Welcome to the Mastering Midlife Podcast where we talk about all the crazy fun things that happen when you are a midlife mama. I'm your host Heather London, let's dig in. I knew the answer for me was to break up with my kids and as I held this long, warm, loving embrace with my kids as tears rolled down my cheeks and I slowly let go for the last time.
I grabbed my bag and I slowly turned and walked away and as my steps took me through the airport door and it closed behind me, I could feel the momming slowly exiting my body, slowly melting away.
And the further I got into the airport, the more I noticed the excitement and something inside of me changing as my brain switched from thinking about momming my kids to getting me on this adventure that was right before me, finding my airplane that was going to take me to Costa Rica, thinking about the adventures that I was going to have discovering Nicaragua. And this is when everything changed for me. I knew that I needed to dump my kids,
not because I don't love them, but because I'm obsessed with them. If you are a midlife mom, you are feeling me on this because I am so close with my boys. I love them so much. I just want us to be together forever, the three musketeers, but life will not have it that way. The whole purpose in life is for them to become independent. So my job is to become irrelevant and to let them go. But I found it really hard because we're all still living in the same house where they grew up. So all the
memories of me in that house is of me momming them. And so even though they're 20 and 18, I would still want to take on that role of momming them and think of them and telling them what to do and doing stuff for them. And it was really hard for me to stop it in that situation. So I booked the first flight to Costa Rica and I hopped on it. And while I did that, I let go of all of the other stuff
that I didn't want to hold on to anymore, the momming. And it's my mission to just let them be. I feel like I've done a good job raising them and they have the ability and all the tools to take care of themselves. And for me to just guilt free go live my life. And I did it. And guess what? It worked. Oh, 100% it worked because I went started my trip in Costa Rica. And I've been there before and I just love the country. And I got to focus on me living my life. So I was working while I was
there, which made it even better because I wasn't just on vacation. So I had this purpose, this mission of running my business and discovering Costa Rica, like traveling down the Go on Costa coast, meaning new people. And I every where I went, I had an adventure. But I set up my life where my days consisted of walking on the beach, surfing, and that would depend on the tide, what times I would surf at. And then I would eat all clean foods, discover the area, meet the locals, see what
the community is all about. And then my day would always end with the most brilliantly epic, glorious sunset that I had ever seen every single night. And never disappointed. And it was different every single night. And not only did I do that, but the whole town came down and paid homage to the sun. Grateful that it rose that day at a setting and we'll come back again tomorrow.
Just such gratitude. It was amazing. And I noticed that I was able to focus my attention on me, try to discover who I was or I wanted to remember who I was and my passions and what let me up because when you become a mom, we make the mistake of our kids becoming our life purpose. Now it feels like there are life purpose, but they're not our life purpose. And when we got caught up in thinking that they are, we lose sight of ourselves and who we are. So it can be painful
when you let go of them because now you're without purpose. And if you're without purpose, life can be painful. You can spin in circles and confusion and darkness. And it can get pretty dangerous. So for me, I wanted to remember my purpose, remember who I was. But in the process, I learned that that person is gone. The person who I was doesn't exist anymore because I've lived a thousand lifetimes raising kids. And I am now a new person. And so this mission changed from
rediscovering who I was to reinventing who I am. And it made it even more exciting. Because in any given moment, I can totally reinvent who I am, especially when you're traveling. And nobody knows who you are and you're meeting new people all the time. And reinventing yourself starts with the thoughts in your brain. Because that's how you created yourself in the first place. And so you can consciously recreate yourself. And I wouldn't really invite and recommend that you consciously
reinvent and recreate yourself on purpose. If you really specific about it because if you don't consciously do it, you'll reinvent yourself from your past. And we don't want to do that. We want to totally start from scratch. And so this is what I spent my months doing. I spent my months really investigating where I was, what the culture was like, meeting new people, trying new things. But really connecting to nature and who I am and who I want to become. And I had never, never,
never felt so good in my body ever. And I attribute it to a couple of things. One, getting up with the sunset. It's just naturally waking up when your body has had enough sleep. And there is a crack of dawn because that sun is intense. And spending the first part to my morning walking on the beach. So I, the only time I wore shoes was flip flops, was to get from one place to the other because the sand in the ground was so freaking hot. That's
the only reason why I wore shoes at all. And so when I would get to the beach, I would take my flip flops off and I would walk on the beach, usually near the water where it was cooler. Otherwise, the sand was too hot. And just have my feet on mother earth for as long as humanly possible. And we're picking up the energy because what happens is as humans were put in, stuffed it to shoes and shoes have rubber soles. And so that disconnects us from the energy of the earth. And so
we are energetically disconnected. And anytime we put our bare feet on the ground, any kind of the ground, we're reconnecting into the energy of mother earth. And getting back to our circadian rhythm and it is grounding and it is life changing. And so I was grounding every day. And then I would surf. So I would go in the ocean. And again, the ocean has healing properties like think about it. The ocean is so amazing with the salt and all the life that's going on in there, the pull,
the gravity, all of it. Just the feeling of surfing too is so amazing. And then I would watch the sunset in the evening. So we know that seeing those lights helps our circadian rhythm. So when we see the sunset, it helps to release the melatonin for us to sleep. And seeing the sunrise in the morning helps release the cortisol for us to wake up. And just eating whole clean foods, that's all I ate, the local fruit. Not a lot of vegetables because
