EP21 Speech 17 - Midlife and Beyond: What Matters from Inside-Out - Jean Shinoda Bolen

Description: In this reflective and personal address, Jean Shinoda Bolen invites listeners to see midlife and elderhood as thresholds into deeper meaning rather than decline. Drawing on Jungian psychology, archetypes, dream work, and her own lived experience, she explores individuation, gratitude, and the call to live from the “inside out.” Framed within the larger liminal moment of the pandemic, she encourages forming circles, honoring inner guidance, and using this stage of life to grow into one’s fullest expression of love, purpose, and trust.

Syllabus Description: First half of life is about adaptation to gender and social norms and expectations at which a person succeeds or fails. Midlife raises the question: is this all there is? What now? What next/ A time for questions about the meaning and purpose of life, about responses to suffering and loss, creative expression, spiritual insights.

Learning Objectives

1. Individuation: about becoming "who you were meant to be," the subjective sense of being true to an innate sense of yourself absorbed in what you are doing, where you are, or who you are with.