Ep. 163 Why Your Anxiety About Midlife Isn’t a Crisis But A Sign You're Ready To Embark On Your Next Chapter

Have you ever felt the quiet anxiety of stepping into midlife without a roadmap or recognition?
This episode is your invisible graduation ceremony—honoring the transition no one prepared you for.
.Here’s what you’ll take away from this episode:

1. Why anxiety in midlife is normal—and often a sign you’re being called into leadership.
2. How to cultivate coping skills that are rooted in presence, not performance.
3. The surprising power of quiet transitions and how they shape your influence and purpose.

 Listen now to honor your own midlife graduation and step into the role you’ve been preparing for all along.

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About the Host:
MJ Murray Vachon LCSW is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with more than 48,000 hours of therapy sessions and 31 years of experience teaching her Mental Wellness curriculum, Inner Challenge. Four years ago she overcame her fear of technology to create a podcast that integrated her vast clinical experience and practical wisdom of cultivating mental wellness using the latest information from neuroscience. MJ was Social Worker of the Year in 2011 for Region 2/IN.

Creating Midlife Calm is a podcast designed to guide you through the challenges of midlife, tackling issues like anxiety, low self-esteem, feeling unworthy, procrastination, and isolation, while offering strategies for improving relationships, family support, emotional wellbeing, mental wellness, and parenting, with a focus on mindfulness, stress management, coping skills, and personal growth to stop rumination, overthinking, and increase confidence through self-care, emotional healing, and mental health support.

Transcript

M.J. Murray Vachon LCSW: 0:00

In today's episode, we'll celebrate your graduation to midlife.

Built-in Microphone: 0:04

Welcome to Creating Midlife Calm, a podcast dedicated to empowering midlife minds to overcome anxiety, stop feeling like crap and become more present with your family, all while achieving greater success at work. I'm MJ Murray Vachon, a licensed clinical social worker with over 48, 000 hours of therapy sessions and 31 years of experience teaching mental wellness.

