Let’s Not Lie to Ourselves

What midlife transformation actually looks like

Happy Sunday, y’all! I’m publishing this here and on my Geezer Substack. If this is a duplicate, my apologies. I’d love to hear about your “midlife transformation” story if you care to share—my guess is that we’ve all got something going on these days. (Some messier than others. See below.)

I can’t stop thinking about this article I read by Robin Levine Shobin on middle-aged women who don’t exist.

It’s a surgical takedown of the lie being sold on social media to women in their fifties. The broad outlines are: I had a crappy husband, I dumped him, I “glowed up,” and now at 57 I’m hotter and happier than I’ve ever been.

It didn’t take too much digging for the author to discover that these were AI-generated women telling AI-generated stories emotionally engineered to sell a host of expensive wellness products. I have an unending stream of spicy words for this predatory bullshit. As if our generation wasn’t damaged enough by diet culture. Now “wellness” vultures circle our aging bodies, stoking midlife insecurities to feed their own dead-eyed grift.

But then I thought to myself: Wait. Am I guilty of the same thing?

Image courtesy of The Smithsonian, which makes the cursing more cultured.

Not that I am AI generated or that I’m hawking NAD+ products, but have I been sharing a similar story: Turned 50, left a long-term marriage, cashed in after decades spent writing for other people and founded a print magazine that let my creative light shine.

All of this is true. None of it is simple.

My “midlife transformation” looks nothing like the before-and-after images on social media. It looks more like a house in the middle of demolition: drywall exposed, naked wires dangling, decaying appliances lingering awkwardly in the side yard. The neighbors are over it and so am I, but the contractors are sketchy and the job may never be complete. It’s uncomfortable for everyone.

The Jung and the restless

Back in 2022, when I started rethinking every aspect of my life—as you do—I instinctively turned to storytelling.

I devoured books like Glennon Doyle’s Untamed and Kimberly Harrington’s But You Seemed So Happy. I processed endless podcasts while running the trails behind my home, seeking guidance, yes, but also searching for a hopeful outcome. I wanted to hear the same stripped-down story I’ve been guilty of telling: she leaves, she succeeds, there is much rejoicing.

The book that really did it for me, though, was The Middle Passage: From Misery to Meaning in Midlife by Jungian scholar James Hollis. This I could dig my teeth into. I read a chapter or two every night looking for permission to detonate the life I had painstakingly crafted over a quarter century.

Here’s the passage that gave it to me:

“A very effective instrument when in the face of blockages and difficult choices is to ask the very pragmatic question: Does this choice enlarge me or diminish me?...We should choose the path of enlargement, not service to wealth, power, fame, or the accolades of others, because it is what is asked of us by the soul. When we choose the small, we don’t have to step into the large, which is quite comforting until we realize we are living small, diminished lives.”

This made sense. To stay would extend the slow drip of self-diminishment I’d felt over decades of choosing my family’s emotional, administrative, and financial support over my own desires. To leave was to take the much more exciting path towards enlargement.

My husband, no doubt freaked out by my new penchant for bawling during kids’ movies and sad commercials, retreated into his garage. I was left alone to run, work, and weep. I drank too much and listened to Fiona Apple’s Fetch the Bolt Cutters on repeat. It was all very perimenopausal, though I didn’t know it then. Sadly, my unraveling took place a few years before the term “estrogen cliff” claimed space in our vernacular.

I had soon crawled so deep into the cannon of my heart’s three-ring circus that emerging quietly was not an option—I would have to be shot, screaming, into the unknown. All it would take was one errant spark.

The catalyst came in the form of an ex-coworker. He was hot and smart. I was alone and vulnerable. The fuse was lit and I cannonballed out of my old life and into the unknown without a plan or an inkling of what was to come.

This is where the Insta-perfect midlife glow-up falls apart. What I did was dumb and destructive and what came next was a goat rodeo of epic proportions. There should be no “like and subscribe” for the terrible conflicts, financial devastation, and emotional agony that ensued. This is the shit that does not sell supplements.

A divine tragicomedy

It’s been almost four years since I caught fire. Just enough time to begin processing the experience with a bit of detachment.

The catalyst relationship was a slow-motion flop—another outcome that doesn’t fit nicely into the narrative. Looking back, the worst thing about it is the headline’s cliché: “Wife leaves good but checked-out husband for alluring but unavailable man.” To quote Goethe: Ew. Gross. Gag me with a spoon.

So, was taking a battering ram to my well-constructed life, destroying my marriage, disrupting my kid’s childhood, and flinging myself into the abyss worth it? My answer thus far is a solid “maybe.”

Because somehow, in the midst of the mess, my life dances on the edge of divine. And it only does that because I reclaimed and resurrected my own creativity. That was the vital part of me that had been diminished over time—and when it got the chance, it came back with a decades-delayed ferocity.

Case in point: If I hadn’t left my old life, I wouldn’t have created Geezer magazine. And if I hadn’t created Geezer, I wouldn’t have met Jane Pratt, creator of Sassy magazine and lifelong inspiration. And if I hadn’t met Jane Pratt, whose profile I wrote for issue No. 3, she wouldn’t have sent me this text that I will cherish forever:

The real text from the real Jane. She even gave me permission to use it!

That feels like a high-five from the universe for believing in myself enough to take a risk.

Am I lonely? Sometimes. Would I like a partner to hang out, get naked, and do fun stuff with? Absolutely. But, amazingly, my lifelong fear of aloneness has dissipated. I’m oddly content with walking my dogs, working out, chilling with friends, and making my magazine. I don’t even keep hard alcohol in the house anymore, so no more late-night languishing over a gin and tonic.

All signs are pointing to a healthy, happy ending—but that’s no guarantee. There’s a ton of potential fuckery between here and there.

The midlife reinvention trope is pure, uncut Gen X catnip. It’s also an awkward, hormonally addled return to adolescence, but with so much more at stake. So let’s not kid ourselves—every transformation comes at a cost, every growing thing cracks the seed that contained it. You’re not going to want to put this on your Insta feed, no matter how good you look by the end.

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