The Third Turn: What Horses Can Teach Us About Midlife
Apparently, horses have been the topic of my week, so naturally I am going to draw as many metaphors from them as I possibly can.
Last week, I went to the races (shoutout Emerald Downs; for the old timers Longacres Racetrack) with my dad. It was a fun day, but it also brought back one of those childhood memories that somehow stays tucked away until something brings it back to life. When I was eight years old, my dad taught me how to bet $2 on a horse. I was fascinated. So fascinated, in fact, that afterward I would get the Seattle Times, unfold it across our rust-colored shag carpet next to my dad in his Lazy Boy, find the sports section, and study the race results. Every week. I started getting pretty good at predicting which horses would win. Apparently, I was an eight-year-old handicapper in training.
Fast forward a few decades, and there I was again at the races with my dad. And, of course, the horses gave me plenty to think about.
One horse in particular decided he was not interested in participating. He got loose before the race and took off, and it was quite entertaining watching a group of people try to catch a very large, very fast animal who had absolutely no interest in cooperating. Eventually, he was caught and scratched from the race.
I couldn't help but wonder: If you have spent your life being trained to run around a track at top speeds, what happens when one day you decide,
"No thank you. Please scratch me. I've had enough of this process."
Maybe he wanted a new jockey. Maybe he wanted a different color jacket. Maybe he had decided racing wasn't actually his thing. Or maybe he was simply done doing what everyone expected him to do.
And isn't that sometimes what happens in midlife?
We spend years training for the race. School. Career. Marriage. Motherhood. Achievement. Productivity. Taking care of everyone else. Being responsible. Being successful. Being good. We learn how to run the course we have been given, and for a while, we may not even question whether it is the course we actually want.
Then somewhere around midlife, something inside us starts asking a different question:
Is this still the race I want to run?
Maybe nothing needs to change. But maybe something does. Maybe you need a different pace, a different direction, a different jockey, or simply a different definition of success.
Do you allow yourself to change?
The Third Turn
There is something about watching the third turn of a horse race that feels a lot like midlife. The horses have already covered much of the track. They have found their rhythm, burned energy, experienced the jockey's direction, and navigated the competition around them. Then they enter the third turn, and suddenly the finish line is in sight.
The horses are heading into the home stretch. Every stride matters.
That feels a lot like midlife to me.
We are no longer at the beginning of the race. We have lived enough life to know some things. We know what drains us and what energizes us. We know which relationships nourish us and which leave us depleted. We know what we have survived. We know what we are capable of. We have made mistakes, recovered from disappointments, changed our minds, raised children, built careers, ended relationships, started over, cared for aging parents, and perhaps even lost ourselves along the way.
And now we are beginning to understand that the years ahead are not an abstract number. They are ours.
So what do we want to do with them?
What do we want to create?
What do we want to contribute?
What do we want to experience?
What do we want to leave behind?
What is your legacy?
Not just the money you leave or the accomplishments on your resume. I mean the deeper legacy: the courage you model, the wisdom you share, the cycles you break, the relationships you nurture, and the way you show up in the world.
In the book I mentioned last week, Your Turn: How to Create a Midlife You Love, the invitation is to recognize that this is your turn. Not someone else's. Yours. (Allison Aubrey is the OG for the metaphor on the Third Turn)
And that requires knowing what actually matters to you.
What are your values?
What do you want more of?
What do you want less of?
What have you outgrown?
What are you no longer willing to tolerate?
What are you curious about?
What would you do if you weren't trying to prove anything to anyone?
What happens when the horse gets older?
Here is where we have to whisper it: glue factory.
I mean, really. What is it about aging that makes us think the only alternative to youth is becoming irrelevant?
We have created an entire cultural story that tells women our value decreases as we age. Our bodies change. Our hormones change. Our faces change. Our careers may change. Our roles in our families change. And somehow the message is that we should be desperately trying to look, act, and feel like we are 35.
But what if aging isn't a decline?
What if it is an accumulation?
