Hi, I'm Amy, and I'm having a Midlife Crisis

The old definitions of success and self are gone, but the new ones have not yet arrived

So, this week, I had grand plans to write about misunderstood plants or tell the story of the Six Swans, but, as that prophetic voice, Mike Tyson says, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” I received some unexpected news last week that threw me into a tailspin, so I’m coming at you minimally edited this week. Unfortunately, for the time being, I need to be vague about this news. I hope in time, I’ll be able to explain more in depth. After a few days of shame, anger, and fear, I found myself coming to terms with the fact that the graceful swing from vine to vine I had planned for my career is likely going to look more like jumping off a cliff. I thought I had rounded the bend on some challenging events at work, only to find that I am probably at the beginning of a bigger challenge. I stewed and wallowed for a few days. Then, I received some generous help and support from friends, which both helped me realize that the stories I told myself about receiving help were usually not true and sent me into an impressive shame spiral. While receiving that help, I realized that though highly unpleasant, this situation is the necessary kick in the butt to get me where I need to go. I may be deluding myself with a more pleasant reframe of a challenging situation, but this challenge may even be necessary to get my soul where it needs to go. 

Head CT watercolor #1

I have really resisted using the term midlife crisis because I associate it with red convertibles and affairs with young blonde women. I find I am judgmental about how consumerism causes us to feel like existential crises are problems we can buy our way out of. Still, even the cars and the affairs represent someone choosing to follow their own inner compass rather than someone else’s expectations. Some people use more gracious terms like

Anne Helen Petersen

’s “The Portal”, which I like because it sounds like a crucible for becoming, but I also dislike it because it sounds a lot more graceful than how it feels. In fact, even astrology identifies this age (in the early 40s, particularly 42, which I turn in 5 months) as a particularly tumultuous time because of the positions of Uranus and Neptune relative to our birth. 

Dr Sharon Blackie

wrote in her piece about midlife, about the emotional components of a midlife crisis:

• A decline in happiness, wellbeing and overall satisfaction with our lives

• Aimlessness, a loss of purpose or a sense that life has no meaning

• Self-doubt; a decline in self-confidence

• A sense of powerlessness or loss of control over the trajectory of our lives

• Frustration with the roles we play in our lives and with the responsibilities we’ve taken on

• Boredom and dissatisfaction with key relationships and with our job or profession

• Growing concerns about our ageing appearance and changing body

• Concerns about old age and especially about death

• Changes in energy levels: restlessness, fatigue, poor motivation

• Mood alterations and swings: depression, anxiety, anger

• Changes in sexual desire: sometimes more, sometimes less

• A profound shift in our values – in the things that we think matter

As you might imagine, given the time, energy, and money invested in being a doctor and the money and status afforded you once you climb that ladder, I have consciously and subconsciously put a strong effort toward wrestling the angels pulling me in a different direction. Leaving medicine feels like failing on many levels, from choosing the wrong field in the first place to not being tough enough to keep going. Yet, when I contemplate taking a break from clinical medicine my body feels so light it could float away. 

There are few careers more secure than that of a physician in an aging and ill society, but that is part of what this midlife crisis is about. Security may not be a defining characteristic of success for me anymore, at least not security in this form. My midlife crisis looks like tearing down my definitions of success while having to wait to learn the instructions to build the new ones. Similarly, I am tearing down my definitions of myself, and the wait to rebuild myself is even more excruciating. God bless those who know and love me who are waiting on this rebuild. I fear the contractor is over-budget, inefficient, and just a dreadful mess. I am someone who has followed the blueprint, done what was expected of me in most ways.  When I have fallen or sometimes even before I have fallen, I have had the good fortune or the privilege to have someone there to pick me up, but as Richard Rohr says in Falling Upward, “People who have never allowed themselves to fall are actually off balance, while not realizing it at all.” You can only learn to recover from falling by falling, and thus there is some falling (and failing) that is necessary. 

Falling Upward, Richard Rohr’s book about the “sacred dance” of the second half of life, quite miraculously found its way into my hands this week. He talks about how the first half of life is about achieving status and security. Often, this requires fitting in rather than belonging. He says, “Your false sense of self is your role, title, and personal image that is largely a creation of your own mind and attachments. It will and must die in exact correlation to how much you want the Real.” Reading this reaffirmed that though profoundly uncomfortable, this upcoming change is likely to be important and deeply necessary.  

Head CT watercolor #2

Rohr also shares that “In much of urban and Western civilization today, with no proper tragic sense of life, we try to believe that it is all upward and onward–and by ourselves. It works for so few, and it cannot serve us well in the long run–because it is not true.” I must be doing something right, because right now I’m not sure of my trajectory, but I know that progress in the wrong direction is not progress. As the wilderness wisdom goes, when you are lost in the woods, stop. 

• Have you traversed a midlife crisis or portal? What changed for you? Do you have any rules of the road? 

• Are you hung up on an existential crisis right now? What are you grappling with? 

• How can we make more space for each other to grapple with these new identities, to lie fallow for a while, to figure stuff out?