't it? To people around you, but it could be a spouse or a partner. They may not understand that. So you feel very lonely in that grief, which is all the more reason why I think at our age, we definitely need a very, very tight-knit community of women who can hold each other and love each other and lift each other. It's very, very important. Um, so that you you're you're not, you don't disappear into isolation. We can tend to isolate. So the grief has been sitting there and it's been and it's waiting to be acknowledged. And it could look like journaling, it could be speaking to somebody who you really trust. But no matter what, it needs to be heard, right? It needs to be heard, it has to go somewhere. If you push it under, it will not go well. And whatever we it's a cliche because it's true, whatever we resist will persist and it will get worse. So, in the craziness and distraction of your life and thinking, well, I just got to get on with it and just get no, no, process it. Process it. There is only one way through it, and that is through it. You have to feel to heal. Let that land for a moment. So, number one is name it, number two is let it be felt. Number three is stay connected to life. So at the time, this is a very important distinction. So we gently keep ourselves connected to life. We need to do this now, not in a forceful way, not in a, oh, okay, I've got to pull myself together way, but in small, loving, nurturing actions, or as we call them in my program, um, making those little deposits, those little tiny deposits. It's like the deposits that we make for our future self. It's like putting a little tiny pebble in the pond. It can be a little tiny pebble that you're putting in. And you keep on doing those because you're building up your reserves. So rather because you feel drained by grief, right? You've you've probably used up a lot of your reserves, honestly, which is why I am so big. If you follow me on social media and everything, on we've got to build our reserves, we've got to build our reserves to age powerfully because you never know when you might need them. And this is a time when you need it, when you are grieving and going through grief. So, you know, we don't want to just use up all those reserves and just be empty and feel absolutely like an empty husk at the end of it. And that's why staying connected to life is so important. So, small loving actions. And this is where a simple patent interrupt can be very powerful. So, as a coach, I talk a lot about patent interrupts. Patent interrupts can be changing your physiology when you feel absolutely stuck and you're in that depressed um posture. And the depressed posture is when you're hunched over, you know, your shoulders are rounded, you're in a protective mechanism, you could be endless scrolling, you could just be hugging in, you know, to yourself. And so a patent interrupt is can be changing physiology. It can be going for a 30-minute walk, not to punish yourself, but to reconnect with it, uh, reconnect with life, your breathing, your life force, um, making yourself a beautiful, nourishing meal, not restricting, not skipping, but nourishing. It could be taking a hot bath, a really exceptionally long shower, um, listening to beautiful music, even if it brings tears, or even better if it brings tears. I find connecting to nature to be such an incredibly soothing thing. It's one of the things that I miss so much about being in the UK, because living here in Los Angeles, there is nature, but it's not the same kind of beautiful wild where I come from in England. There are woods and forests, and it's just a place where I always used to go when I was growing up, just to process and to cry and to, you know, if anybody's seen the movie Hamnet, that just suddenly sprang to mind. It's such a beautiful movie that is this connection to the earth that's so primal. And so if you live somewhere where you have that kind of nature that you can walk out in, just go and connect and feel the energy of the trees and the forest floor and the the the you know the the birds and and and and anyway, all of that I think is one of the most powerful things. Um so, you know, if there are tears, uh those tears are are the cleansing, aren't they? Um and and don't ever minimize your grief. You know, I yes, if you've had enormous loss, you probably are not minimizing it. And hopefully nobody around you is minimizing it. But if it's that deeper, kind of more subtle grief that I'm talking about, the loss of self, the loss of who you were, you know, don't minimize that. Just allow yourself to have that. You don't have to stay stuck in it. You don't have to stay stuck in that gear, but just acknowledge it and let it be there. It's all part of the release, it's part of the healing. And the key is this, right? We don't stay stuck in the gear of grief, we allow it and we keep life and really anchor this in. We keep life gently moving through us. We keep life gently moving through us, we keep on moving, we keep on moving. Okay, so number four, this is all about identity, and this is something I see. So sometimes grief can become our identity. Now, I have worked with many, many women over the last 20 years, coaching women. And so this is something that I occasionally see. So it's the story becomes this happened to me, or all these many things happened to me, and I'm in grief and I can't move forward. I cannot move forward. It's just who I am. I am defined by this grief. And when it becomes that narrative, this is when women can really begin to lose themselves. So and this is very, very important piece here. Really hear me with this, because I'm saying this, and I wanted to do this episode about this because it is what I uh hear quite a lot. Is or see, sorry, I see this, I notice and observe this, is they stop taking care of themselves. Like really taking care of themselves. And this is the moment where it becomes so important that they do right now, in this moment of feeling unmotivated, stuck in a uh brain fog, discombobulated. I just can't even seem to put one foot in front of the other. And then, on top of that, many women that I speak to at this stage of life, they're struggling with their body, they're struggling with belly fat, they're struggling with chronic inflammation. And so it's a vicious cycle because stopping taking care of themselves at this particular stage of life is exactly what we don't want to do. In fact, we need to do completely the opposite. So here's your shift if you relate to any of this, because there is another way to meet grief, not by pushing it away, but by allowing it to deepen how you care for yourself. I'm gonna say that one more time to deepen how you care for yourself. This can be the moment where you say, This matters, I matter, my life still matters. And instead of drifting further away from taking care of yourself, you begin to step forward in a more intentional and a more honoring way. Because at this stage of life, taking care of yourself isn't optional, it's essential. So anchor this piece in here. You can honor your grief without losing yourself inside it. I'll say that one more time. You can honor your grief without losing yourself in it, and this is just such an important thing. And again, you know, this grief, and I'll finish with this grief, as you know, is not something grief of loss isn't something that can be rushed, it's not something that can be fixed, it will take its own time, it's deeply intimate, it is deeply, deeply personal. And you want to surround yourself with people who don't try and fix you, who don't give you platitudes, or just you know, the usual platitudes, the worst ones like oh, time heals, or things like that. They mean well, but it's not helpful. You want to be around people who just hold space for you with deep compassion, and deep compassion means that they can almost feel it with you, they can almost feel it with you, and they are holding you, and at the same time, and this is the key to every time I've been through really really deep grief, is that they also see you. They know and therefore they see you healing from this. So it's not like, oh, this is terrible, how awful, but it's just like yes, they know that they're there, they're holding space, and they know that your next chapter is going to be deeper, stronger, even more beautiful and powerful than it has ever been. That's the opportunity if you can navigate through it in this way. So I hope you found this helpful. Um, I I just talking a little bit more about this because I'm just seeing it so often in women who I work with and and women who I speak to. And um so I just feel that it's something that we need to address more at this stage of life because it affects our health so profoundly. And as I said before, at a stage of our life when we really need to be really taking care of our health. Sending you so much love and light as we close today. And if you're listening to this and thinking, I feel really stuck, I can't quite navigate this on my own, please know that you don't have to. I offer a complimentary session that I call a breakthrough session. It's a space for us to gently look at what's going on, get some clarity, and help you find your next step forward. You can learn more and book your complimentary call at SophieUliano.com forward slash podcast. And if you're moving through a season of grief or transition right now, I'm holding you in so much softness. Be very, very gentle with yourself. You're allowed to take this one step at a time. Thank you for being here with me today. And if this episode supported you, be sure to subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts. And I'll see you next time for another cup of tea with Sophie.