Not all midlife crises announce themselves with affairs and Ferraris.
When mine happened to me, I didn’t think I was having one. Mostly because that phrase seemed reserved for middle-aged men living out their teenage fantasies. Or it meant burnout, panic attacks, trips to the hospital.
But me? I was healthy. I had a happy marriage. Four beautiful children that I loved. My dream home. And a glamorous career as a magazine editor. I had it all.
So why did I still feel like something was missing?
For one, I was bored. Unfulfilled. I felt like I was wasting my days away in a role that I had long outgrown. I craved creative outlets, and felt the pressure of so many unfulfilled dreams stacking up while being too time-pinched to pursue any of them.
Also, I missed my kids. I hated rushing through our mornings to commute to my job downtown, only to arrive home late at night and still feel like I wasn’t giving enough at the office. I felt like the worst mom in the world for always being the last one to get their kids from daycare, for the fast food lunches I sent with my kids to school, and for having to choose between taking care of a sick kid or upholding my reputation at work.
I was messing up all over the place, running out of time to make my dreams happen, and I couldn’t find a way to fix any of it.
So many of us stay stuck—in jobs, marriages, relationships, and roles we no longer love. And I get it—it’s terrifying to face change. But you can only suppress who you truly are for so long and hold yourself back before the facade cracks and resentment builds. Then the anger. The depression. The illness.
I didn’t have this kind of awareness when I reached my own turning point. I just felt like I was suffocating, and I knew if I didn’t do something about it soon, something irreparable, perhaps, might break inside me. I think that something was hope. And that was enough to get me to choose doing the hard thing over sticking with the comfortable, predictable path.
Which brings me to this: Maybe we’re looking at it all wrong. Maybe midlife crises aren’t about affairs and breakdowns or wanting to be young again. Maybe they’re about identities we’ve outgrown, roles that have expired, and signals that we’re ready for something bigger, better, new.
