"Midlife Reinvention" - Please Don’t Give Me Another Era I’m Supposed to Crush

Apparently by 40 I’m supposed to be confident, financially secure, drinking enough water, lifting weights, protecting my peace, healing generational trauma, maintaining meaningful friendships, raising emotionally intelligent children and entering my most powerful era.

I'm over here like, I think I forgot to put on deodorant today.

Somewhere along the way, "midlife reinvention" for women became another achievement project. We were supposed to spend our 20s figuring ourselves out, our 30s building the life, and then arrive in our 40s with excellent boundaries, financial security, a strong sense of self and the kind of confidence that makes us walk very slowly through parking lots wearing expensive sunglasses. And if you don’t feel that way? Well, apparently you have some work to do. **hair-flip**

Except you don’t. This era doesn’t need to be impressive. It just needs to fit.

I thought I was supposed to feel different by now

I really did. There’s a particular kind of disappointment that comes from reaching an age you assumed would feel different. You thought you’d be more confident by now. More certain. You thought you’d care less what people think. You’d know what you wanted and have better boundaries around the things you didn’t. You would, presumably, have located the magical combination of career success, meaningful relationships, personal fulfillment and a skincare routine you actually remember to do every night.

Instead, you're just tired.

For a lot of women, the years that were supposedly leading us toward this confident midlife era were also spent working, parenting, managing households, maintaining relationships and generally keeping an enormous number of plates from smashing onto the floor. It’s easy to look back at an earlier version of yourself who had hobbies, interests, career momentum, community involvement or simply more room to think about herself and wonder, Where did she go?

And then we make a pretty big leap: I used to be more confident. Something must have changed about me. Maybe. But there’s another possibility...

Maybe your confidence didn’t disappear

You may be interpreting depleted capacity as a character change.

Think about the version of you who felt more confident. What else was true about her life? Where did she spend her time? What parts of herself did she get to use regularly?

Years of responsibility can leave less room for the things that once made you feel curious, capable, engaged or expansive. That doesn’t necessarily mean those parts of you disappeared. In fact, you may have become wildly more capable.

You can run a meeting, manage a household, remember everyone’s appointments, make the dentist appointment you’ve personally rescheduled three times, locate a missing shoe while answering an email and somehow know there are exactly two rolls of toilet paper left upstairs. Congratulations. You are crushing it. Are you having fun yet?

There’s a difference between being very good at managing your life and actually recognizing yourself in it. If most of your energy has gone toward being useful, responsible and dependable, maybe your confidence isn’t gone. Maybe you just haven’t had much opportunity to experience yourself outside of what everyone needs from you.

Midlife apparently comes with its own set of shoulds

This is the part that gets me. We finally reach the age when we are supposedly going to stop caring about everyone else’s expectations, and immediately receive a brand-new set.

I should be more confident by now. I should be grateful. I should be enjoying this. I should want the next opportunity. I should have better boundaries. I should be taking care of myself. I should know what I want.

And because we are nothing if not efficient, we can usually find a way to turn all of those into another to-do list. So now, on top of work and family and friendships and finances and all the normal maintenance required to be a functioning human, we are also supposed to find our purpose, protect our peace, heal our past, prioritize ourselves and reinvent our lives.

Also, strength training. Apparently we are all strength training now. I am not arguing with the health benefits. I would just like someone to tell me when we’re doing all of this.

What if you don’t want a "midlife reinvention"?

This is where the language around "midlife reinvention" for women can start to feel a little off. Maybe, just maybe, you don’t need a second act. Maybe you’d just like fewer meetings in this one. It could be that the things you wanted ten years ago just aren’t that important to you anymore. That doesn’t mean you’ve lost your ambition. You may just be less interested in arranging your entire life around work. Your kids might need you differently now. You finally have some of the space you spent years wishing for, and now that it’s here, you’re standing in the middle of it thinking, Okay... now what? And that’s the strangest part. Nothing is actually wrong. You have a good life. You’re grateful for it. You just can’t shake the feeling that some part of it doesn’t fit quite like it used to.

None of this automatically requires "reinvention." They might require recognition.

Before asking, What am I going to do next? it might be worth asking, Who am I now?

Before you add another goal, notice the expectation

Try something simple. Finish this sentence:

By this age, I thought I would be:

Don’t make it inspirational. Write the real answer.

What did you write, look at then ask yourself: Do I actually want this, or did I just assume this was what a woman my age was supposed to look like?

You don’t need to immediately fix whatever comes up. You don’t even need to know what you want instead. Just notice it. Because there is a big difference between wanting something and feeling behind because you thought you would have it by now.

Your era doesn’t have to look impressive

If you really are entering the most powerful era of your life. Great. That's awesome, I'm genuinelly excited for you having a life that fits is an amazing feeling. If you're not, that's okay too. If your entering the era where you finally admit you hate hosting Thanksgiving, that's also great.

Maybe you want more. Maybe you want less. Maybe you want something completely different. Maybe you genuinely don’t know yet. There is room for all of that. You don’t have to turn uncertainty into a transformation plan. You don’t have to make midlife another performance review where you evaluate how successfully you’ve become the woman you thought you were supposed to be.

Start smaller.

Recognize the woman who is actually here. Notice what she cares about now, what she’s tired of carrying, what still fits and what she may have quietly outgrown. Then you can figure out what comes next.