Midlife Haiku

First: love. Then marriage.

A mortgage. And a divorce.

Is that all there is…?”

― Peter Radley

Many people in their forties and fifties are growing weary of the weight of performance and responsibility that feels required by their current life and are desiring something more. As the opening haiku captures, they are beginning to ask “is this all there is?” Midlife can be a time of unraveling and transition, but it doesn’t have to be a crisis, it can be an evaluation and shift into greater freedom and fun.

I want to look at the midlife stage of life through the lens of four categories:

• Mental Wellbeing

• Personal Growth

• Life Direction

• Relationships

At fifty-three I am mid midlife. My forties bought a huge amount of upheaval, transition and growth, but so far I am sailing in smoother waters in my fifties. Here is my lowlights and highlights reel for my midlife experience so far:

My Forties

Challenges

Developing a significant stress induced health condition

The unexpected ending of my second marriage

Shared parenting

Parenting teenagers

The death of my father (my mother died of cancer in her early fifties when I was 32)

Going back to zero financially

Re-entering the workforce after being a stay at home mother for eleven years

The roller coaster of dating, loneliness and relationship heartbreak

Positives

Being explorative with dating and sex (I didn’t really date when I was young. I was a virgin when I married my first long term boyfriend at 22)

Shared parenting giving me more time freedom

Learning to accept, love and understand my authentic self as I am

Discovering somatic practice

Dancing regularly again

Turning 50

“Mrs. Miniver suddenly understood why she was enjoying the forties so much better than she had enjoyed the thirties: it was the difference between August and October, between the heaviness of late summer and the sparkle of early autumn, between the ending of an old phase and the beginning of a fresh one.”
― Jan Struther, Mrs. Miniver

I loved turning fifty. It felt like the beginning of my second innings at life. In the first half of the game I got the feel of the playing field, developed effective strategies to meet challenges and got warmed up in my skills. Now, in my fifties, I have a wealth of life experience wisdom and learning, a grounded self confidence and a body that is fit and able. I’m ready to launch into the best years of my life.

Relationship wise I am settled in my third long term partnership and it feels like a really good fit. Over the last ten years I have done A LOT of personal growth work and relationship skill development. I have finally healed my inner child’s need for love and approval that kept driving me to get into relationships with emotionally disconnected, critical men just like my father.

What is important to me now

What is important to me now is living a life that feels good to me. In my twenties and thirties I dreamed of speaking to packed auditoriums. What I really craved was acknowledgment and validation. I have given that to myself now and don’t need it from others so much anymore. My key love language is still words of affirmation though, so I do still feel best when I am receiving regular words of encouragement. The things that take my focus now are financial and time freedom, doing work that is meaningful and creative, and developing my relationship skills to connect effectively with people.

There are a lot of things in my own experience that are typical of midlife ups and downs. Let’s have a look at some of the common challenges and positives for each of the categories I listed above.

Midlife Mental Health

By the time they reach our forties, a lot of people are feeling like they are running on the same treadmill of stress and exhaustion day after day and existing more than living. Many of us are working, raising children and looking after a household. Throw in extended family responsibilities and there is little time left for ourselves and our dreams. However, our children are getting older, which gives us some space, and we can begin to see light at the end of the tunnel - maybe, unless like me you had a child in your late 30’s or early 40’s and then the light may get shunted out until your 60’s. When I talk to people of midlife age, frequently the primary thing they desire is rest, and yet, ironically, most of us are so stuck in stress-induced survival mode that even if we get spare time we can’t or don’t know how to stop and just put our feet up. Many of us feel constantly on and find it very difficult to switch off.

For many people grief features strongly in midlife. It is when they become acutely aware of their own mortality and the slow degrading of their body. In conjunction with this, death often becomes more of a feature as aunts, uncles and sometimes parents pass, and we enter the zone where fatal health issues such as heart disease and cancer start to rear their heads more intensely.

Relationships in Midlife

There is a general trend in Western societies that the number of couples that are separating or divorcing after age fifty is increasing. I think that there are many reasons for this including longer lifespans, increased financial independence for women and the abundance of information and options available now. Statistically women are the primary instigators of ending relationships and a key reason why is that they have been carrying the emotional and mental load of the relationship for years and finally decide that they have had enough. Most women in Western society are no longer locked into unhappy relationships for reasons of security. This opens up new opportunities and challenges of dating again in midlife, and I think it is also requiring us to get better at developing effective relationships skills. Now that couples no longer need to stay together out of necessity for material support, we are re-examining how and why we develop long term committed relationships. Many of us have also had painful relationship experiences and as a consequence are working on our own personal growth to reparent our inner child and shift unhelpful patterns of belief and behaviour.

