The rhythm of our lives and what it's trying to tell us

Plus news on comments and a new monthly Members' live chat starting next Sunday night

Hi friends,

If you’re new here, hi! I’m so glad you’ve found our community of (early) midlifers asking, “What now?” We’re much more than that, of course. Our corner of Substack is for deep thinkers and feelers. It’s for the readers as well as the (life) writers. It’s for the (prematurely) perimenopausal. The carers. The parents of tween and teens, rattling roughshod over the peaks and troughs of others’ hormonal ups and downs as well as our own.

Perhaps you’ve stumbled upon our community following an automatic recommendation from another publication you subscribe to. If so, the best place for you to start is over on my welcome page where you’ll find out what to expect whatever subscription tier you choose:

This week, some words on songs, an announcement about comments and a new invitation for the Membership…

The rhythms of our lives and what they’re trying to tell us

I’ve been walking a lot, the weather in Glasgow being what it is. My internal weather, too. When life feels a bit extra, I don’t have the bandwidth for podcasts and audiobooks. Instead, it’s a well-worn Spotify playlist: the aural equivalent of the old gear I haul on before I head out for a metronomic stomp. The one I’m returning to is called, inventively, Liked Songs. It’s a rolling selection I’ve hit the + button on and it’s giving 90s mix tapes: I’m so familiar with it I can “hear” the next track before it kicks in.

I am not and never have been a shuffler. Therein lies chaos.

I tend to start at the top and therefore listen to the same few songs every day; the length of the walk dictating how far into the playlist I travel. It’s like going back in time; 2024 re-encountered as small clutches of songs that would never sit side by side anywhere else. I say 2024 because I upgraded my phone in February and couldn’t work out how to log back in to my existing account. Ended up somehow using an ancient one linked to the family plan that hadn’t been touched since the girls were small. It was all Laura Veirs’ Tumble Bee and They Might Be Giants (if you have toddlers, fire in and thank me later) but once all that was deleted I had a blank slate.

Blank slates are good. They offer at least the feeling of a fresh start, even though I’ve discovered that a new playlist doesn’t mean the way I listen has changed much.

When else might I have an excuse to use the jukebox photos, I ask you

I wonder about the way I’ve forever over-listened, obsessively so, to particular tracks until I’m sick of them. Carried their rhythm often moreso than their lyrics around in my head so that when I’m not actually listening, I still am. It’s something I’ve done since childhood, so you can imagine my delight when Sony invented the rewinding Walkman that could hear the gap between songs and automatically shut off and go back to the one you just listened to. For a good while, aged 16, it was You Don’t Know Me by Armand Van Helden (and yes, I felt entirely misunderstood). The late nineties/early noughties was a golden era for dance and trance in particular and if I wasn’t out clubbing I was clubbing in my head (in an imaginary club that played the same few tracks over and over and over again).

We know there’s a trauma response element to re-watching or reading. Familiarity lessens our cognitive load and doesn’t mount a cortisol response. Knowing the outcome offers momentary certainty in an otherwise uncertain world. Re-listening, particularly repetitive over-listening, probably says something additional. It speaks to a safety-seeking reminiscent of the way the heart rate of a baby or toddler in distress will slow to match the measured, steady beat of a nursery rhyme or song. They respond like this because it reminds them of being back in the womb. Add a felt beat in the form of rocking or the pat, pat, pat of a hand on a nappy-padded bum and we, too, are awash with a calm that reverberates through to the youngest parts of us.

Maybe it’s also why certain songs with driving bass lines have kept me company when my work has demanded I dig back into an uncomfortable past. Writing my first memoir, I couldn’t escape the guitar that runs through Stevie Nicks’ Edge of Seventeen. The lyrics, too. “In a web that is my own, I begin again.” It was a song that had meant a lot to me in my adolescence and, nearing 40, I felt it resonating afresh. It also keyed me into the mood of the story in a way that nothing else could. I’d go on a quick walk after putting the girls on the school bus listening to that on repeat then by the time I got home, I was already in the zone and the words tumbled out of me.

