When I first started this writing space and was trying on different names for what ultimately became Midlife Run, I struggled. Solidly in my forties, the idea of attaching the word “midlife” to anything seemed like an unwelcome, uncomfortable stretch reserved for the after-fifty set. But I settled into the name, comforted by the knowledge that I was on the “early side” of midlife. Not so any more. Last month we dropped our youngest at college thus marking the beginning of the “empty nest years” and today, as I start to write this, I turn fifty. I am solidly, undeniably, in midlife.
I have a few choices available here. I can freak out and cry (totally viable option). Or I can embrace the hell out of this milestone.
I’ll go with the second option.
With fifty years of life-training behind me, after I get past the god-awful number and get down to the substance of who I am, the reality is that I have never felt more grounded and purposeful in life than in this moment in time. It’s not that there aren’t challenges or big decisions to be made, it’s just that they feel different now. When I was eighteen, or twenty-two, or even thirty, it felt like any decision I made would fling me out onto some life-tangent into the unknown and scary universe that literally would affect The.Rest.Of.My.Life. - where to go to college, whether to go to grad school, who to marry, where to live, where to work, where to move, whether we really could afford that house, whether to have children, how to raise the children, and whether any little misstep or mistake would unravel it all. It’s no wonder that we struggled to decide what’s for dinner - we were in decision overload half of the time, and the other half I was living in a world of worry wondering if we were doing it all right, and whether some meteoric event out of my control would strike and fling us off onto another uncertain path.
Looking back on it, it makes my head spin. Truly.
So here I am at the half-century mark, and, like so many of my peers, I am feeling strong, emboldened, and finally leaning into my voice. There is a reason. If you put a few of us in a room and place a giant Life Bingo card on the floor, between us we’d be able to fill all of the squares: Marriage - Divorce - Therapy - Graduations - Promotions - Career Change - Death of Parent - Loss of a Spouse - Cancer - Miscarriage - Child birth - Financial Struggles - Graduations - Surviving the Toddler Years - Surviving the Teenage Years - Confronting the Empty Nest ... check, check, check. By this stage in life, collectively we have covered a huge range of life’s successes and failures, with incredible highs and some devastating, heartbreaking lows, and we finally have acquired a confidence born from having survived it all. Having now realized that we are capable of navigating life’s changes and that we aren’t alone in these experiences, there is a marked change in the openness and honesty with which we are willing to talk and laugh about all of it, and urge and encourage each other forward as we continue to journey through this one “wild and precious life.”
What a gift to be in this moment. Fifty years. And still chasing all that is possible.
***
Current status: I am in a grand room of a historic hotel, writing next to an imposing stone fireplace, with a giant moose head staring down at me, in the middle of leaf-peeping season in New Hampshire. The fact that I am one of thousands of people who have had the privilege to be in this space, and walk through life, and witness the turning of the seasons is humbling, and grounding, and fitting given the occasion. In a few hours I will run free on trails with my husband, with a carpet of fallen leaves under our feet and a canopy of reds, yellows, and greens above us. Later we will talk with our children, and drink good wine, maybe dance a bit, and laugh a lot, and celebrate not the Big Number, but the fact that life is alive.
***
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
- Mary Oliver (“The Summer Day”).
