Raise your hand if you’re like me – in the midst of the great midlife unraveling.

It sucks, right? But I’m soldiering through it. Trying to redefine what success means. And that means lots of reflection. Like back to high school reflection.

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School was a refuge for me and I kicked ass at it. I’m talking Student Government President and pretty much all A’s.

I was Reese Witherspoon from Election – obnoxious and bossy and purposeful. I even had a high school rival. Which doesn’t mean anything other than there was another girl as obnoxious and bossy and purposeful as me. These days she thinks I’m funny on Facebook, so all is forgiven.

I had a couple thoughts when I graduated of what I’d do next.

I wanted to write – and started a journal the first day of 9th grade that I continued until my oldest was born. I can say this blogging thing would make my 18-year-old self give a little nod of approval. She would be perplexed by my level of sarcasm, though, because she spent most of her formative years in a literal state, informing her mother’s friends that there were several inaccuracies in the funny stories her mother liked to tell. Reese Witherspoon could be a bit of a buzz kill.

The other things on my 18-year-old self’s bucket list included: Congresswoman and high-powered career lady.

Now, in my early 40s, I am neither of these. And I’m not sure what to do with that information.

The female midlife crisis

Y’all, I’m in love with Ada Calhoun. She’s just published this fabulous book, Why We Can’t Sleep: Women’s new midlife crisis. It’s about Gen X women floundering around in their 40’s. In other words, I feel like she knows me.

To get a little taste of what you’ll find in the book, check out this mind-blowing article on Oprah.com by Calhoun. I’ve read it, like, FOUR TIMES, because it’s comforting to know I’m not alone in this.

Here’s one quote I really love from the article:

A 2011 report by the Center for Work-Life Policy (now the Center for Talent Innovation), which described Gen X as the “wrong place, wrong time” generation, noted that “thwarted by boomers who can’t afford to retire and threatened by the prospect of leap-frogging millennials…49 percent of Gen Xers feel stalled in their careers.”

Yep, that about sums it up.

Eons ago, I got the MBA, followed by a big marketing job at age 30. Then BAM! I joined the ranks of 20-some of my closest friends in the line at the Unemployment Office during the Great Recession. That kinda dampened my spirits.

Try explaining to my 18-year-old self that I got laid off. She wouldn’t be impressed. Not like it was my fault, not like I’d been a toxic jerk and gotten fired. That was life in 2007. (At least she’d be pleased to know I was only unemployed for 2 months – thank you, MBA!) But, you guys, I’d been on this upward trajectory and then LURCH! Suddenly Millennials are speeding past me because they never had to take a sideways turn.

A couple months ago a friend said, “My 20-year-old self was me at my purest.”

Yes to this. It conjures up the idea that anything is possible, that all those years of prepping for college paid off with the actual, amazing college experience, that you could study whatever the hell you felt like and turn that into an action plan for the rest of life. That the goals of your 20-year-old self were simply and fully yours – no husband to balance them against, no 9 to 5 job to work around, no children waking you up at 6am and demanding breakfast and love and affection and care til 8pm. At 20, you only stopped you. No one else could do it.

What’s next?

I guess the question now is, at this mid-point in life, how do I want to spend the next several decades?

Do I want to run for Congress? Thanks to ole Donny boy in the White House, I can wait til I’m 70 to worry about this. Although my 12-year-old self would’ve agreed with my 18-year-old self, with a resounding YES! There’s a reason that darling, precocious 7th grader established a never-smoke-pot-EVER-rule. Because people who do drugs don’t get elected to office. Wasn’t I quaint? How very pre-Bill Clinton of me.

Do I want to be some high-powered exec? I don’t know. It sounds tiring and tedious. I even turned down a recruiter a couple weeks ago who posed the same question.

Dear 18-year-old self, SUCK IT! Why must I define success in my 40s based on your innocent and cute, little goals?

Life is complex. Way more than I imagined in high school when all I wanted to do was boss my classmates around and dream BIG dreams.

These days, I know a thing or two about actual adulting. It is hard, you guys. And super mundane – full of making doctor appointments and fixing peanut butter sandwiches and walking the dog and drying little kids’ tears. And then paying doctor bills or cleaning up dog poop…

And you know what? In the end, maybe that’s really what it means to be successful. To be brave enough to just get up the next day and do it all over again. And the day after that. Ad infinitum. Because future high schoolers are depending on me so they can dream their own BIG dreams.

Share your thoughts below on how your 18-year-old self would view your current philosophy on life – or comment on Facebook at MothersRest.

Photo credit, featured image: Riki Ramdani from Unsplash.com

ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS AND COMMENTS
My hubby claims to be anti-the blog, but he sent me this amazing text that I need to immortalize here: “I read your blog. Really good job. Love you.”

What a great reflection from Libby, one of my dear mom friends on (and off) Facebook:

I think you and I were the same high school student. (Perfect, and positive that all would remain perfect until the end of my idyllic life at an old age and sacrificed for a noble cause) 😜

I’ve been thinking about this recently too (I’m pretty sure I read the same article about mid-life crises). I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m generally happy with my life until I compare it to what I THOUGHT I’d be doing in my youth. Which basically means, I’m not living up to the ideals of success that I dreamed up when I really had no idea what life was all about and had not experienced adversity in any form.

I may not be “successful” in the eyes of my former self, but I’m pretty sure I’m a better person than I was at 18 and that’s got to count for something.

Special thanks to Ande, one of my girlies from high school (and one of my fabulous GUEST BLOGGERS!) who was right there with my 18-year-old self, for these thoughts:

Funny how we remember things differently, but part of that could have been my own aspirations were to make good grades and be loved. I have reflected on my own issues in high school, so I need not go there…. I don’t remember you being quite so Reese Witherspoon, though you were competitive. I chuckled when I read the part about having a rival. (I never quite got that either).

