Why We Can't Sleep: Women's New Midlife Crisis

by Ada Calhoun

From morning television to the evening news, experts tell us to make chore charts, to save a certain percent of our income, to clean out our closets, to get our BMI under twenty-five. Nothing seems to stimulate the economy like women feeling bad about themselves.

“Those who try to refuse suffering,” wrote W. H. Auden in an essay about characters in Shakespeare, “not only fail to avoid it but are plunged deeper into sin and suffering.”

“validating the living shit out of each other.”

Her fancy was running riot along those days ahead of her. Spring days, and summer days, and all sorts of days that would be her own. She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It was only yesterday that she had thought with a shudder that life might be long. —Kate Chopin, “The Story of an Hour,” 1894

crisis. I’ve given up on a magic bullet that will make this age easy, but I’ve learned that there are many things that make it harder or easier, and I’ve made changes accordingly. I’ve assembled a team of helpers worthy

On the micro level, I’ve figured out what makes me feel worse (drinking too much, looking at social media) and what makes me feel better (eating three meals a day, walking around in fresh air), and try to behave accordingly—or at least not to be blindsided if I feel despair the morning after a party or the evening after a day in front of the computer.

With my body presenting less of a distraction, I’ve been able to think more clearly about my place in the world—not as the ingenue but as a mother, mentor, neighbor, or

My expectations are way lower. I no longer believe that at this age I should have rock-hard abs, a perfectly calm disposition, or a million dollars in the bank. It helps to surround myself with women my age who speak honestly about their lives.

I’m more patient, too. I know that perimenopause is tough on many women and also that it ends. In less than a decade, no matter what I do or don’t do, things will be different. I’ve made friends with some older women who remind me by their example that a more serene future is possible.

Note: none of what I’m saying falls under the umbrella of what’s commonly called “self-care.” Short-term perks like spa days or facials are like putting a Band-Aid on a broken bone. Our problems are beyond the reach of “me-time.” The last thing we need at this stage of life is self-help. Everyone keeps telling us what to do, as if there is a q...

For me, the first step to peace in middle age has been learning that the game is rigged. If we feel that things are tougher now, it could mean only that we’re paying more attention. This is a bumpy stretch in life. We should not expect to feel fine. “Women are not prepared to have ‘everything,’ not success- type ‘everything,’” writes Eve Babitz in Slow Days, Fast Company.395 “I mean, not when the ‘everything’ isn’t about living happily ever after with the prince (where even if it falls through and the prince runs off with the baby-sitter, there’s at least a precedent). There’s no precedent for women getting their own ‘everything’ and learning that it’s not the answer.” I know too well that it’s easy to turn these facts against

“Bad and better” is one way to think about our prospects at this stage of life, too.

So many Gen X women have told me that they were raised believing that if you don’t care about everything, you’re squandering opportunity.

They felt pressure to take advantage of all the chances their mothers and grandmothers didn’t have. And they’ve worn themselves out in the process.

“The people I know who are happy realize they can’t care about everything,” says Deal. “You have to decide what you care about. If everything m...

“We are doomed to aspire for the rest of our lives. Aspiration is suffering. Wellness is suffering. As soon as you level up, you greet how infinite the possibilities are, and it all becomes too awful to live without.”

eat reasonably well and try to get out in nature occasionally, but I am under no illusion that these things will fix the existential crunch that is middle age. The only thing for that is a new story.

“We take basically good ideas and turn them into something with which to self-flagellate,” said Asia. But the driver and the woman in the Uber story “both showed this ability to take that moment when you could have both been embarrassed or grumpy or angry and instead find it hilarious and lovable and adorable.”

It’s about telling the story of our mistakes, our life, in a new way, in which we’re heroines worth rooting for.

What are the most moving scenes? Deliverance from suffering in midlife could come from some outside force, but it could also come from reframing your life as being about something unexpected.

“Life doesn’t have to get easier to be good.”

One of my favorite studies is about how children benefit from hearing an “oscillating family narrative.”402 The researchers found that what helps build resilience in children is a story like this: “Dear, let me tell you, we’ve had ups and downs in our family. We built a family business. Your grandfather was a pillar of the community. Your mother was on the board of the hospital. But we also had setbacks. You had an uncle who was once arrested. We had a house burn down. Your father lost a job. But no matter what happened, we always stuck together as a family.” That kind of tale fosters self-confidence—more, even, than one in which the family has been on a steady upward climb.

To me, this is a transformative way of thinking about life, every day, all day—as a story in which the bad things are part of the plot and not random disasters.

involved, in one way or another, the letting go of expectations. That’s been the most important part of my own reckoning: When I start criticizing myself for not having saved enough money or for not having written enough of value or for my son’s bad handwriting, or for not working out or for any other failures small and large, I try to put my finger on the expectation that any of these things would be different.

also try to remind myself that if I were in better shape or my son did calligraphy or I had $30,000 in an emergency fund as I’m supposed to, life would not necessarily be any better. Even padded with achievement or glamour or cash, midlife is very likely going to be challenging. Even if you don’t subscribe to the belief in a crisis point, you cannot deny the onset of new physical limitations and stressors.

Therefore, if the first piece of a solution is getting support and the second is reframing the way we see our life to remove unrealistic expectations, the third might be… waiting. One day, midlife will end. Kids will grow up; relationships will evolve. Women in their fifties and sixties tell me that after menopause they ...

You are just a girl playing at life.”

When the tough things happen—parents get sick, relationships go sour, careers stall—we might ask ourselves if the situation is a prison or a school: a place to escape or one in which to learn.

My choices may have brought me debt and uncertainty and a lot of people depending on me. But they’ve also brought me a family that will wake up early to decorate the house and friends coming over to eat and drink and make jokes and the capacity to appreciate a clear sky on a cold day.

Assuming we keep living, there will be a next year and another year after that. There will be tears and money stress and caregiving pressure, but also moments when we might walk through a supermarket parking lot and feel the sun on our face and think, out of nowhere, What a lovely day