Kansas City, Mo. – Upheaval in midlife used to be the province of men.The cliché response to the male “crisis” was to buy a red sports car and maybe have a fling. Women suffered no such stereotype. No melodramatic response to aging. No sports car.
Turns out, however, that women aren’t simply muddling through anymore. Today women in their 40s and 50s are more likely than men to go through life-altering transitions, researchers in adult development say.
No doubt a few equip themselves with little red sports cars, but most go for more concrete changes: They dump careers and start new ones, embark on spiritual journeys, ignite new intimate relationships, even engage in hobbies with new intensity.
Intense describes Sue Shellenbarger’s plunge into all-terrain vehicle riding at the age of 49. She had a crazy desire for outdoor adventure, and ATVs were her answer. For The Wall Street Journal columnist, though, what came before is perhaps more the crux of the story.
Shellenbarger had watched her father die, experienced the end of her 20-year marriage and realized her children weren’t so young anymore.
“I began to feel a sense of despair and deadness,” she said.
ATV riding was brand new and scary to her. Speeding down the trails revived her adventurous side. She also crashed a few times, and one accident left her shoulder so cockeyed she has taken to wearing turtlenecks.
“It’s really bizarre-looking,” she said with amusement. “It works, but it doesn’t work right.” Shellenbarger wrote a column about her ride on the wild side, and women bombarded her with messages about their own midlife changes, some turbulent and provoked by circumstances, others quiet and provoked by introspection.
She then did her own study of the topic and wrote a book titled “The Breaking Point: How Female Midlife Crisis Is Transforming Today’s Women.” In the book she described her feelings at the onset of her own transition.
“After marching for so long to the drumbeat of work and family, I felt as if I was dancing to some deranged inner bongo-player no one else could hear,” she wrote.
And in the book Shellenbarger, now 53, suggests a new definition for midlife crisis, one that focuses not on the male stereotype but on renewal and growth.
Indeed, said Diane Sanford, a clinical psychologist and president of Women’s Healthcare Partnership in suburban St. Louis, a sudden meltdown followed by adolescent behavior isn’t usually what women discuss who come to her with their midlife stories. More likely they talk about a pervasive unease, she said, a vague feeling that they’re not where they want to be for the second half of life.
Some are waking up to the idea that they’re not going to live forever, Sanford said. They ponder their marriages and careers. They examine their unpursued dreams.
Sometimes, turbulent events force, or at least precipitate, changes.
Julie Metzler of Kansas City wouldn’t say she came to a breaking point, the term used in Shellenbarger’s book title, but a few years ago when she turned 51, midlife certainly started to dish up changes.
Her marriage of 34 years, which produced four daughters and “a big, busy, happy household,” ended. In 2001 she moved out of the house that had been home since 1976. Her father died later that year.
In 2003 she was fired from her job by a supervisor who had won the position she had been in line for.
“I was stunned,” Metzler said. “My identity was tied up in those things. Life was stable for all those years it needed to be stable, and when it could be fluid, rocky and different, it became all of that.” For about four years, every plan she made fell flat, except one.
When it became obvious her marriage was headed for divorce, she began a spiritual journey, aided by two Jesuit priests. She studied Ignatian spirituality and Buddhist practices. She learned to meditate and to get past her plans and fears.
A friend asked her if she could do one thing, what would it be. Her answer: “I would pare down and live in one room. That was just in my gut.” Such an opportunity arose, and Metzler took it. After volunteering at the Holy Family Catholic Worker House in Kansas City, which serves meals for homeless people, an opportunity arose to move there and help as a staff member for a year. Her room is simple and comfortable.
“When you think, ‘Where should I be?’ well, I should be where people need tending to,” she said.
Meanwhile, Metzler got fit and lost 50 pounds and won a job at the Kansas City Art Institute as director of the new Center for Community Arts and Service Learning, which draws on her many years with Arts Partners and Kansas City’s Young Audiences.
For many women (men, too), adulthood often leads to a stage in which certain concerns – material success, raising a family – give way to bigger-picture matters, from helping fix society to aiding the planet.
The question arises, Sanford said: “What can I do to give back and create a meaningful existence?” Others dive deep into a more solitary hobby, such as painting or gardening, finding new life in an old passion.
Sarah Gibson and Christi Lynne have found a way to do both. Their passionate pursuit and their answer to the bigger-picture “what can we give back” question is taking shape at Acme Bicycle Co., a shop they opened last year in Kansas City’s Crossroads Art District.
In deciding to take their advocacy of bicycling to a deeper level, they relocated the shop from the suburbs, where riding is nearly all recreational, to the urban core.
Gibson, 46, and Lynne, 48, are adamant that America’s car culture, entrenched though it is, is bad for the planet. And they believe they can do their own small part. With their shop and as founding members of the Greater Kansas City Bicycle Foundation, they promote bicycling as transportation rather than mere recreation.
