The Meaning We Make
How interpretation shapes whether we feel broken…or understood
Once we begin to consider that symptoms might be signals, another question quietly follows:
What do we believe those signals mean?
Because meaning is never neutral.
It is shaped by culture, language, family, medicine, and the stories we’ve inherited about what it is to be a person.
In the Western model, the dominant meanings are often clear and immediate:
If you feel too much → you are dysregulated.
If you can’t sleep → something is wrong.
If you withdraw → you are avoiding.
If you struggle to function → you are impaired.
Sometimes, these interpretations are accurate—and helpful.
But they are not the only interpretations available.
In Crazy Like Us, Ethan Watters describes how different cultures make meaning out of similar experiences in radically different ways.
The experience itself may be difficult.
But the story around it changes everything.
In one context, hearing a voice may mean:
I am losing my mind.
In another, it may mean:
Something is trying to communicate with me.
In one context, deep grief that lingers may mean:
I am not coping well.
In another, it may mean:
This love is still alive in me.
In one context, emotional sensitivity may mean:
I am too much.
In another, it may mean:
I perceive things others overlook.
The inner experience hasn’t changed.
But the meaning—and therefore the relationship to it—has.
This is where many women in midlife find themselves in a quiet but profound conflict.
Because the meanings they were given earlier in life start to feel insufficient.
Or even harmful.
You may have been told:
Be strong.
Be rational.
Don’t overreact.
Keep going.
And for a long time, you did.
You translated your experiences into acceptable language.
You minimized what didn’t fit.
You adjusted yourself to the expectations around you.
But something shifts.
The old meanings stop holding.
The explanations feel thin.
The labels feel incomplete.
The language feels like it flattens something that is actually complex and alive.
This is not a failure of understanding.
It is the beginning of a new one.
Meaning is not something we passively receive.
It is something we participate in.
This doesn’t mean we ignore what we’ve been taught.
It means we begin to ask:
Does this interpretation actually fit my lived experience?
Does it help me relate to myself with more clarity—or more shame?
Does it open something—or close it down?
We are allowed to question the meanings we were given.
Even the ones that came from authority.
Even the ones that helped us at one time.
This is not about replacing one rigid story with another.
It is about creating enough space to hold complexity.
A symptom can be both:
A real physiological experience
and
A meaningful response to a life that needs attention
Grief can be both:
Overwhelming
and
A continuation of love
Anxiety can be both:
Exhausting
and
A sign that something in your environment or life is not aligned
When we allow for this kind of both/and thinking, something softens.
We are no longer forced into one narrow explanation of ourselves.
And that matters.
Because the meanings we carry become the way we treat ourselves.
If the meaning is:
Something is wrong with me
the response is often:
Fix it. Hide it. Push through.
If the meaning becomes:
Something in me is responding
the response shifts toward:
Listen. Adjust. Care.
This is the quiet work of midlife.
Not just managing what we feel—but reinterpreting what it means.