Going with the flow
Finally embracing an added identity
<Welcome to Sandwich Season, where I explore the burdens and blessings of life in the sandwich generation—in the hopes of encouraging others in similar seasons.>
Hello everyone –
Here is something I didn’t expect to grapple with in middle age: I am not who I think I am.
I thought by this time of life, my mid-50s, I would have clarity. (Anyone else feeling this?) But so often I still feel like a 20- or 30-something (and sometimes younger) person living in this older body.
Today I’m mulling the career front. I think I am a writer, a professional communicator. That’s what my LinkedIn page says. And it’s what my resume says.
But the truth is, I have a growing second resume. A yoga resume.
I’ve been teaching yoga since 2018, but it’s always been secondary to my writing/communications work—usually a one-class-a-week thing. Recently, though, I had the opportunity to take on two more yoga classes, both at the fitness center attached to my dad’s retirement community. My students are in their 60s to 80s, and they are a delight.
At my first class, most of us settled on our mats (a few stayed in chairs), and I invited them to find their way into staff pose. That’s a position where you sit upright with legs together straight(-ish) out in front, kind of like the shape of an L.
The woman next to me asked, “Boat?”
“No,” I replied, thinking she had misheard. “Staff.”
“Boat?” she asked again.
“No,” I replied again, a little louder, thinking she was hard of hearing. “Staff.”
“Boat?” she asked again.
“Nnn …,” I started and then asked, “Wait, do you want to do boat?”
“OK, let’s,” she said.
So I invited the class to find their way into boat pose. This is a seated posture where you bring your weight onto your sit bones, lift the legs together, keeping knees bent or straightening them, and then lean the torso back at an angle, kind of like a V shape … or a square root symbol.
They all knew the posture, so everyone lifted and leaned into their various versions of boat. And that’s when my neighbor started rowing her arms and singing: “Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream …”
Some of the class joined in right away, while others waited and started at the next phrase, making it a round, everyone chuckling at the end.
And then we did staff.
These sorts of things don’t happen at the YMCA, at least not in my classes, which range in age from mid-20s to 60s or so.
My retirement class students treat yoga kind of like a group project. They have side conversations and offer commentary on what I ask of them. They laugh at themselves and groan when things get challenging. They offer each other suggestions. When I lead them through breathwork, they inhale and exhale vigorously. They make music requests and sing along with their chosen final rest/savasana song (below).
This morning, one of my students and I were talking about shooting star, a move we tried for the first time at Tuesday’s class. We had stood with arms raised, angled up to where the walls and ceiling meet. Then we lifted one straight leg out to the side … paused … and shifted to the other leg.
I mentioned that I had brought that posture to my YMCA class yesterday.
“Oh,” she said, “you teach other places as well?”
“Yes,” I said, “I also teach at the YMCA, but …”
And then I stopped. I was about to say, “But I’m really a writer.” And then I wondered what does that mean? Am I not also really a yoga instructor?
Because on paper right now, my yoga teaching life has more structure than my writing life. I teach three times a week. And I’ve recently signed up for a yoga therapeutics course in experiential anatomy, which starts next month. Between classes I spend inordinate amounts of time thinking about and researching what postures would be most helpful for my students, to maintain and improve mobility.
So I stammered a bit, and then landed on this: “But I’m also a writer. My dad calls yoga my ‘second career.’”
Which apparently it is. And the great thing about having yoga as my second career is that this season of life, sandwich season, requires a lot. As I discovered last week, I’m overseeing 14+ entities/people for Max alone. Then there’s all of the pieces of my life, and Jon’s and my life, and some parts of my dad’s life, and Zadie-the-dog’s life and …
It could be that this second career, with all of its breathing and stretching and strengthening and flowing, is holding me together through all of the multi-tasking and grief and changes that sandwich season brings.
Certainly it’s saving me from all of the sitting and scrunching and squinting I have done in my decades-long writing life. Maybe yoga is the yin to the yang of writing ... or is it the yang to the yin?
Either way, I’m grateful for it and for my students who get me thinking about movement and posture in new ways and open up other worlds to me.
I’m curious … for those of you in mid-life and beyond … what sorts of identity shifts have you experienced, career or otherwise? Feel free to share them below!
With all best wishes,
Sarah
P.S. Confession time: I still have not yet started my Autumn 2025 Getting Stuff Done project. It’ll happen … I’m going with the flow.
P.P.S. I found a new name for the Obituary Writing Workshop. See the fine print below!
Share your thoughts
I've always been more than one thing - dancer, writer, sometimes designer... But the focus has shifted at different times in my life. Started out as a full time writer/part time dance teacher. Morphed to mostly dance teacher with a little bit of writing. Then added a bit of designing. In this phase of life after retiring from my 40-year dance career, I'm really leaning into the writing. I like life to be fluid. I plan on becoming for the rest of my life.
I’m in my fourth and final career. First I was a nurse, then a biology professor. When my academic aspirations got torpedoed (long story), I became a life coach. Finally, in my mid-50s I found art and am now a professional illustrator. The biggest identity shift was when academia and I parted ways. I was flying down to Central America to meet up with my husband who was already there. I was trying to fill out the immigration form and got to “occupation.” I just sat there and cried because I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know who I was anymore.