“This place is a focal point to have an impact on those issues,” Gibson said. “A lot of people would ride their bikes if they felt safe and supported.” Gibson had been a social service worker, a job that wore her down emotionally, she said, before switching careers and buying a bike shop in Lenexa, Mo. Lynne bought and operated rental properties and, after some family troubles, raised her sister’s children.
“We both did things we were supposed to, and we thought, ‘Now what?”‘ Lynne said.
Now they want to help change attitudes about bicycling and to help make practical changes, such as creating bicycle-friendly streets and increasing the number of bike racks in front of businesses.
While bicycling is their “bigger picture” issue, both have personal passions for bikes. Soon after they teamed up to open the shop, Lynne got the idea to take a course in bicycle frame-building, which is something Gibson had dreamed about doing for 15 years.
They now build custom frames that sport their own logo, a stylized peace symbol. Besides such high-end bikes, they also rehabilitate used bikes and sell them for as little as $20 to $40. Some they’ve even given away or traded.
One of the biggest satisfactions so far, Lynne said, has been providing bikes for people who really need them for transportation: “I can’t buy that with a credit card.” “Someone came in and asked, ‘Is this a business or are you just doing this for fun?”‘ Gibson said. “And my answer was, ‘Yes!”‘ Sanford, the psychologist, said the midlife years, whether turbulent or quiet, can be an opportunity to take stock of life by asking simple but pointed questions: Am I happy with my career? Am I living in the right place? Am I in the right relationship? And, she said, being open to make changes.
Psychologist Sanford, who is 48, said she didn’t experience big upheavals, but she did respond to midlife by doing some “housecleaning” of friendships and associations, making wiser choices about with whom she spent her time.
“I started in my early 40s and really decided who I wanted in my life and who I didn’t, what was working and what wasn’t working, and making the changes,” she said.
Judy Randall of Overland Park, Mo., is marking her middle years by getting married this month. She met her fiancé, Calvin Coffey, three years ago at age 50. She wasn’t particularly looking for a new relationship, although she was open to the idea. Randall’s sons were grown and living away. She had been divorced for nearly 20 years.
After years of calm, Randall experienced turbulence in midlife. In 1997 her kidneys began to fail, a shock for someone in excellent health and with no kidney disease in the family. She was on dialysis for two years awaiting a transplant.
“I knew the Lord had a kidney for me, but I didn’t know when or where it was going to come,” Randall said.
It came in May 2000, a new beginning. Two years later she lost her job in human resources when Trinity Hospital closed. Since then she has taught school, worked in the television ministry at her church and found a sideline as a wedding coordinator. She didn’t expect to be coordinating her own.
Randall met Coffey at church. She had taken on the task of finding a janitorial service for the church, and Coffey’s company was one of the applicants. His company got the job, and they ended up talking from time to time.
They talked about pro football; he asked her to some family outings. They clicked. Last October on her birthday, he proposed.
“I can’t say I was praying for a change or that it was fate,” she said. “I was just going about life.” New relationships are one of the top outcomes of midlife transitions, Shellenbarger said.
Of the 50 women in her study, she counted 13 new spouses or partners. She also counted 20 new careers, 14 new hobbies and 15 new religious pursuits, plus 16 women who took up adventure travel and eight who threw themselves into extreme sports.
Sanford said such outcomes show how positive and varied midlife transitions can be.
“I do think of it as a second adolescence,” Sanford said. “We get a chance to redefine ourselves and our lives.” Why is this happening now and not a generation ago? Unlike earlier generations, women today are more likely to have enough money and education to make such choices, Shellenbarger said.
Women’s earnings have gone up 17 percent the past 15 years while men’s have dropped slightly. Women now earn more than half of all college degrees. They experience the stress of the workplace along with their continued duties at home.
“They are ripe candidates for midlife crises,” she said.
For Shellenbarger, her reconnection with the outdoors and her adventurous nature helped her face her fears and find her limits. She hopes women can experience successful midlife transitions and will be able to say, “I found new meaning, I explored my limits, I can reach farther than I could before.”
Six midlife-transition “archetypes”
Author Sue Shellenbarger interviewed 50 women about the driving forces behind their transitions and came up with six “archetypes”:
The Adventurer: Seeks adventure or bold travel to enlarge her world, entertains risk, vanquishes fears.
The Lover: Seeks a soulmate and life partner; works on an existing intimate relationship or finds a new one.
The Leader: Seeks to create a new business, organization or movement; works toward creating a meaningful legacy.
The Artist: Seeks self-expression through art; focuses on creativity and stimulating others with her work.
The Gardener: Seeks to find meaning in things close at hand, such as garden, home and community; learns to cherish the moment.
The Seeker: Seeks a spiritual path to meaning and serenity; tries new religious teachings or goes deeply into existing practices.
