The Millennial Crisis — We are tired, because we are remembering.

Read til the end

Hi you,

You are about to read one of my rough, rogue posts that I sat to write in the pocket of a regular Tuesday afternoon.

I just went on a walk in the winter sunshine here. I sent long, rambly audio messages to two girlfriends overseas— one in England, one in the USA.

Every time a friend sends me a 14.56 minute audio message, telling me about some very big things in her life, she will say ‘i’m so sorry for rambling'.’

I think we all do that— we apologise for rambling but let me tell you on behalf of all women— we don’t care. We love it. Ramble on.

I love hearing from my friends far away. Catching up on a years worth of life events deserves a full day coffee catch up but if all you’ve got is an audio message after school drop off then please don’t package it into a nice, neat, structured message.

Your audio message to me is not part of the viral yap challenge on Instagram. You are not being graded on your structure. Send it to me messy, send it to me ADHD, send it to me while stopping to say hello to the woman walking by, send it to me while yelling at your dog to get off the couch.

Send it to me in one big chunk. Send it to me in crumby bits.

Not one time, am I thinking “dammit she is rambling.”

My ears are a safe space for the messy imperfections of my girlfriends— as clever, wonderful and self aware as they are.

A theme I’m noticing amongst my friends but also on the interwebs is that so many of us are in some kind of…. pivot.

Pivot is the soft word because ‘identity crisis’ feels a bit heavy, a bit extreme.

I mean, we’re not midlife yet are we? Is 38 considered midlife now?

Anyway, the ‘crisis’ that we’re in doesn’t resemble a midlife crisis as in the movies— sure, there is the rogue impulsive haircut and the desire to rave again…. but the millennial identity crisis is different because we are different.

We are the first generation to parent publicly. We have eyes on us in our most tender, tired times, and we have relentless lists of ideals to compare ourselves to.

We have done more ‘self development’ than any generation in history, more healing, more self indulged pursuits which have left us tired and more separated from ourselves than ever.

We have lived our entire adult lives with a front row seat to everyone else’s peak (and lowest) moments and this has taxed not only our minds but our souls. We’re constantly pursuing things that aren’t for us and we don’t catch it until we’re sick.

We have galaxies of information in the palm of our hand— our parents had to trust themselves. We are learning to trust Claude.

We learned so many epic truths about living a limitless life but pursuing ‘having it all’ burned us out.

We have gripped onto all of it— free from the 9-5, hustle culture, boss babe, trad wife, wellness obsession, new age to Jesus, performative activist, 7 fig girlies… ALL of it has lost it’s stick.

We have achieved big things. Got the money, the success, the big followings and realised that Jim Carey was right— everyone should get it, to realise that it isn’t the point.

We’ve watched the worlds horrors on our screens and become totally numb to a lot of it, not by choice, but through de-sensitisation.

We have, without ever intending to, become performative.

We made ‘authenticity’ a job.

There is SO much to care about while also giving our all, including our bodies everyday for the little people inside our homes.

We care about one thing, we’re yelled at for not caring about all things.

We are tired of being told what to say. What to care about.

We’re spoken to by thousands of strangers at once in tones and in volumes that was once reserved for only our closest circles.

Thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of strangers have opinions about us. Our nervous systems adjust to this, while we’re also up 5 x a night breastfeeding for years.

We’re tired of it all.

Politically correct bullshit.

Performative faith.

Performative activism.

Performative niceness.

Performative politics.

Performative wellness.

Performative expertise.

We are disillusioned. We are tired. We are pissed off.

Also, we are maturing.

We are growing into ourselves.

We are discovering our spines.

We are not the children anymore— we don’t need permission.

We are realising that we are the adults now.

No funny jokes about ‘AdULtInG’. We are the mothers and fathers of this earth.

I have felt myself in a little tired place this past month— beautiful and God given though.

(I will reserve the details of that for when I switch my paid subscription back on so I can go to town on it).

But I secretly love this little periods of pause— it’s like the wisest part of me saying ‘hey, no. We’re not doing it like that anymore.’

God makes us tired so we can be tender.
We become slow so we can become soft.

Otherwise, we charge and push through.
Many friends of mine have been feeling in this weird middle place lately. They’re pivoting in their creative and professional lives.

