Is it a midlife crisis or a midlife recovery?
Along with the challenges, midlife shifts can also reveal possibilities and joys.
By Kimberly Sheridan
Is a midlife recovery the new midlife crisis?
Writer Maggie Smith has spoken on multiple podcasts recently about a midlife recovery — or midlife return-to-self — while promoting her best-selling memoir You Could Make This Place Beautiful. I love the reframe of crisis to recovery, and the idea of getting closer to your true self with age. Smith did note that a crisis, such as a betrayal or a divorce, was frequently the catalyst for this return, especially for those who feel they’ve lost themselves in motherhood, marriage, work, or a mire of societal expectations along the way.
Canadian psychoanalyst Elliott Jaques coined the term “midlife crisis” in 1957. “Crisis” comes from the Greek word krisis, meaning “decision.” Jaques proposed that we confront our limitations, restricted possibilities, and mortality in the middle of our lives. While midlife crises have proven to be less common than their looming myth suggests, I don’t think encountering these existential boulders is bad or even avoidable. It’s what we do with that knowledge and awareness that is perhaps the key to the next path in our lives.
“Thinking about and being aware of our mortality creates real perspective and urgency,” writes author Ryan Holiday in The Obstacle Is the Way. It doesn’t need to be depressing. Because it’s invigorating.”
Midlife recovery can show up as improved self-image, better sex, a needed divorce, later-in-life relationship or marriage, kids moving into adulthood, getting sober, coming out, reprioritizing, slowing down, holding firmer boundaries, or honest self-expression.
Pandemic shifts spark self-love and creative confidence
The COVID-19 pandemic actually helped kickstart a midlife return for Leila, a 42-year-old hair stylist and mother of two. Her husband was suddenly home every day for months, and he was able to help more with their kids. Leila started reading, taking baths, catching up on sleep, writing, and exercising — activities that feel essential to her wellbeing, but are easy to let slip away in the busyness of daily life.
Like many women, Leila disliked her body in her younger years, and has come to love it more through pregnancy, childbirth, and breastfeeding. She’s grateful for what her body can do, like chasing her kids around playgrounds, hiking mountains, and swimming. Gaining this freedom and focusing more on health and wellbeing can be a monumental shift.
“Time in life is limited and I can’t waste it second-guessing myself because some people might not get it.”
Community can also emphasize the possibility and beauty of midlife. Leila took a solo trip to the desert in 2022 to celebrate a friend’s 50th birthday, spending a weekend with filmmakers, painters, musicians, and creatives who were working in a supportive community together. She noticed that it felt very much like her friends were living in the prime of their lives.
“[They displayed] skills honed from years of experience, and also youthful insecurities fully pushed aside or discarded,” she said, adding that this inspired her to start putting her creative work out in the world.
“Time in life is limited and I can’t waste it second guessing myself because some people might not get it,” Leila said.
Multiple recoveries, physical intimacy, and living by the sea
Janet Lynn, a 58-year-old former professor and current coach, had one midlife recovery at 40, and another at 54.
At 40, dissatisfied with her career and marriage, she spent a month traveling around the U.S., visiting places she loved or had been curious about. She wandered, processed, and thought about what should come next, returning to Alaska with renewed optimism, a university job offer, and an agreement from her husband to go to couples counseling.
Janet Lynn’s reset allowed her to relate to her same life differently, and it was much better for a while. She and her husband improved their communication and connection, and enjoyed shared activities like road trips and hiking. Their physical intimacy, however, never improved. He was shut down physically from extreme childhood trauma, unable to show affection through touch or words.
“I believe that when we are courageous enough to honor our discontent and our knowing about what we want and need for our wellbeing, we can recover something that is buried or hidden inside of us.”
Fourteen years later, Janet Lynn had a short interaction with a music festival worker on a cruise. A touch of the Hanuman (Hindu monkey god) tattoo on his forearm sent a bolt of instant knowledge through her. She could no longer deny her needs and deny herself the pleasure and connection of physical intimacy.
“I believe that when we are courageous enough to honor our discontent and our knowing about what we want and need for our wellbeing, we can recover something that is buried or hidden inside of us,” she said.
Janet Lynn initiated a separation from her spouse, left her job, and started her own successful coaching business. She moved from the cold North to Florida to live by the sea, and finally got an octopus tattoo. She recently walked part of the Camino de Santiago in Spain, and she’s going to rent an oceanside place in Portugal next summer with the hope of someday living there.
I asked Leila and Janet Lynn if these recovery times felt more like safety and settling in, or adventure and fun. Leila said that she’s trying to establish safety for her family but also coming into her own, so this time is expansive. Janet Lynn said she chose safety, albeit from an empowered place, in her first recovery. The second time around, she discarded safety for the chance at greater happiness.
Does the midlife crisis have to happen in midlife?
Interestingly, Dr. Nicole LePera, psychotherapist, prolific Twitter poster and author of the upcoming How to Be the Love You Seek, proposes that the midlife crisis now happens at younger ages.
“Generations were raised with an obsessive focus on achievement and a lack of self connection,” she writes. “The result is 30-year-olds who don’t know who they are, living unfulfilled lives.”
She adds that younger folks now tend to seek fulfillment in response to this early focus on external success. This can lead to the earlier self-examination traditionally associated with the “midlife” crisis, or return.
Whatever the age, a return to self is worth celebrating.
“Close the gap between yourself and your spirit — the person you know you can be,” Smith writes. “Let your choices reflect the person you want to become, not just the person you think you are.”
It’s never too late.
Kimberly Sheridan’s work is forthcoming or appears in Entropy, The Big Smoke, Monologging, and University of Hell’s essay collection, 2020* The Year of the Asterisk. She wrote a column, Tattoo Ink, for The Big Smoke. Kimberly holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from Eastern Washington University, and served as the managing editor of Willow Springs. Born a Jersey girl, and after many years in New York City, Los Angeles, and Spokane, she’s recently relocated to Wellington, New Zealand. Find her at kimberlysheridanwrites.com.
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This made me teary, so many emotions as our lives lead us in so directions! It’s powerful to see wonderful women reconnect with themselves and feel content. Beautifully written 🥲.
Love this take... midlife recovery. I call it a midlife reconnection but it’s very similar ..:: that after years perhaps chasing dreams we thought we should chase, perhaps being so many things to so many people we’ve love sense of who we are to ourselves, it’s a time for women to really say “this is my time “ 💪