Midlife crisis? I’m having a midlife bounce

Photo by Jordan Donaldson | @jordi.d on Unsplash

Thank you for all the lovely messages you sent after the post I wrote about my dad, Roger, who died 15 years ago. They mean a lot.

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Search for ‘midlife’ on TikTok and you’ll find videos with titles like “Midlife muscle wastage,” “Signs you might be having a midlife crisis part one,” “Why is dating so hard in your 50s?” “Ultimate slim trick,” and, bizarrely, “Midlife and why it happens,” (a 32-year-old man talking about other people’s midlife crises).

There were people in their 30s talking about their “early” midlife crises, women in their 60s at the gym doing “age-defying” things, and the American journalist Tamsen Fadal asking people on the street how old a woman in midlife is (the answers ranged from 30 to 55). “Creators” in their cars earnestly talked to the camera with big eyes and sad violin music in the background.

No, I haven’t had a midlife crisis and downloaded TikTok to understand what the youth of today are doing - I was browsing it as part of research for a feature on another topic. I decided to type in “midlife” as I was interested to see what came up.

I found what I saw depressing, portraying midlife as a problem to be solved rather than a time to feel curious and celebratory.

I get it, to a certain extent. The 40-something years can be a time when people start to notice the physical signs of ageing, like wrinkles, grey hair and the hormonal changes that can have all sorts of effects for women.

The cliché might be true: You feel 25 but can’t quite understand how you look 45, and, like me, you might be considering doing some facial refurbishment (I haven’t - so far).

You might be parenting kids as well as looking after ageing parents, wondering whether you should continue being married, or fretting about being single.

There might be something scientific around the idea of a midlife crisis. Apparently, there are two times in life when women and men age in a “dramatic” way – at age 44 and age 60, according to a Stanford University study that was published this month.

Researchers aren’t sure why this is (and it’s not to do with perimenopause/menopause), but suggested that drinking more alcohol during stressful times might have something to do with mid-40s ageing.

But if I look back at my life since I turned 40, I’ve been pretty content, and especially so in the past two or three years, when I feel like I’m having a pretty darn good time - a midlife bounce.

At the start of the decade at around age 42, I thought I might have a “roaring 2020s,” letting go of the shackles of the years I spent on high mating alert and feeling more free to explore whatever came my way.

The pandemic put that sense of freedom on hold for a couple of years - see below to read about the day I waded through shit mentally and literally in September 2020.

Wading through sh*t

More recently, I’ve started to fully embrace my midlife. A massive high point was travelling alone to Vietnam last year (I felt like I was in the middle of a midlife adolescence)…

Good morning from Vietnam

… and so are my ongoing adventures in dance, like Annie Mac’s Before Midnight raves, seeing Beyoncé by myself in New Orleans and then going to a night themed around the singer at a large shed-like venue next to an MOT centre where I saw people vogueing for the first time.

You look great... for your age

When I do these things, it’s not as if I’m trying to relive my youth - I’m often surrounded by midlifers also having a great time. Which is why I feel like the narrative around midlife crises needs to be changed, because it’s not what I’m seeing around me.

The good news is that it feels like there might be a shift going on, with lots of books out about this era, as the author Glynnis Macnicol wrote about in her newsletter

Good Decisions

last Sunday.

And “Love Me!” a brilliant book out this week by

Marianne Power

, a fellow midlifer, explores whether, and how, to have a “life full of love without marriage and kids.”

She writes: “I had been conditioned more than I’d realized to value heteronormative landmarks – marriage, kids – and to devalue myself for not reaching them. I didn’t want to devalue myself any more.”

This rings seriously true for me. Having let go of the shame I felt around not becoming a mother, I now want to stop devaluing myself for not being a wife.

This isn’t about giving up on romantic love, it’s about accepting myself exactly as I am, at this precise moment, and celebrating the love that’s all around me, in my friends, and family, in neighbours, in nature, and community, and in the small things like a smile from a stranger - and being bloody grateful for it.

Maybe it’s time to start making videos on TikTok.