As far as your 18 yr old self not understanding your 40 yr old self… isn’t that what growing up is about? Tim and I often say “if I had known before…” But those experiences helped to form and mold us into the people we are today. I remember being rather shallow and think of my 18 yr old self as rather self-absorbed. While I may not have understood your passion for all the injustices I remember you getting fired up about, I do remember thinking I wish I had your passion. Similarly now, I think you are still on fire for your beliefs. Again, while I may not agree with them all, the way you give voice to them is still admirable. I guess I never thought about what my 18 yr old self would say to my 40 yr old self. There is plenty I’d like to say to my 18 yr old self, though. My 18 yr old self was definitely not well put together.

I wouldn’t have thought that your 18 yr old self would be disappointed. You were about perseverance and you have continued to persevere. That’s often what life requires, right? Conquering one trial after another? I certainly have found that this suffering is what builds character and ultimately draws me closer to God. If life is to be for the purpose of glorifying God, then we are to be molded for His great purpose, not for the purpose of an 18yr old ego. So, yea, I think each of us at some point are idealists when we are young and ultimately can tell that 18 yr old to suck it. 😜

And I’m crying over this lovely note my best friend from college sent me:

Dearest Ginny,

“Dear 18-year-old self, SUCK IT! Why must I define success in my 40s based on your innocent and cute, little goals?”

So many thoughts flying around my head and in my heart after reading another one of your fantastic blogs, as well as Oprah’s incredible article that truly resonated and brought to the surface so many feelings that have been suppressed, as if they would be sacreligious to utter.

I thought about picking up the phone to discuss, but I am going to take this opportunity to reflect as I weigh the emotional, spiritual and mental banter that surrounds my question… now what?

This year I was forced to start a new chapter. My youngest started Kindergarten. The house is eerily quiet during the day. I cried the ugly cry because I loved the years of birthing, nursing, singing lullabies, reading board books ad nauseam, playing on the floor, napping, cuddling… I was finally really “playing house” as I had dreamt during my girlhood years. Fast forward to that 18-year-old self you mention… when I left home at the top of my game ready to become an engineer with my bright mind and make lots of money AND THEN at 19, I realized God had a different plan, and I was now going to change the world (at least the world of underprivileged kids in the bayous of South Louisiana). You know my story better than most, but here we are in our 40s, and it is strangely comforting to know that so many are in the same boat. I am happily married to the love of my life, have four children I adore more than life itself, live in our “forever” home and find myself struggling with the next chapter like no other decade previously. NOW WHAT?

I have a job (albeit not a career), I volunteer at school and church, I look after my neighbors, I try to exercise, I run the roads every afternoon taking kids here, there and everywhere, I cook 18 meals a day, I try to remember birthdays, I connect with my family, I try to keep a clean house and I never have enough time to do it all and certainly not well. Therefore, I feel a bit like a failure before I’ve even gotten out of bed like the lady in the article. I also can relate to this paragraph like nobody’s business:

And 24/7 they’re on their smartphones (which, remember, have only been around for 10 years), flooded with friends’ Instagram-tastic vacation photos and Twitter posts by frenemies bragging about promotions. They’re watching breaking news alerts of nuclear threat escalations, end-times weather catastrophes, terrifying mass violence. They’re waking up to see what else has gone wrong and wondering how to help. They’re fielding long 10 p.m. emails from bosses that end with “Thoughts?” The cumulative effect is the feeling that they will never catch up, on any level, ever.

I turned 40 and wanted more than anything to embrace my BEST self. I read everything I could get my hands on to inspire me, I adhered to a strict diet and exercise plan, I was uber positive about life and what it had to offer me, my hubby and the kids. THEN, I did a 180 a year in and said I think I’ll take another approach to the fuck-it 40s because who truly cares if I’m at my best? I find that in every facet of this stage the underlying theme is that it’s not about me anymore, even in this age of self-care. It’s humbling. It’s a reality check to truly test if I know how to put God and others before myself as we’re called to do, right?

“The message Gen X women got was ‘You can have it all.” … That came with better blueprints and also bigger expectations,’ says Deborah Luepnitz, PhD, a psychotherapist in Philadelphia, a boomer and author of Schopenhauer’s Porcupines. “In midlife, what I see in my Gen X patients is total exhaustion. That’s what brings them to treatment. They feel guilty for complaining because it’s wonderful to have had choices that our mothers didn’t have, but choices don’t make life easier. Possibilities create pressure.”

I also feel like this paragraph came right out of my head:

Possibilities. We still have them in midlife, but they can start to seem so abstract. Yes, I could go get a doctorate, but where would I find the graduate school tuition? I could switch careers—therapist? Zamboni driver?—but at this stage of life, do I really want to start from the bottom, surrounded by 20-year-olds? If I went on an Eat, Pray, Love walkabout, who would pick up the kid from school?

These thoughts are definitely thwarted by the reality that my 18-year-old self would see my future self as a total failure. Dream of becoming a massage therapist? But wait! I was the valedictorian! I was going places. The quote that resonates with me daily and sits in my windowsill in my office is “What screws us up most in life is the picture in our head of how it’s supposed to be.” As I write this, I am very fortunate to stare out at the river and watch an osprey catch a fish. Everything seems in order. My cup runneth over. My glass is not half full or half empty, it’s refillable. I will continue to set goals and to challenge myself to be better, but I’ll take my mom’s advice to slow down and my dad’s advice to laugh about it all. I’ll let “my vibe attract my tribe,” and I’ll bravely allow myself to rediscover my purest self, as your friend eloquently described, in my next chapter.

Love ya,
Megan