It’s Not a Midlife Crisis — It’s a Midlife Realignment: Recovering from the Potholes of Life

When the world calls it a midlife crisis, what if it’s actually a midlife realignment? We open the door to a different narrative—one where your wake-up isn’t a breakdown, it’s a spiritual audit that says what got you here won’t carry you where you’re going. With honest, grounded guidance, we explore why people who benefited from your overfunctioning often label your healing as chaos, and how to stop carrying expectations that were never yours.

We trace the hidden teachers in life’s potholes—emotional strain, relational wear, spiritual dryness, physical fatigue, and generational burdens—and show how slowing down to reassess, repair, and redirect turns pain into wisdom. Context matters, so we talk about life expectancy and its impact on urgency, purpose, and timing. If your community’s average lifespan is shorter, the midlife wake-up can come earlier, often with more grief and responsibility—and also with more resilience and clarity.

From there, we move into practice. We offer the four movements of realignment—reassess your landscape without shame, release expired assignments and inherited burdens, re-root in faith and community, and re-match actions with calling instead of coping. To ground it, we refresh the SALT model: serve without self-sacrifice, affirm without approval-seeking, love without losing yourself, and transform without erasing your identity. On the other side, the gains are real: peace, clarity, courage, honest boundaries, and the insight to see who loved your presence versus your usefulness.

If your clarity has been called a crisis, this conversation gives you language, tools, and hope. Subscribe for more grounded talks on purpose, faith, and personal growth, share with someone who’s rebuilding their life, and leave a review to tell us what you’re releasing next.

Chapters

• 0:01 Reframing Midlife As Realignment
• 1:49 Wake-Up Call Not Breakdown
• 3:45 Boundaries And Mislabeling Healing
• 4:51 Potholes As Teachers
• 6:21 Life Expectancy And Urgency
• 7:24 From Survival To Purpose
• 9:11 Questions That Drive Realignment
• 9:35 Four Movements Of Change
• 10:41 The SOFT Model Reimagined
• 11:31 What You Gain After Realignment
• 12:25 Bless The Departures
• 12:47 Closing Affirmations And Sendoff

