Am I having a midlife crisis?

And other midweek musings.

This post has been sitting in my drafts folder for a few weeks now. On the one hand, writing about my midlife whatever-this-is has been wonderfully cathartic. On the other hand, putting my experience out in the world has also felt unexpectedly vulnerable. Long story short: I needed to sit on the post and sort through some Big Feelings.

But also, sometimes the world just feels so noisy. Like, throw-your-phone-and-computer-away-and-live-off-the-grid noisy. And I needed to take a beat to figure out if I felt okay continuing to contribute to that noise.

As the menopause discourse (and, quite frankly, the world in general) gets louder, do I feel okay continuing to vie for your attention? Or should I do you the service of leaving you alone in the way I sometimes want to be left alone?

So, there was a lot to sort through. And in the end, I decided to keep writing about issues pertaining to midlife and let you decide where you direct your attention. If it’s Hot & Bothered, I’m so honored. And if it’s not, trust me I get it.

As for the midlife “crisis”, I’ve decided that I won’t let a little shame get in the way of talking about a very typical midlife experience. Especially if by talking about it I’m able to help ease the process for someone else. So without further ado …

For the last 18 months or so, I’ve been feeling a lot of capital-F Feelings about how I’ve spent the last 25 years of my life and how I want to spend the next 25 years.

And it occurred to me the other day that I think this might actually be a midlife crisis.

(Sidenote: What does a midlife crisis even look like for women? The only cultural reference points I have are the male-centered cliches from movies and tv. And they are not very helpful under the circumstances.)

I married young, and kids came much faster than we had planned. And then for sooooo many years I was in the thick of parenting 4 kids while managing part-time work, significant volunteer responsibilities, tremendous hardship and loss. Meanwhile, I’ve had full-time dreams on the back burner that I wondered if I would ever get the chance to pursue.

And now that I have just one kid left at home and life in general is much less intense, I’m looking back at the choices I made and feeling aaaalllll the feelings.

On the one hand, I am in awe of the life I’ve built alongside my husband. I can say I genuinely love my life.

On the other hand, I’m grieving roads not traveled. Sometimes that grief has been a manageable ache, and sometimes it has felt absolutely gut wrenching.

And then there has been the guilt about the grief. Why can’t I just be grateful and happy, especially when the disappointments of my life are insignificant compared to circumstances other people face?

Thankfully, I’m finally coming out the other side. Here are the two things that have helped me tremendously. Maybe they’ll help you too as you go through your own midlife crisis/reckoning/reconciliation/whatever-this-is.

First, I read this article from Cup of Jo in which the writer, Abigail Ramsey, talks about having to reconcile what she thought her life would look like with what it actually looks like. And the truth of it is that she both loves her life and is disappointed by it.

Abigail explains,

“The other morning, I was blabbering to my therapist about this very thing, about how surprised and sad I was about how so many parts of my life have turned out, all the while being so grateful for a whole lot of it.

She stopped me. “Midlife,” she said, “is all about holding the tension of opposites.”

Unlike in our 20s, when it’s all about the future – getting the job, dating, building a career and/or a family, traveling, doing good in the world – this stage is all about holding the light and the dark, the good and the bad, at once. For most of us, that means there’s plenty we are happy with, and plenty that we are shocked or disappointed by. Perhaps a marriage has ended or we weren’t able to have kids. Perhaps our parents have fallen ill. Maybe we fell into unexpected careers that turned out to give us enormous satisfaction. Perhaps our second marriages are much better than our firsts!

At this stage of life, she explained, we are reconciling how we thought our life would go with how it’s actually going.”

The beauty of Abigail’s essay was that I no longer felt alone in this process. Or like a terrible person for grieving when I have so much to be grateful for. I’m simply going through a reconciliation process that’s actually quite common at this age. Goodness that knowledge was an immense relief.

The second thing that has settled deep into my soul are the final stanzas of Joy Sullivan’s poem Culpable. They read:

I wrote a pep talk recently to myself on a bar napkin:
no matter which road you take, it will be both glorious and unbearable.
Every road is lonely. Every road, holy.
The only error is not walking forth.

Yesterday, a friend in California, when giving me directions,
Told me I could take the trail toward the tall pines or turn left and find a field of poppies,
Growing gold and savage at the edge of the valley.

When I asked which to choose, she simply shrugged and said,
Either way, it’s all heaven.

The line, “no matter which road you take, it will be both glorious and unbearable” healed something in me. Different roads would have simply led to different glorious and unbearable things. But they would still be present, in equal measure.

And “either way, it’s all heaven” was an important reminder: it’s all heaven, simply because it’s mine. It’s the life I have, and it’s a privilege to be here living it despite the disappointments.

So do I have it all figured out? Do I know with certainty what I want the next chapter of my life to look like?

Nope. But I feel like I can finally stop grieving the past and start focusing on how to move forward. And that feels like tremendous progress.

Have you gone through a similar reconciliation process? What helped you along the way?

Also, what does a midlife “crisis” actually look like? I have a feeling it can look like many different things and would love to know your thoughts.

xo, Rebecca

P.S. The older I get …

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