It felt quite magical at times.

I haven’t purposely curated a soundtrack for my current book project but I suppose it’s turned out to be this Liked Songs playlist by default since it’s the music I’ve listened to while living through the stuff I’m now writing about. It’s a project that feels immediate and urgent. One that speaks, perhaps, to the restlessness and surprising rebellion that midlife, at least at first, only whispers quietly in your ear. In it I’m interrogating the curveballs — hormonal or otherwise — that force a reckoning with the roles many of us have internalised and played versions of since childhood. 2024 strength-tested all of that for me. It was a year that rattled me awake; demanded I listen hard for what I want in this next phase of my life. There are no songs from the past lurking in it. It’s incredibly freeing.

Here are two of the songs — Steal by Maribou State and Ocotillo by Loma — that are currently keeping me steady. Perhaps their lyrics are reminding me of my luck. That I have both the autonomy and confidence to break old patterns.

“You know I only ever took 

what’s mine…

What if I could have lead a

different life…”

“Sun is like an open eye

Big wind is blowing over

Lead me to another life

All my ties are broken 

I’m in wonderful

Disarray”

I wonder about the beats or the lines that won’t let you go? No explanation needed, though of course there’s fun in the telling. Maybe they offer solace or confidence? Maybe even challenge?

Meet you in the comments.

Comments and Chat update

It’s nearly a year since my publication hit the Bestseller milestone and since then the Membership has nearly doubled in size again. I am so grateful to have you here and above all else, LOVE the connections we make and conversations we have in the comments so from now, comments on posts like this one are open for the Membership only. I want to protect this space for us to have the kinds of intimate exchanges you’ve joined our community for.

I want you to talk to one another as much as to me and am announcing this change with a new invitation to join a monthly chat thread on the last Sunday of every month at 8pm GMT. This will give those of you who are already chatting with each other a regular place and time to get together each month and hopefully inspire those of you currently in the quietly-loyal camp to hop on in.

How will it work?

On the last Sunday morning of every month, you’ll receive your usual Sunday post from me direct to your email or Substack inbox. In that, I’ll share a prompt for that evening’s chat and when I launch it at 8pm, you’ll get an alert in your inbox (if you’ve got it set up) that the chat is open. You can just join if you’re able and for as little or as long as you like and we’ll chat together for half an hour or a bit longer if it gets wild. It’s a bit like a WhatsApp group where we can chat in real time unlike the comments threads on written or video posts (like this one) where we say our piece then drop off.

If you don’t already have the app, here’s the link you need, though you can use Chat on the desktop, too.

This month… What Now?

For our first chat (next Sunday, 26th Jan 8pm GMT) I thought I’d choose the topic, though I’ll be asking you lot to chip in with your suggestions as we move forwards. I shared a link to my About page last Sunday, where I shared the backstory to the name choice of my Substack, and it’s making me wonder what your current “what now?”s are. Here’s how I summed it up:

What Now? What now? What, NOW?

In autumn 2022, I ended a three-year psychotherapy journey asking myself, ‘What now?’ I vowed that I’d replace those thrice-weekly therapeutic hours with something, but wasn’t then sure quite what.

Enter Substack.

I find myself asking this question a lot. Perhaps because I’m a parent there are many flavours of “What now?”s in a day. There is the incredulous “What now?” in the face of pre-teen cheek, the “What is it this time?” what now and also the “Does it have to be RIGHT now?” what now. But more generally, the question reflects the ever-vigilant part of me that has spent the past 35 or so years with my head tilted back, in wait for some sort of “surprise”. It also speaks to the part of me that is – daily – saddened, shocked and yet also hopeful when faced with the reality of the world we live in.

I can’t wait to chat with you all next week, but for now I’ll see you in the comments below.

Lindsay x