M.J. Murray Vachon LCSW: 0:29

Welcome to the podcast, it's graduation season, and today I want to welcome you to a graduation ceremony that was never officially scheduled. There are no caps and gowns, no marching bands or diplomas, and yet you are graduating. Welcome to midlife. This is the first major life transition that doesn't come with a ceremony. No one throws you a party for turning 41 or 52 or 67 but something significant is shifting. There's a quiet crossing taking place, and like many rites of passage, you might not realize you're in it until you're halfway through. Unlike the loud, bright commencement of young adulthood where dreams are shouted from stages and applause encourages you to chase achievement, midlife whispers. It taps you on the shoulder in the early hours of the morning, or it sits with you in carpool lines, budget meetings, or visits with aging parents. It shows up in unexpected questions. Is this it? Why do I still feel like I'm 30 inside? how do my parents' faces suddenly appear in the mirror? Why do I see my mother's hands in my own. Midlife often surprises you. It comes faster than you expected. Maybe like many others you thought by now you'd feel wise, confident, surefooted, but instead you might feel like you're improvising just with grayer hair and more responsibilities. Here's the truth. Midlife is the moment you're handed the torch. Not in a spotlight, not on a stage, but in a quiet passing of trust. When life asks you to go deeper into who you really are, not just for yourself, but for the benefit of others, your family, your coworkers, your community. It's the handoff you didn't know was coming, and yet here you are carrying it. And that torch, it doesn't shine on individual ambition anymore. It lights the way for leadership care and service. Not the loud, kind. The steady kind., the kind that helps you become someone others look to, that invites you to guide instead of prove. To ground your daily life. Not in self-promotion, but in the common good for all. I remember the moment I graduated into midlife, though there was no ceremony. No announcement, just a phone call. A family member reached out, very upset. One of her children, was in trouble with the law. I told her I'd call my dad. He was a lawyer with an uncanny ability to find light in any storm. At the time he was in his early eighties, wintering in Florida I called and explained the situation. To be honest, I thought he'd say, don't worry, Mary Jane, I'll be on the next plane home. Instead, he listened and quietly he said, oh, that's terrible, and I trust you'll find a way to help them through it. That was it. No putting on his cape, no flying home. I hung up the phone and sat down. I was stunned. I took a breath. And then another, and to be honest, quite a few more. My dad, who had always known what to do, had just handed the torch to me quietly. Clearly, I. It was his way of saying, now it's your turn. After a few minutes, I gathered myself. I called a friend who was a lawyer and got solid advice. The crisis lasted a while and I did the best I could offering support, showing up, helping guide the family member through the mess. Years later, at my dad's funeral, one of his friends approached me. He told me that during the week I had called, he'd been visiting my dad in Florida. They had spent that afternoon talking about how they needed to stop jumping in to fix things for their adult children. How at some point, the best gift was to step back To trust that their kids could find their own strength when life got hard. There was no fanfare in that moment, but something shifted. I wasn't just absorbing wisdom anymore. I was offering it. I had to step in to what I had learned. I had to step in to what I knew, I had to step in to the resources around me. And yes, it was scary. Very scary, to be honest, to carry the torch instead of follow it. But when my dad said, I trust, you'll help them. Something crystallized in me that I could have never learned any other way. Midlife doesn't ask you to aspire in the same way young adulthood once did. It doesn't beg you to climb ladders or collect trophies. Instead, it asks something far more difficult. And far more meaningful. It asks you to lead with what you've learned, to live with intention, clarity, and purpose, and to give what you can to the people and places that matter so much in your life. You're becoming a culture carrier. A wisdom keeper, a value and a bridge builder. You're now the one shaping families, teams, communities, and institutions, not just through ambition, but through integrity, stability, and presence. You're being called not just to succeed. But to serve, this is midlife. This is leadership in midlife, and it may not look like what you expected. Midlife today isn't what it was for your parents. We live in times of great uncertainty. You might be launching a second career due to changes in your industry coming to terms with the limits of your current job raising children and caring for aging parents, or learning to find your voice in spaces where you used to stay quiet. Midlife used to mean slowing down and enjoying the life you built, but for many people today, it is a time of learning to stay stable and being a light in all this uncertainty and confusion. A time to support those who are young and finding their way, and those who are elderly, who are coming to terms with the limitations of aging. You're not becoming, you are being, you are in between. And that in between space, it's sacred, it's fertile with possibility, but often it isn't what you imagined when you were younger. Midlife has a way of calling you to things that you never even considered but land in your lap. For me, it was the story above where my dad called me into service for a family member. I can look back now, two decades later, and it still takes my breath away, but inside of me, that is the moment where I stopped taking and began giving. You too, are being called. Don't let fear have you turn to your phone instead of turning toward being a real agent of support and change to those who are around you. Those who are real, not virtual. There is no other life stage that surrounds you with so many people of all ages, real people who will benefit from real connection. Real challenges that can't be solved or supported by hitting a like, but will benefit from you tapping into the wisdom and life experience you have, but often underestimate. Find your voice in meetings. Hold your children accountable when they lose their way, and mentor that young colleague who is struggling in their job. Do what is best for the future. Not just your future, not just your children's future, but all of ours future. Do this again and again and again. This is midlife. Yes, there's grief in this stage. The loss of certain dreams, the changing of your body, the shifting of roles. Sometimes it feels like you're walking an unmarked trail with no signs to say you're doing it right. Trust yourself. You have come a long way from your high school or college graduation. You have a lot to offer. Don't fool yourself into paralyzation by saying, I'm not enough. I'm not sure. Gently push yourself forward and offer what it is that you can. It will be enough. Yes, there will be anxiety as you step in to being part of the solution. Push through your anxiousness. And offer anyway. Move your focus to how you can contribute to the development of others. And in doing this you will develop yourself. This development in midlife often comes with a quiet grounding of joy that you don't notice in the moment. But in looking back, It shows up with a sense of pride, a sense of I didn't let my fear keep me from being part of the solution, keep me from helping others who I care about. So today, on this invisible graduation day, here's what I want to remind you. You're not late to life. You're right on time. Even if it doesn't feel like it. Midlife isn't a crisis. It's a calling to offer what you can to others. You are now the elder in training. Even if you don't feel wise. Others are watching how you carry responsibilities, how you handle uncertainty, how you speak truth with compassion. The world needs your presence more than your performance. Just make your corner of it a little more sane, a little more humane, a little more generous, because if you do that, that's the kind of leadership midlife was made for. May you carry your torch with steadiness. May you use its light, not only to see, but to help others find their way.

11:07

Your Inner Challenge for this week is twofold. First, move your invisible tassel to the other side of your cap. And second, send this to one of your friends who you would love to celebrate your midlife graduation. I'll be back on Thursday sharing my dream commencement speech for those graduating from high school and college, something that you can pass on to them instead of a card.

M.J. Murray Vachon LCSW: 11:34

Congratulations, graduate. Thanks for listening to creating Midlife Calm.