The other key relationships most midlifers have is with their children and their parents, and there are often big shifts going on in this area too. Most people in their forties are managing the challenges of parenting teenagers, and then the fifties bring the mixed emotions of the home becoming an empty nest. However, empty nests can then often be filled with adult children returning to live with their parents, or having your elderly parents come to live with you.

Social isolation and loneliness become more of an issue for a lot of people from midlife onwards. As children grow and partnerships end, social connections change, and joining new social groups and making new friends can be very hard, especially at this stage of life. Past relationship experiences can lead to people carrying a lot of shame around “failed” relationships, or extreme wariness about trusting other people or themselves. At this stage of life you are also more and more likely to lose loved ones through death as well.

Personal Growth and Identity in Your Forties and Fifties

On one hand, negativity around aging may stimulate a sense of despair or a drop in self-esteem as you reach midlife. However, I think that for many people middle age is no longer just seen as a transition into old age, but more of a stimulus to review your identity and how you are living your life. For most people, by middle age, life experience has shown you who you are and what you want to be and you are ready to transition to living that more fully.

As their children get older, many women who gave up their careers and stayed home as the full-time parent begin to look up from the endless piles of washing and want more than just being a mother and a wife/partner. Meanwhile, the mothers who juggle work and parenting frequently carry the burden of mother-guilt as well as the stress of physically and mentally managing that load.

Many men also begin to question the meaning of things in midlife. They’ve followed societies expectations and done “all the right things” - found a partner, built a career, had children, achieved financial security - but they don’t feel happy or fulfilled. They have fused their identity with their job title and are now beginning to question if “what I do” is really “who I am”.

For a lot of people, their forties and fifties are when they start having spiritual awakenings. This may be a combination of feeling older and hence closer to dying, and the sense that there must be more to life than just sleep, eat, work repeat.

Midlife Direction

Midlife is typically a time when people reflect on their life so far. You may regret missed opportunities, begin to idealize your past lifestyle, or wonder what your life would be like if you had made a different choice. The career path you embarked on when you were young may no longer feel like a good fit. You may feel bored or exhausted by your daily routine, or a general sense of discontent or restlessness about yourself and your life.

These things can turn into challenges or they can be used as springboards to reevaluate and adjust your priorities and life choices. For many people midlife is when they start to become true to themselves and more authentic in how they live their life. A lot of people change careers around age forty or start a passion project. Some people set the intention of bringing more joy back into their life, and either re-engage with things they enjoyed when they were young or develop new hobbies. I learned to hula hoop for the first time in my mid-forties and loved it so much I became a hula hoop fitness instructor as a job path.

My Top Advice for Midlife: Stop Waiting for The Light at The End of the Tunnel

“Maybe midlife isn’t the crisis we joke about. Maybe it’s the moment you finally stop waiting—for permission, for perfection, for the “right” time.”
― Bree Penfold, Lola Bloom The Flamingo Diaries: A Midlife Memoir-in-Motion

If you are waiting for the light at the end of the tunnel and hanging out until you retire to start living the life you want, then life is likely to pass you by and you will never reach the end of the tunnel. Start today. Make the choice. Make the decision. Give yourself permission. That is how it begins. One choice and one action at a time. Life will shape around you when you do. You will stop being like sand that is shunted around by constant crashing waves, and become like a rock dropped in a stream, emanating out ripples and causing life to begin to flow around you.

From Crisis to Clarity: Reimagining Midlife as a Gateway to Freedom

Midlife is widely experienced as a period of exhaustion, grief, shifting relationships, and existential questioning, but it can also be a powerful catalyst for self-discovery and authentic living. Common struggles like stress, divorce, aging parents, and identity loss, can become springboards rather than dead ends. Instead of waiting to be granted a freedom later in life that may never come, midlife is an ideal time to stop seeking external permission, let go of other people’s expectations and start making deliberate choices to live a life that feels genuinely meaningful to you.

Just One Thing

The just one thing action point for this post is a request to help me help you by commenting with some feedback. If you are a fellow midlifer, then let me know in the comments: what are your biggest challenges and positives for this period of your life and what is most important to you?