Experience. Wisdom. Perspective. Resilience. Confidence. Self-knowledge. Discernment.
There is a kind of confidence that comes from having lived long enough to know yourself. You become better at recognizing what is yours and what isn't. You become less interested in performing for other people and more interested in living according to your own values. You learn that "no" is a complete sentence. You become more willing to trust your own experience.
There is good reason to challenge the negative messages we have absorbed about aging. Researcher Becca Levy has spent years studying the connection between our beliefs about aging and health, and her work suggests that positive age beliefs can have meaningful effects on health and well-being. The American Medical Association has a fascinating conversation with Levy about this research and the power of changing the way we think about aging. Read the AMA article on positive age beliefs.
So perhaps the question isn't, "How do I stay young?"
Maybe the better questions are:
How do I age well?
How do I age with confidence?
How do I use what I have learned?
What do I still want to discover?
Who do I want beside me for the next part of the race?
Conduct a thought audit
As you head into your third turn, conduct a thought audit.
Our thoughts are powerful. They influence our feelings, and our feelings influence our actions. So before we can change our lives, it helps to understand the beliefs that may be running the show.
Take out a pen and paper. Yes, actual paper. Write it down.
Start by asking yourself:
What do I currently believe about aging?
What do I believe about menopause?
What do I believe about my changing body?
What do I believe my role is supposed to be at this stage of life?
What am I telling myself I am too old to do?
What am I afraid will happen if I change?
Whose expectations am I still trying to meet?
Then dig deeper.
Do these beliefs actually belong to me?
Or did I inherit them?
Our culture has plenty of rules, expectations, judgments, and messages about what women should look like, how we should age, what our bodies should do, what we should buy, and how we should behave. Many of those messages are designed to make us feel "less than." Shame is a very effective marketing strategy.
As Gloria Steinem said, "The first problem for all of us is not to learn, but to unlearn."
Maybe your third turn is partly about unlearning.
Radical acceptance
One way to counter the cultural script is through radical acceptance.
Not resignation. Not giving up. Acceptance.
Why fight something that is inevitable? Every ounce of energy we spend hating our changing bodies, fighting our age, or wishing ourselves back into a previous version of ourselves is energy we could be using to actually live.
Tara Brach's Radical Acceptance explores this idea of meeting ourselves and our lives with greater compassion rather than remaining at war with ourselves. If this idea resonates with you, you can learn more about or order the book directly from Tara Brach's website.
Imagine what might happen if you stopped treating your current self as a problem to solve.
What if your body isn't the enemy?
What if menopause isn't a failure?
What if aging isn't something you have to apologize for?
What if this version of you deserves the same compassion you so freely give everyone else?
Radical acceptance doesn't mean you stop caring about your health or stop wanting to grow. It means you stop wasting precious energy fighting reality and start deciding what you want to do with the reality you have.
Find your pack
There are millions of women navigating this same third turn. You are not alone.
Finding your pack isn't about scarcity!
Find the women who make you feel more like yourself. Find the women who will run beside you rather than compete with you. Find the women who will cheer when you take a different path. Find the women who will say, "Yep. Me too."
Midlife can be a transformative period when we finally confront the things we have carried for years: old wounds, complex PTSD, dysfunctional patterns, people-pleasing, perfectionism, shame, and identities that were built around what everyone else needed from us. It can be uncomfortable, but it can also be a reclamation.
A chance to become more intentional.
More purposeful.
More empowered.
A chance to break generational cycles and create a life we actually want to live.
The first two turns of the race matter. They shaped you. They taught you. They gave you experience. But they don't have to dictate the third.
As you head into the third turn, what needs to shift?
What beliefs need to be challenged?
What skills need to be sharpened?
What relationships need to be nurtured?
What new interests are waiting for you?
What values do you want your life to reflect?
What do you want your legacy to be?
And perhaps most importantly, what race do you actually want to run from here?
You don't need to know exactly where the finish line is.
You just need to know what direction you want to run.
