It's A Book Thing Presents: An Interview with Jen Berlingo, author of Midlife Emergence: Free Your Inner Fire

Author’s Bio: Jen Berlingo is a thought-leader, coach, guide, and author on the midlife transition. She's also a Licensed Professional Counselor in the state of Colorado, a nationally registered art therapist, and a Reiki master. Through two decades of midwifing hundreds of women through life’s major transitions and experiencing her own fiery midlife passage, Jen was inspired to write her book, Midlife Emergence, to accompany women needing fortitude when traversing the portal into the second half of life. 

In addition to her long-standing healing work, Jen is a visual artist who offers original paintings, prints, and oracle decks to collectors worldwide. She shows her fluid, abstract art in her beloved town of Boulder, Colorado. There among the sunny foothills, Jen can be found making bottomless bowls of popcorn and snuggling on the couch with her unconventional family, her coven of close friends, and her Norwegian forest tabby rescues, Jinx and Juju.

 

Deliah Lawrence: What inspired you to write your book?

Jen Berlingo: In addition to my 20 years of experience in guiding my therapy and coaching clients through life’s transitions, I experienced my own profoundly transformative passage in my early forties, wherein I was able to live more fully into my queerness and other seemingly subversive aspects of myself. Through this journey, I became inspired to write a book to midwife the modern woman through her unique midlife emergence®.

 

There’s an unexpressed and beautiful part of each woman that is longing to be set free. It can feel difficult to acknowledge and even more daunting to act upon. Most of my clients, like myself, are “recovering good girls” who have done all the “right” things and met the expectations to create the life we “should” want, but we still feel unsatisfied. Making changes could be disruptive because the stakes feel high. Most of us have no roadmaps, models, or cheerleaders helping us to unfurl into our most expansive, aligned way of being in the world. Therefore, we are lulled into staying in our safe, sleepy, stagnant habits because it is too difficult to face the voice inside us that perpetually wonders, “Is this all there is?” I’ve so been there.

 

As I’ve been working to realign to my own integrity, I became a cartographer, charting the course, marking the waypoints, pinpointing the universal signposts along the journey. I did this so other women in midlife wouldn't need to walk the path alone. Midlife Emergence is a compassionate companion that belongs on the bedside table of every woman who desires to shamelessly reclaim powerful parts of herself that social conditioning locked away.

 

DL: What is your writing process?

JB: I really love to write at small tables in cozy cafes with a steamy beverage beside my laptop and people bustling about. However, I began to write Midlife Emergence at the start of the COVID-19 lockdown, when we were all quarantined in our homes, wearing pajama pants. So, I tried to recreate the café vibe in my house by playing instrumental jazz music and sipping my chai tea latte each time I began to write. This was a signal to my body and mind that I was moving into writing mode! I try to let the words pour onto the page at first, without taking a critical editing eye to them. The edits will come later, but it’s important for me to first capture the essence of the feelings and senses.

 

DL: What do you think makes a good story?

JB: Author and theologian Nadia Bolz-Weber talks about how we do the most harm when what we're protecting is the notion that we're good. My favorite stories are the ones where the storyteller allows the full spectrum of the human catastrophe to be witnessed. This hopefully creates a ripple effect in radical truth-telling. 

As a collective, we are famished for honesty, thirsty for admitting our struggles to each other. Keeping everything neatly inside is such a profoundly lonely way to live. The things that make us feel that alone are actually what have the potential to connect us to one another, if only we felt safe enough to make them visible. Those are the sorts of stories I am interested in hearing, and they’re the only ones I’m interested in writing.

 

DL: What were some of the challenges when writing this book?

JB: Writing Midlife Emergence was such a cathartic process, in that I revisited some of my childhood stories in order to examine (and eventually overturn) childhood messages that don’t serve me at this stage of life. I also wrote this book from inside the messy middle of my divorce. Even so, it wasn’t the emotions that were the biggest challenge; it was the anticipatory visibility/vulnerability hangover I experienced in knowing my story would soon be out in the world. When one writes a memoir, it usually involves those in their closest spheres, so I felt challenged in walking the line between telling my truth and respecting the privacy of those I deeply love.

 

DL: What do you like to do when you are not writing?

JB: When I’m not writing about midlife, I work with women one-on-one as a midlife coach and guide, and I facilitate online programs on the topic. I am also a visual artist who loves to create colorful, abstract pieces with watercolors and alcohol inks. I’m a big fan of all things cozy and connected, so I spend a lot of time at home with my favorite humans and my kitties.

 

DL: What are three things you can’t live without?

JB: Cuddles. Art. Hand lotion.

 

DL: If you had to describe yourself in three words, what would they be?

JB: Tender. Honest. Visionary.

 

DL: Would you like to share an excerpt from Midlife Emergence?

JB: Sure! This is an excerpt from a chapter where I invite the reader to examine their early childhood conditioning. Here, I’m uncovering what I learned from my caregivers about having needs:

 

I grew up in a household of tremendous care and good intentions, underneath a cloud filled with expectations, obligations, and unspoken rules. In writing on what she calls “the mother wound,” Bethany Webster says, “For daughters growing up in a patriarchal culture, there is a sense of having to choose between being empowered and being loved.” Like many of us, I was born into a time and a family where I had to choose between these two. From the time my tiny and supremely permeable being could pick up on energy in utero, I surmised that being an “easy baby” and a “good girl” were prized over expressing genuine needs.

 

When I was a smiling, quiet baby, I was rewarded. When I did what babies naturally do to communicate their preverbal needs—have a tantrum or a breakdown—I was placated. Natural emotional expressions that fell outside of happy were met with impatience and often rage by my father. My mother responded with an anxious “you’re okay,” and a perfunctory hug accompanied by a pat on the back in a curt “there, there” fashion intended to soothe me, but not coming remotely close to matching my level of discomfort. (I know this reassuring hug well, because as a nervous, young mother myself, I repeated this pattern at times.) The cocktail of my dad’s anger response paired with my mom’s minimizing response knocked me unconscious to my own needs at quite an early age.

 

DL: What new projects are you currently working on?

JB: I’m so excited to have my book out in the world, and I’ll be busy all year spreading the word about it through live and virtual events, as well as continuing to guide Midlife Emergence® programs online. I’m also collaborating with another artist on a forthcoming tarot deck. Soon, I hope to get back into my art studio and begin to accept commissions for custom paintings again. And I have a juicy idea for a second book…

 

DL: Where can readers learn more about you and purchase your book?

JB: Readers can get more information here: 

• Website: https://jenberlingo.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jenberlingo/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jenberlingotherapy
• Etsy shop: https://www.etsy.com/shop/artsorceress/
• Sign up to be notified when my book is released + receive a free gift:
• https://jen-berlingo.mykajabi.com/midlife-emergence-e-book 
• Book Buy Link: https://www.amazon.com/Midlife-Emergence-Free-Your-Inner/dp/1954805462

DL: Thanks so much for being here with us today. I know my readers will enjoy getting to know you and your work.

JB: Thank you!