
DATE: Saturday, June 7, 1997                TAG: 9706060066

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E2   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY PHYLLIS SPEIDELL, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:  123 lines

A HELPING HAND THROUGH MIDLIFE CRISES

IN A LETTER to her college-student son, Jean Bowerman shared ``the best thing I have learned so far: Nothing is as it seems, so give everything a chance to be something other than what it seems.''

Good advice for someone in search of life's calling or for those caught in a midlife muddle, say Marilyn Robinson and Joyce Wooldridge, counselors and partners in Personal Growth Resources in Suffolk.

Robinson, a former Roman Catholic nun, and Wooldridge, a former school administrator, have built a business guiding folks through the midlife maze - ``developmental life-cycle counseling within a spiritual framework,'' Robinson calls it.

The two draw on their own experiences, academic training and the teachings of psychiatrist Carl Jung, who considered the midlife passage even more difficult than the troubled times of adolescence.

By midlife - which for some occur in their 30s, for others the 80s - many people are surprised to find that their self-identity of prior years no longer fits comfortably; their goals and priorities are less well defined.

For women, the stress point tends to come as early as mid-30s; for men, at retirement, when giving up the job also means giving up much of their identity.

In workshops in Hampton Roads churches and in retreats at their center in Duck, N.C., Robinson and Wooldridge have helped hundreds of men and women - including Bowerman, a Virginia Beach copywriter in her early 50s - learn to work with, rather than fight, the changes going on in their lives.

``We live in a culture that wants to fix what is broken,'' Robinson said. ``We are suggesting that there are plenty of times in life when what is broken is broken because we need to move on to something else.''

Scott Vollmer, a 42-year-old sales manager from Virginia Beach, had accomplished his ultimate career goals earlier than he had ever dreamed.

``I had the salary, the position, the house, so I congratulated myself and put my goals behind me,'' Vollmer said. ``But where was the peace of mind, the self-assurance? The whole fairy tale dream of success seemed to be a false road to contentment.''

From Personal Growth Resources, Vollmer learned to re-evaluate his goals and to discover what was missing in his life.

``I knew then that my parents' goals and methods of accomplishment were not going to work for me,'' he said. ``I learned to dig down past all my old ideals to find my own ideals to guide my future life.''

One technique Robinson and Wooldridge occasionally use to help clients better define themselves is the Enneagram, an ancient spiritual growth tool that describes nine personality styles on a circle of wholeness. ``

``It brings out things you know in your gut about yourself, but you have tucked them away because you don't like what you know,'' Robinson said. ``People don't always like what they find, but by midlife, they are ready for it.''

For Robinson and Wooldridge, the midlife focus was an outgrowth of their own traumatic passages.

Robinson, with advanced degrees in both teaching and theology, believed that her future was set with the Ursuline order. She was not looking to leave the convent.

Like many working men and women driven to devote their lives to careers, Robinson was slow to recognize that something was amiss. But at age 48, after 30 years as a nun, the signs were unmistakable, and she left the convent.

A pastoral associate position with the Church of the Resurrection brought Robinson to Portsmouth. She later realized that although she loved the ministry, she needed the freedom to direct her own work in her own business. She said goodbye to a salary and plunged into creating Personal Growth Resources.

Wooldridge believed she had confronted her own midlife crisis years earlier, when her youngest child left for college. That same weekend, Wooldridge fled the empty nest, commuting weekly to Charlottesville to begin a doctoral program in religious studies at the University of Virginia.

Three years later, vision problems that had plagued her teenage years returned, and Wooldridge realized that she was likely going blind. She enrolled in one of Robinson's workshops.

``Since I was 35, there had been signs of `Who am I? What do I want to be when I grow up?','' Wooldridge recalled.

In an instant meshing of personalities, interests and respect, the two women forged a strong bond and soon decided they could be a dynamic professional team. Both strong personalities, Robinson, 58, and Wooldridge, 50, between them bring a variety of backgrounds and life styles to their clients.

Catch them on a day off and you might find them relaxing at the North Suffolk waterfront home Wooldridge and her husband share with Robinson. The two volley ideas with a natural candor and frequently ask, ``How do you feel about that?''

Bill Holloran senior vice president of the Hampton Roads Chamber of Commerce and head of the Small Business Development Center, has consulted with many fledgling companies, but he recognized from the outset that Personal Growth Resources did not fit the mode.

``So many people think of entrepreneurs as looking for the profit,'' he said, ``but they . . . are using the business as a way to provide a service, to answer what they perceive as a real need.''

He said: ``They are doing things to get people to change their behaviors rather than the quick-hit, motivational-type seminars. It works, and their business has become self-sustaining.''

Personal Growth Resources also offers business-oriented work behavior profile workshops and spiritual growth seminars.

``We are running out of time to do it all,'' Wooldridge said. True to style, she and Robinson plan to take this year to assess where they are and where they are going. ILLUSTRATION: Photo by JOHN H. SHEALLY II / The Virginian-Pilot

Marilyn Robinson, standing, and Joyce Wooldridge have built a

business, Personal Growth Resources, guiding folks through the

midlife maze.

Graphic

GROWTH RESOURCES WORKSHOPS

Retreats at Duck

June 15-21: Week for Artists

Sept. 12-14: Celebrating Women

Oct. 10-12: Midlife Transformation for Couples

Oct. 24-26: Midlife Transformation

Nov. 7-9: Drinking From the Well Within

Nov. 21-23: Finding My Own Voice