Midlife …What? - Love & The New Midlife Woman %

Midlife …What?
What is your immediate thought following the word ‘Midlife’?
A friend on Facebook drew my attention to the most likely answer which is ‘crisis’, as in Midlife Crisis. Probably 9 out of 10 people would give that answer.
Yet for the last few years I have been promoting the term Midlife Woman and I didn’t mean that she is in crisis.
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I didn’t invent the term Midlife. It comes from one of my heroines, Marianne Williamson. She wrote the book The Age of Miracles – Embracing the New Midlife first published in 2008.Although the Midlife concept applies to both Men and Women, Marianne has much more to say about how it presents the opportunity for women to step into their ‘power and their greatness’.

On the other hand, Midlife Crisis would seem to indicate bad news. The term has been largely grabbed by men to describe their psychological difficulties with ageing and their reducing virility.

Women in my opinion have a greater claim to this term. For midlife women, so many things come around the same time – Menopause, Empty Nest Syndrome, Partner Dissatisfaction, Career Uncertainty – plus a nagging doubt about whether one has a further useful role.

All these issues cast their shadow into the future. They can cause a woman to descend into despair or rise up into a richer way of being, and to grasp the opportunity to reinvent herself as a New Woman for the second half of her life.

Women often ask me at what age do you become a midlife woman?
I say it comes when it comes; and you won’t miss it!

Looking on the positive side, the term ‘crisis’ in medical terms is defined as follows

. the turning point of a disease for better or worse; especially a sudden change, usually for the better, in the course of an acute disease. https://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/crisis

This will have been preceded by a period of fever, pain and perhaps unconsciousness.
This is similar for midlife women. They will experience growing discomfort, pain,and emotional distress, without being conscious of its causes.

The ‘midlife crisis’ would then mean becoming aware that their life is in flux and realising they can take control to fashion a new lifestyle. They may not know how, but they do know it can be done.

I call this ‘reinventing themselves as a New Midlife Woman’. The form this takes will be different in each case, and it will take some time. But it means choosing to live as they would wish rather than following a stale model of middle age life laid down by society.

These independent minded women sense and relish their freedom to live as they choose and cooperate in groups with other women for mutual benefit.

One of these groups is the New Midlife Woman Community, but that in turn is a gateway to many other groups.
So maybe we can reconcile the terms Midlife Crisis and New Midlife Woman. It may be that without reaching that crisis point, the doorway to a new life would never open.

I would like to end with the famous quote by Marianne Williamson. It seems to sum up the aspiration of the New Midlife Woman Community.

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