They’re between an old identity and a new one.
Recognising old patterns that have hit their expiry date.
Holding a vision for the future that would require they really grow and get out of their comfort zone for the first time since 2013 when they built their first business.
Feeling things they’d preferred to have shelved away for another 38 years.

Many are just feeling disillusioned. We’re telling ourselves the God honest truth about what we want, don’t want, believe and don’t believe.

Suburban domestic life? Boring. How am I back here? Is this truly my choice or an orientation towards comfort, safety and doing ‘the right thing by others?’

Absolutely everything being optimised through AI? Discombobulating.

Christians who tell people not to trust their God given discernment and intuition while they gaslight using bible verses? No.

Churches that serve whole cups m&m’s to kids while having them colour in at kids church and politically correct pastors who think homeopathy is demonic but the hideous politicians they support are not? What?

Every false belief we have clinged onto about what it means to be a good mum, a good wife, a good daughter, a good human— crumbling when we realise how much our over perfectionism has cost us our FULLY LIVED LIVES.

Realising that our social media audiences perceive us to be nice little spiritual girlies when really we are rough and rogue and hilarious and WOW why don’t they know that? Am I, still, also…. a little performative?

The relentless over-auditing in our own minds because we are FULL of comparisons, of different teachings, of ways to optimise and so now it is harder to just rest in our own judgement without jumping through hoops and doing somersaults first. Too much information. Too much everything.

We are tired of our own BS.

We are tired of others BS.

We are tired of the depth of corruption in the world.

We are tired of the performative EVERYTHING.

We are tired of trying to lump ourselves into a box because ALL boxes have come undone. They’ve broken open…

And here we are now just us.

The raw honesty about who we are, what we actually want, what’s working and not working, what we believe, what we do care about and what we don’t care about….

The fact that actually yes I do like to swear when it’s called for

and no, the imaginary christian in my head is not going to guilt me for it

and that all of this striving for some insane level of perfection has broken us

and we’re tired

and we want our innocence back

our zest for life

our voice before we tried to make it a perfect yap or something that wouldn’t piss people off

our true, innocent spiritual life without performing it or perfecting it for image

our unhinged goals and desires before we decided that they were not from God because God never said that. The lady on the internet did and we believed her because our mind has fused with the internet and we only realise when we become so tired because we’re not living our own lives.

I mean, we are but we’re still holding back, hiding a little, performing a little, guilting ourselves when we have no need to, speaking when we don’t want to, not speaking when we do want to, overthinking the shit out of everything….

Trying to squeeze the juice out of our lives according to the 1282359 voices in our head from the internet rather than…..

The quiet voice of our own souls.

The exciting desires of our hearts (that God put there).

The remembering that this is our life. We have to take it back from the noise and live it because we are around 40 now.

It’s moving fast. Some friends have grey hairs and some friends have died and our kids are growing so fast, our parents too.

No more fking around in complacency or those old life sucking patterns of trying to live for others.

I KNOW you have been honest. I KNOW you have a spine. I KNOW you haven’t been fake this whole time— that’s not what I’m saying.

I’m saying that we are waking up from any remaining remnants of falseness now. And yes, even if you have been high agency this whole time, we all have our weak spots.

Our kids are watching us— not for our perfection but for our aliveness.

They’re looking at us seeing if they too, have permission to go for it, to enjoy, to trust themselves, to believe themselves…

We aren’t the kids anymore. We’re the adults.

We are tired of trying to live right and we are so, so ready to start living even more true.

We are going back to our 2012 courage, innocence, who we were before the internet muddled it all up.

We are re-deciding all of it:

Where we want to live.

What we want to do with our time.

What we want our family rhythm to be.

What we care and don’t care about.

What structures and ideals we have believed in via osmosis and not truth

And most importantly… that we do not need to run it by God or wait for a permission slip.

God made us free because we are meant to create our lives.

Our thoughts, our identities, our beliefs…. yes, they do instruct our lives and always have.

No, it was not demonic manifestation. That was a lie.

Wake up. Let it come full circle. Let what you KNOW inside the Kingdom of God within you be true.

Trust it.

We are participants, we are not puppets.

This is the millennial renaissance.

This is the millennial pivot.

This is the millennial crisis which is not a crisis at all—

It’s a remembering.

More like this coming.

Love, PK. XX

If you want three hours of me on camera delivering this x 1000, you can buy my latest class here.