Unraveling, Rebuilding, and Remembering Who I Am
A midlife journey of grief, joy, and finding the spark to begin again.
Hi, I’m Shawna.
I’m a woman in midlife who is struggling with all the things and feeling all the feels. My three children are leaving (or have already left) while my mother is declining with Frontotemporal lobe dementia (FTD)— the same disease that has already stolen my father from me.
I’m in the midst of book deadlines, publisher contracts, private coaching clients, and prepping for speaking events. At the same time, I’m worried about our economy, a crumbling government, political degradation, the lack of medical access and information for women, the loss of reproductive rights, the polarizing debates around vaccines, and children starving needlessly in Palestine.
My heart aches daily with sadness, and my adrenals are running on fumes.
My husband of 26 years is steady and strong — but still learning how to evolve past his unconscious bias and male toxic insensitivity.
I’m scared I might inherit the same illness that has taken both of my parents, yet motivated to care for my brain and body as if I’m running for my life from an angry grizzly.
After three long years of medical gaslighting and misery from five different doctors, my hormones are finally stable. Perimenopause was pure misery. But now — there are glimmers.
My morning coffee in the sunshine with my sweet dog, Koa.
My weekly walks with my friends.
Seeing my children explore far and wide, creating their own tales to tell.
It’s an unraveling and a rebuilding all at once.
As my mother quickly loses her words and memories, I try to create more of mine. I tell myself: say yes to every opportunity. Every trip. Every speaking engagement. Every conversation. Every chance I have to live.
I’m acutely aware that my days are numbered — like the steady tick-tock of our old cuckoo clock. My parents bought it when I was twelve, during a family trip to Germany. That little hand-carved bird would coo-coo on the hour, day and night. From my room above the kitchen, I heard it incessantly. Annoying. Disruptive.
That’s how I feel now — aware of each passing moment, each coo-coo that reminds me that time is slipping away. How many days are left until my brain, my body, our world declines?
Back to the unraveling.
It pulls me away from the identities I’ve long held onto — daughter, mother, wife, friend, writer, journalist, young woman. Instead, it reshifts me from the inside out, asking me two dizzying questions that circle endlessly in my mind:
Who am I with?
Who am I without?
I call this period of transformation The Third Spark.
Why? Because I want to deeply own this new chapter of my life. I want to feel the fire in my belly again. I want my narrative to be built on raw authenticity, heart-exploding joy, and an unwavering commitment to a greater purpose — one that feeds my soul and helps build a world where my granddaughters and great-granddaughters can thrive, not just survive.
As a writer and journalist, I use my medium to teach, connect, and hopefully inspire. Women belong in tribes. We are walking, breathing communities. Our bodies cycle together in sync. Our intuition nudges us to call or reach out when something feels off. Our body language betrays what our words can’t quite say.
We read the subtle messages of our children, our partners, our friends, our parents.
But what about ourselves? Do we really know what we need?
I created the Third Spark community as a way to connect back to ourselves. It is the honey that helps the medicine go down.
Midlife is medicine — deep, bitter, sometimes painful. But when women lift one another up, the medicine becomes more palatable. Yes, I can give you the science — oxytocin and cortisol, the hierarchy of hormones between stress and bonding. But science is only one piece of the puzzle.
The other piece is simply being witnessed. To feel it. To be seen.
Both are necessary.
You are not lost.
You are only wandering — on a journey back to yourself.
We’re all just trying to make sense of life right now. And I believe the best way to do that is together, with other women. Finding that spark within yourself — and igniting it in those around you — truly makes all the difference.
“We are travelers on a cosmic journey, stardust, swirling and dancing in the eddies and whirlpools of infinity. Life is eternal. We have stopped for a moment to encounter each other, to meet, to love, to share. This is a precious moment. It is a little parenthesis in eternity.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
This is the Third Spark. The unraveling, the rebuilding, the remembering….together.
Join us at www.thirdsparkhealth.com.
Your heartfelt comments surely resonate with many others as well as me. And I just turned 74! It keeps on evolving. Time to reflect, remembering people and what we did in our youth. Yikes! Was that ME?
Consolation occurs when I remember to try not to be so hard on myself, and as my mother tearfully told me as she dealt with lymphoma, "Susan, stop and smell the roses. You're always working so hard."