Hi friends, it’s this:
Should I go back to school? If I go out on interviews will people think I’m too old to hire? Why are my pants always so tight? What is the best word to describe the way Donald Trump’s skin looks? Does the dentist take the new insurance? Why did I make out with that one gross dude when I was drunk at that party 20 years ago? Is my father-in-law okay? How is it possible that at 45 years old, I made less money last year than I did in when I was in grad school, working part-time? How will we retire? Ugh.
I try counting down from 100 but next thing I know it’s 5:09 and the alarm is going off in six minutes. I turn it off, oversleep.
I try not to let the average weekday streak past in a blur because there’s so much weirdness, tenderness, funniness to savor. I make poop jokes with my kids, go for a walk, stop to admire the winterberries and catch sight of two hawks eviscerating a screeching squirrel in the pink four o’clock light. But the worries that bubble up in the middle of the night are always ticking through my brain. You, too? We’re in the thick of it, right now.
And there’s a new book to validate our angst: Why We Can’t Sleep: Women’s New Midlife Crisis came out earlier this month. The author Ada Calhoun connects the experiences and anecdotes of 200 women she interviewed with broader societal and structural shifts.
Part of her thesis is that middle class Generation X women, raised to believe we could have it all, actually have a uniquely unfortunate set of circumstances underpinning this sandwich-y time of life, from the financial:
“A major report called The Fading American Dream…found that rising in the US class structure is less and less possible, with middle-class families seeing the sharpest decline in opportunity. Of American men born in 1940, 95 percent could expect to earn more than their fathers. For American men born in 1980, only 41 percent can” (and it’s worse for women - only 25 percent of women born in the 1980’s will out-earn their dads).
To the health-related:
“Perimenopausal women often complain of sleeplessness, painful intercourse, breast pains and cysts, changes in appetite and energy level, mood swings, bulging midriff, trouble concentrating…all symptoms connected in one way or another to hormones…In a survey by AARP, 84 percent of participating women said that menopausal symptoms interfered with their lives.”
To the realities of navigating domestic duties, libido and sex in marriage; juggling aging parents and young children as a result of waiting to have kids; and more - Calhoun’s book makes it clear that our middle-of-the-night worries are well-founded. While feminism has brought some freedom and fairness to the lives of middle-class women in the US, our culture and its systems and structures remain sexist, ageist, and rigged. It’s no wonder we’re worried.
The midlife crisis - not just for men anymore. But instead of a new car or a younger partner, Calhoun suggests that we reframe our experiences, rejigger our expectations, and turn to one another. For solace! For support! For fun! Who wants to start a club?
Extra bits:
Isabella Stewart Gardner at 54. May we all burst onto the scene this way in our fifties. Wealth, status, and a palace full of fine art might have helped her outlook. ;)
Still searching for a better word than leathery, but in the meantime, I’m also seething over DJT’s latest unwinding of Obama-era EPA rulings. Why does he want to poison us?
Calhoun’s father is an art critic who recently wrote about an entirely different phase of life in one of the most moving and exquisitely written essays I’ve read in a long time.
Yours in 3am ceiling-staring,
Leigh