vegetables don't grow there, but fruit was on the menu, seafood. So rice and beans and fish and fruit. And I was in heaven. It was so amazing. I would wake up every morning and think to myself, damn, I feel good. Everywhere I would walk, I would think, damn, I feel good. And that's another thing. I just walked everywhere I went, every single spot. So you can see how the lifestyle there is healthy from that perspective of everybody is doing that there in the sun, there in the ocean,
they're walking everywhere, they're riding their bikes everywhere. They don't live a sedentary life. They live an active life just out of necessity. So because not a lot of people have cars, so if you want to get from A to B, you're going to be walking. You're going to be riding your bike. You're going to be growing your own food. Like all this physical activity is just built into their daily schedule. So you can see how as I'm doing all of this, I'm not thinking about my kids,
I'm not obsessing about them. I'm not wondering if they're okay. I'm like, I know they're okay. And I'm focusing on me. And the whole day would go by and I hadn't even thought about them. It was so amazing to be able to feel like a real person again. Like I'm a person that is existing here on this earth. Now, what do I want to do with this? What do I want to make of this? And so I went about having the best experience. And I did, like I said at the beginning, I did
end up popping around Nicaragua just because I could. I ran into some people that said they were headed there and how amazing it was. And so I decided I was going to go discover Nicaragua. And it was amazing. It was one of my best trips ever. The things I saw, the people I met, the volcanoes, what the heck? It was just magical. And when I was in Costa Rica, my boys did come and visit me. And that was of course the best highlight of my trip. Because as soon as I see their beautiful
faces, I just connect right back into that. Like how much I love them and mumbling of them. And I was trying hard not to. My mission in life is now to become their roommate and their friend. And to be there whenever they need me. But only when they ask because I don't want to be putting that on them because they're grown human beings. So how can I go from being a mom to being a roommate? It's hard. But when we were traveling there, it was good. I was able to do it. And I
enjoyed my trip more because I was able to do that. Of course, I had to call on my mom's skills because I just have so much more experience traveling than they did. But I made that more of like a roommate friend travel buddy as opposed to a mom thing. Like moms, you know, how they always know everything and they can fix everything and all that kind of stuff. But I'm going to tell you this when it came time for them to leave. It was the hardest thing I've experienced. It was way harder
than when I left at the airport because I was leaving. I was going on to my big adventure. And so I could focus on that and less on them not being around. But when we left Costa Rica, when they left Costa Rica, I was still there. And they left the place where we were staying first. And guys, it was heart-wrenching. I cried for two hours straight. Like I cried the big ugly cry. And I'm not normally a cryer. Now like going through menopause and that, I'm more emotional than I was
for sure. But I cried my heart out. Like I have never cried like that. I don't think it was so intense. And it was not just because they left, but it was the letting go of them. Like it was just what it represented. And it hurt all over again. Man did it hurt all over again. It was so hard. And then I had this big gaping hole in my heart again. So I thought, now I have to start again. Now I have to start again and let them go. Which I could do because I was going on another adventure
because I was moving to another place. And my brother and his girlfriend were going to be meeting me that night actually. So it worked out well. But I did notice too that when they left, when I left them, I did feel like again that hole in my heart, that emptiness. Right? So it was easier for me to be traveling on my own, focusing on me. And when parts of home came to find me and remind me
of what my life was like and who I was. It was hard to let that go again. But I think the purpose of me sharing with this with you is because you don't have to break up with your kids and get on a plane and fly to Central America in order for this to happen. But I want to just invite you to think about how can you let go of your kids? I always joke and say I dumped my kids before they could dump me or I broke up with my kids before they could break up with me. And I'm joking,
but it's true. How can you let go of your kids in a way that feels good for you and allows you to be curious about the adventure that's ahead and allows you to start thinking about who do I want to become? What do I want to create in my life? Because anything is possible. You don't have to just be that person without kids now. What you can do is be anyone. What you can do is anything that you want. I want you to really be curious about it. Sit with it. What would feel good for
you? What would be exciting for you? What would be scary for you? What would push you out of your comfort zone? What if you always wanted to do? But just never did I love traveling? And I would have traveled with my kids. I just didn't have the money to pay for the three of us to travel. That's the only reason why I didn't do it. So when I had the opportunity to do it, I jumped on it. I was so excited, but I have never felt more free and more connected to my body and more
excited about reinventing myself than for those three months. I would have stayed longer. I swear, I would have stayed longer, but I ran out of money. I would have stayed for another couple of months because it was so amazing. And I can keep doing that while I'm here, while I'm at home. And it would just look like other things like, what group could I join? What skill do I want to learn and go out and just start trying all of them? And notice there's going to be some fear coming
up because you're trying something new. That's to be expected. It's not a problem. But I want you to be kind and gentle with yourself while you're doing this. But I want you to have this question in the back of your mind while you're doing it. If I could be anybody, if I could create any life for myself or if I could become anyone that I want to become, who would it be? What would I do? And then I want you to go out there and I want you to try it on. Just create it for yourself.
You might not like it, but you might love it or you might like some of it and you want to change it a little bit. But remember in every single moment, you can become somebody totally different. In this moment right here, you can change who you are. It all starts with your thoughts. So start thinking about the life you want to create for yourself, who you want to become in this next chapter. What's the next iteration of yourself? And then be super brave and courageous.
Be fearless and go out there and create it for yourself today. Thank you for listening. Always, always, always love yourself first and have an amazing day.