'At 49, my life was in free fall. On the day I turned 50, I made a decision.'

This piece was originally delivered as a speech by Jane Tara at the Generation Women event in Sydney.

I've wised up countless times in my 55 years… leaving behind men, jobs, countries, lives that no longer served me. I also left behind things that did serve me thanks to healthy self-sabotage. You don't get to this age without thinking at times that you wised up but really… you f**ked up.

However, in all the years of wising up and stuffing up and everything in between, nothing was as important as the decision I made the day I turned 50.

March 11, 2019.

What was it that day?

That was the day I began a daily meditation practice.

I'll just wait for the eye-rolls to finish. I know you were expecting something… else, but before you get up to go to the bar… hear me out.

Prior to turning 50, my life had been a s**t show, shaped by a traumatic childhood. We talk more freely about domestic violence now. Back then… we swept it under the carpet. Growing up, I lived on a knife's edge. Every single time I dared be happy, it would be snatched away from me.

Later, I stumbled through my twenties, and thirties… trying. Trying to get by. Trying to find normal. Trying to be happy. Trying to escape that legacy.

I wandered from country to country, rescuing man after lost man.

I miraculously found a good man and had two sons with him. But I took a blowtorch to us because I didn't know how to be loved. I'd never learnt to be worthy of it.

My 40s arrived. And boy were they tough. With perimenopause, my trauma magnified, and everything that I'd been trying to unsuccessfully escape was mirrored back to me in the choices I'd made, and the relationship I was in.

Listen to MID where Holly Wainwright and Jane Tara talks about how invisibility begins at your 40s. Post continues after podcast.

I took an emotional and psychological beating in my forties. By 49, my life was in free fall. 2 weeks before I turned 50, I was in hospital with pneumonia, I lost my business, and my partner of a decade ended our relationship via text… Short and sweet. Unlike our relationship.

Worst of all… and it took some time to realise this… I was invisible… not only to people around me, as happens to many women as they age… but to myself. I had completely lost sight of myself.

On the day I turned 50, I sat on the beach and watched the sunrise on a new decade… I made a promise to myself… this cycle of heartache, and trauma and the same old sh*t happening in countless ways was going to change. It had to.

I went home, and on that day, and nearly every day since… I meditated.

Meditation wasn't new to me. I'd given it a go over the years, along with everything else.

Starting in my early twenties, I immersed myself in self-help… Louise L Hay and Shirley McClain and Shakti Gawain, all promised me I could be healed. I could be whole. I could be happy. I pounded pavements around the world muttering those affirmations, but I didn't really believe I was worthy of good things.

I admire my tenacity though… I really tried to find a solution to my pain. I moved furniture around rentals to feng shuimy life. At one stage I ate only the colours of the chakras, one colour a day. I studied reiki, astrology, tarot, spoke to fairies, cast spells, read my aura, identified as Pagan, looked into my past lives, rebirthed into this one, and sat at the feet of multiple teachers around the world… waiting for something or someone else to heal me into happiness.

But my childhood was always lurking in the shadows.

As I roared towards fifty… I turned more to science. Neuroplasticity was the new buzzword. We can change our brains. And I started to understand that much of my unhappiness, my tendency to catastrophise, by inability to maintain attention, my habit of disassociating under stress, my pain… my trauma, and this ever-present sense of doom had all been wired into my brain… And if that was the case… could it be wired out? And that's where meditation came in…

I stopped thinking anything external would change my life. I stopped looking for someone else who could help me… and I turned to me… or into me.

Watch: Holly Wainwright on what being MID is like... Post continues after video.

It is now widely recognised that meditation has cognitive, psychological and neurobiological benefits. It can fast-track changes to the circuitry in the brain. There are structural differences in the brains of experienced meditators. Meditation creates a space where we can expose our negative programs, our self-deceptions, our fears. Meditation is where I became AWARE of myself… my attachments and my beliefs… my programs… and changed them.

I'd had no idea how I really saw myself, or the world, until I began this practice. The way I saw myself and the world had been forged in the flames of my childhood and had been reflected back to me in countless awful ways throughout my life.

Meditation changed that. It wasn't easy… I often wanted to run. Or cry. Or scream… but instead, I sat.

It was the greatest act of self-love, and self-love changes everything.

It's only now, in my fifties that I'm talking about the violence of my childhood. The way that type of abuse in childhood shapes your adult experience. I'm talking about it now, because I can. Because I must. And because I am proof that you don't need to be permanently defined by it.

I love my fifties. It's the decade I finally changed how I view the world, and found a kinder, healthier, happier view of it all.

For me, wising up was taking the time to change how I see the world… and how I see myself.

March 11 every year is not only my birthday. It's my rebirth day…

This new me just turned 5.

And I am visible.

If you or someone you know is at risk of violence, contact: 1800 RESPECT.

And if this brings up any issues for you, contact Bravehearts, an organisation dedicated to the prevention and treatment of child sexual abuse, on 1800 272 831.

Mamamia is a charity partner of RizeUp Australia, a national organisation that helps women, children and families move on after the devastation of domestic and family violence. Their mission is to deliver life-changing and practical support to these families when they need it most. If you would like to support their mission you can donate here. 

Feature image: Instagram @authorjanetara.