Foiling After Fifty
Why Midlife is the Perfect Time for New Adventures
"Expand your field of experience." "Don't be afraid to try new things." "A willingness to take risks sits at the heart of personal growth."
Pick up any self-development book and you'll be bombarded with pithy examples of bumper-sticker wisdom. And it's not wrong—just oversimplified.
When I teach classes on interpersonal communication, I beat the "It's all about the journey . . ." drum too. But I remind folks that there isn't a one-size-fits-all approach for how best to grow ourselves or keep life from getting stale. We're born with different human systems—one person's exhilarating is another's serious health risk.
For some, keeping a gratitude journal is just the thing they need to think more deeply about personal development. For others, it’s training for a marathon. The journey of personal growth has many roads, but the challenge is universal: getting outside your comfort zone and embracing change.
As Helen Keller famously said, "Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all."
The Empty Nest Advantage
Once I turned fifty and the last of my four daughters headed off to college, I had more time to try new things. It was an adjustment to become an empty nester, but now that I've adapted, I'm learning that midlife is much more fun than expected!
In the past few years, my life has taken some exciting turns. Consider this fifty-something humble brag: I relocated from California to the Caribbean, finished writing a memoir, improved my running and yoga practices, learned how to play pickleball and trade cryptocurrency, and most recently, I started efoiling.
I'm not alone in discovering the joy of reviving old skills and learning new ones. I just read Courtney Maum's soulful memoir, The Year of the Horses, and was reminded of why women simply must do things for themselves: Our sanity depends on it. In The Year of the Horses, Maum shares her process of learning how to ride horses and play polo. When describing an early lesson, she writes, "...each micro-movement felt to me like I was on the cusp of absolute and limitless self discovery...” After the lesson, she’s so exhausted that her wrist shakes violently and she can’t text on her phone, but exclaims, “I'm hooked!”
Flying Above the Water
The first time I stood on an efoil, racing across the Atlantic Ocean, I felt the same—hooked!
If you've never heard of efoiling, imagine a motorized fin attached to the bottom of a boogie board, racing around in deep ocean water. To efoil, you hold the engine remote in one hand, hoist your belly onto the board, carefully climb to your knees, then feet, all while maneuvering across watery chop. When you're comfortable standing, you speed up the motor and voilà! The board lifts up out of the ocean and you're literally flying through the air!
The feeling is fantastic—like riding on a magic carpet. In order to balance, there is only one place you can be: right there on the board, present in each exhilarating moment.
(This video was shot and narrated by my husband, Mark, who is much too generous with his comments about my very novice skill level 😅).
The Gift of Falling Down
If you watched that video until the end, you saw that I didn't just ride, I fell—which happens a lot when you're learning to efoil. Falling is simply part of trying new things, an important part. The harder falls—like when I've collided with the board in the air before splashdown—have been the most instructive. They left me bruised and sore, but each tumble taught me something about balance, timing, and trust.
The falls weren't failures; they were feedback. They taught me how to fall better.
This is what I love about midlife adventures; we have enough experience to know that setbacks are part of the process, but we're still young enough to bounce back quickly. We can embrace risks with wisdom rather than recklessness. We can sit down, fall down, splash down...and laugh about it.
For women like me who have spent decades balancing a career and a family, midlife offers unexpected liberation. Who knew that some of life's best adventures would come after fifty?
"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take," Wayne Gretzky said. Midlife, it turns out, is a great time in life to take your shot.
What new adventure are you considering? I'd love to hear about it in the comments below!
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My latest adventure is foraging. On one of my daily walks by myself, I noticed a bunch of black berry bushes ripe to be picked. Since I'm not the GM of the Kings, I dont have to get all my fruit at the store, because I know how to pick em. So I took a ziploc bag and picked a sizeable amount of berries. I've been hooked ever since.
I would like to continue foraging at UC Berkeley. The thing is, the main cluster of blackberry bushes are located off the beaten path and are best accessed by standing in a shallow creek that runs through the centre of campus. This is no problem, I can get rain boots, but I decided I would like to minimize my time standing in the creek. The best way to do that is to free up my other hand by getting a wearable basket. I struggled for a few days to find one that wouldn't stand out like a sore thumb, and then I realised I could just get a canvas bag and blend right in with everyone else. I can't wait to put this plan into action.
I love the idea of a gratitude journal putting someone outside their comfort zone