Learning how to pivot in midlife so the second half of your life is something to look forward to
Hot Flashes, Carpools, & Dirty Martini’s by Juju Hook
I was introduced to the work of Juju Hook by a seventy year old working mom whom I interviewed for my podcast Women Behind the Wrinkles. My guest had found her most rewarding career as a television make up artist at the age of 50. She sent me an article on Juju, because it talked about new careers in the second half of your life.
As you can tell by the title of the book, Hot Flashes, Carpools, & Dirty Martini’s, Juju is a unique and dynamic woman. She is a branding expert who took her decades of mastery and channeled it to help women in midlife transition into new careers. Often women who have burned out from a corporate job who are looking to use their superpowers in a new more fulfilling direction. Words such as ‘mastery’ and ‘superpower’ felt new to me. I had not reflected on how my years of experience in research were a strength. When I burned out from academia, I wanted to leave that life behind, those skills no longer felt valuable to me. That was until I sat in a virtual retreat, organized by Juju, with 30 or more other women in midlife, who claimed their superpowers and made me realize that none of them had the behavior change science superpower that I had honed. It helped me see that I didn’t have throw the baby out with the bath water. I could re-focus this skill on working mom burnout. It was such a relief, as the idea of starting from scratch was depressing.
Juju wrote her book because her son’s school principal told her to do something that terrified her. She needed to find fulfillment and challenge in her own life instead of interfering in her son’s life. How often do we worry as working moms that we a missing out on our kids’ lives? Maybe our lack of focus on every minutia of their lives is a relief for them and a good thing. I certainly have read that modeling your own interests beyond motherhood is important, especially for girls.
In her book, Juju challenges our assumptions and calls them out as bullshit (of course!) and helps us transition to the next thought, which is also likely to be based on bullshit. It starts with the fact that as women we have not given ourselves the chance to do what we really want. And that’s the first question she poses: What do you want?
It’s not such an easy question to answer when you have spent so much time making sure everyone else’s needs are met. When I burned out people kept asking me, what do you want to do instead? I had no idea, and I was embarrassed to admit it. I felt so inadequate that I could not answer that question. I did not even know how to start finding out what I might want. I started to understand that our emotions can be flag posts for this. If you can recognize your emotions your can start to see what you need. But it took a long time. As Juju points out we can more easily answer what we don’t want. She takes you through trying to identify what you really want without judgement, limitations, excuses or questioning whether you deserve it.
Juju calls us out on believing that our thoughts are reality, our feelings are facts, and our past is our future. She challenges us to spend the next 21 days trying small actions to move us towards what we want. But she also helps us see the additional lies we might be falling for, particularly in midlife: being selfless, irrelevant, and diminished. She challenges our beliefs about impropriety (not at your age) or that we don’t have enough time left. As AARP reminds us even at 50 we might have another 50 years. She also calls us out for believing the excuses for why we can’t fulfill our dreams; that there’s something we need to fix before we succeed. Her references to being bad at math resonated with me because that was a story that was kept alive by my father even telling my son’s 2nd grade teacher, don’t let her volunteer to correct homework, she’s terrible at spelling and math. I had to start writing my own story.
Juju’s tough, as an author and coach. She has enormous compassion but also calls a spade a spade. She tells you what you need to hear and why you can let go of all the lies you tell yourself. And here’s where her superpower steps in, she teaches you to become your own brand. To own that brand, to believe in that brand, and to communicate those brand values. Her expertise is personal branding and the book gets you into the mindset of I am ready to become my own brand. And her coaching can then take you on that journey of finding the self belief, the unique you, and the superpowers you bring to the world.
Through Juju I learned that my brand is a thoughtful working mom, that my superpower is long form writing, and that my journey is to guide other career moms through burnout. My brand values are compassion, caring, curiosity, comedy and culture change. Juju is a masterpiece.