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:01

Family, welcome back to Salt Talk where we serve, affirm, love, and transform. I'm your host, Jermaine Alberty, and today we're going to have a conversation that too many people whisper about, hide from, or mislabel. It's not a midlife crisis, it's a midlife realignment. Let me say this clearly at the start. You're not in a crisis, you are in realignment. And the people calling it a crisis, many of them are projecting their crisis onto you because you are no longer meeting their needs, their expectations, or their version of you. When you stop overfunctioning for them, when you stop carrying loads that were never yours, when you stop sacrificing your mental, emotional, and spiritual help for their comfort, they say you changed. But really, I changed. Your clarity exposed their comfort. Your evolution exposed their experiences. And now they call your realignment a crisis. Today we are reclaiming the season of life, reaffirming this chapter, and recovering from the potholes along the journey. This is Jermaine Alberty, and you're listening to The Soft Talk. So, what midlife really is. When people hear midlife, they think breakdown, panic, confusion, the classic cliches. But midlife is not about falling apart, it's about waking up. It's the moment your soul says everything that got you here won't get you where you're going. So, with that being said, midlife is not the middle of a time time frame of age. You know, like if you are 40 years old and you expect to live to 80 years old, that's the midlife. No, midlife can happen at any time in your life when you seek to change your life and align your life to who you know you are called to be. Midlife is a spiritual audit, midlife is a personal reckoning, midlife is a pivot from survival to attention, midlife is a shift from doing to becoming. But here's the truth: people who benefit from your dysfunction will always call your healing a crisis. When you set boundaries, they say you're acting brand new. When you protect your peace, they say something's wrong. When you become self-aware, they say you're confused. When you follow God's voice instead of theirs, they say you're in crisis. But really, you're not in crisis. You are in clarity. They're in crisis because your evolution no longer serves their expectation, and that's not your burden to carry. You see, sometimes the potholes of life show up. And so when the potholes of life show up, we need to be able to ask ourselves: what are these potholes teaching us? You see, midlife realignment often comes after you've hit some potholes on the journey. Some potholes are emotional, some are relational, some are spiritual, some are physical, some are even generational. And some potholes were created by caring too much, giving too much, been the strong one too long, people pleasing, living for approval, silence use as survival, trauma that was normalized, expectations you didn't choose. But potholes don't stop your journey. They just force you to slow down, reassess, repair, and redirect. My friend, let every pothole become a teacher for you. Learn the lesson that that pothole taught you. You see, the journey of life and the reality of life expectancy is real. Because life is a journey. But let's be honest about the mouths. We talk about midlife like it hits everyone at the same age. The truth is, midlife depends on your community's life expectancy. Here's the reality in the U.S. The overall life expectancy is 78.4 years. For men, about 75.8 years. For women, about 81.1 years. By ethnicity, non-Hispanic black Americans, about 74 years, American Indians, Alaska Native, around 70 years, white Americans, mid to high 70s, Hispanic Americans, approximately about 81 years of age, Asian Americans, approximately 85 years. So if you grew up in a community where men often passed in their 60s or early 70s, a midlife might arrive in your 20s, 30s, or 40s. Which is why many of us hit midlife with more fatigue, more stress, more trauma, more responsibilities, more burnout, more grief. But also, I hope you hit that midlife with more wisdom, more resilience, more spiritual insight, more urgency, and more clarity. Because life expectancy isn't just a number, it shapes how we experience purpose, urgency, and realignment. You see, there's a shift that has to occur when we move from survival to purpose. Because when you look at the math of life, and when you consider the years behind you and the years likely ahead, you start realizing I can't afford to live misaligned. What does that mean? Not with your purpose, not with your health, not with your calling, not with your faith, not with your inner peace. You begin to realize I cannot, I cannot afford to live misaligned. And this is where the real misalignment happens. You begin asking yourself, okay, what is still in my purpose? What is still in my health? What is still in my inner peace? Because that's where the misalignment is. You begin to ask yourself, hey, what what what is still in these things? But this is where the real realignment happens when you begin asking your questions that begin to get you to evaluate yourself. Who am I now? What still matters? What can I release? What must I protect? Where is God calling me next? How do I want the next 20 years to 40 years to feel? You stop living for expectation and you start living by your convictions. So there are four movements to this realignment. You ready? Midlife realignment is intentional work. I want you to get this. Midlife realignment is intentional work. What do we mean by that? I want you to commit to four movements. The first one is reassessment. I want you to take an inventory of your emotional, spiritual, relational, and physical landscape. Do it without shame. Just take an inventory. Number two, I want you to release some things. I want you to let go of expired assignments. I want you to hear that. Let go of expired excitements, draining relationships, unspoken expectations, and inherited burdens. And that's a whole other podcast on inherited burdens. Number three, I want you to re-root. I want you to ground yourself in faith, purpose, community, discipline, and self-awareness. And finally, number four, I want you to match your actions with your calling, not your coping. Because what's happened is you have just been doing things to cope and to get by. I need you to switch that. I need you to move from just coping to actually move into what you know that you're called in. And this is where the soft model can breathe new life into you. One, service no longer has to be all about sacrifice of yourself. You can serve without self-sacrifice. Affirmation is you don't have to seek the approval of everybody else. No, I want you to affirm yourself without approval seeking. I want you to love people, but I want you to love people without losing yourself. And then transformation, I want you to be able to transform and be who you are without erasing your identity. My friends, this is not a crisis, it's a reconstruction of the soul. So what happens after realignment? Something powerful happens. You gain some things, you gain peace, clarity, courage, honesty, boundaries, and a renewed sense of purpose. You finally see who loved you for your presence and who loved you for your usefulness. And let me free somebody today. If people leave because you stopped living in crisis, in their crisis, let them leave. Bless them on their way. And your realignment is not the end of you, it's the beginning of you. Well, family, as I come to a close, I want you to hear me clearly. You are not in a midlife crisis. You are in a midlife realignment. Your clarity is not a crisis. Your boundaries are not a crisis. Your healing is not a crisis. Your evolution is not a crisis. And anybody who says otherwise is simply comfortable with the virgin that you were, and they are uncomfortable with the virgin that you are becoming. They are simply uncomfortable that the virgin of you that serve their needs no longer exists, but that this new version, this new version, is considering yourself over others. And that version was never meant to carry you into that next season of your life. Well, thank you for joining me on the Salt Talk. I want to remind you that transformation begins with how you serve, affirm, how you love, how you live. And until next time, serve, affirm, love, and transform. This is Jermaine Alberty, and you've been listening to The Salt Talk.