Ep. 268: The Hardest Part of Midlife Nobody Talks About

I don't think the hardest part of midlife is getting older. I don't think it's wrinkles. I don't think it's menopause. I don't even think it's the teenagers or parenting of adults…walking alongside them.

I think the hardest part of midlife is realizing that the way you've always done life doesn't seem to work anymore.

And if you've been feeling that lately, I want you to know something before we go any further.

I don't think you're failing. I don't think you've become lazy. I don't think you've suddenly lost your ability to handle life.

I think you've reached a season that asks something different from you.

And that's the part nobody talks about. Nobody sits you down at forty-five and says, hey, by the way, the strategy that's carried you through every hard season so far is about to stop working, and that's actually not a crisis—it's a milestone. 

Nobody tells you that. You just find out the hard way, usually alone, usually while quietly wondering what happened to the woman who used to handle everything.

Today we’re going to talk openly about the physical side of midlife. Hormones, sleep, metabolism, all of it. We're far less honest about this part…the quiet realization that the entire way you've operated for twenty years has an expiration date, and nobody warned you it was coming.

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Transcript

Well, so today, again, we're gonna talk about how I don't think that the hardest part of midlife is getting older. It's not the wrinkles, it's not menopause, although, you know, all of that stuff is kind of like a roller coaster. the teenagers and the young adults and and all of that walking alongside our kids kids as they get older, like that is a thing. But I think the hardest part of midlife is realizing that the way that you have always done life, it just doesn't seem to work anymore.

And if you've been feeling that lately, I want you to know something before we go any further. I don't think you're failing. And I don't think that you've somehow become lazy. And I don't think that you've suddenly lost your ability to handle life either. I think you've simply reached a season that asks something different from you. And that's the part that nobody talks about. Nobody sits us down at 40 or 43 or 45 and says, hey, by the way.

The strategies that have carried you through hard things in life thus far, they're just not gonna work anymore. And nobody tells us that. We find that out the hard way, usually alone, while quietly wondering what happened to the woman who used to handle everything. And so today we're gonna talk about that. We're gonna talk about the quiet realization that the entire way that we've operated for 20 years or longer, it kind of like has an expiration date.

And nobody warned you that it was gonna be coming. So this really is the fourth installment in a series that started with a simple question. And the question that I asked you was this: it was a question I gave you to ask yourself, actually. And and the question was: does this deserve the best of me? And that has taken us through resentment. We've talked about resentment here. We've talked about invisible decisions. We've talked about the real cost behind every yes.

And today's conversation is gonna go somewhere a little bit different. It's less of a how to and more of just a moment that I just want to have a conversation with you because I think there's a specific kind of exhaustion that shows up in midlife and almost nobody names it out loud. And so that's what we're doing today. Now I will warn you as well. Today for you, I don't have a framework. I don't have an exercise to walk through. I just truly want to sit here in.

A conversation about midlife with you because a lot of you, I'm guessing, have been quietly handling this. Why can't I deal with life anymore? Question on your own. And you're also probably wondering if you're the only one. So many women that I know ask the question essentially, what's wrong with me? Why am I so tired? Why can't I keep up anymore? I used to be able to handle everything. What happened? Maybe you've asked some of those questions. I know I certainly did.

I still do sometimes. But here's what I really have shifted to wondering over the last couple of years as I've worked more and more closely and intimately with women in inside their lives every day. The question that I'm wondering, and that I think we should all be wondering instead of what's wrong with me, is what if we asked, what if we first of all allowed the fact that nothing is actually wrong with me?

What if we've been asking the wrong question of ourselves all along? What if the better question is, what changed? What changed in my life? Because something did. And we default to this whole conversation of like, what's wrong with me? Because it feels like it's something we can fix then, right? If the problem is you, your discipline, your organization, your energy, then theoretically there's a version of just trying harder and just

Buckling down that is gonna solve that problem. But if the problem is life itself has expanded, well, that's a much bigger and much less controllable thing to face. And so it just becomes easier to default to blaming ourselves because at least that feels like something that's within our power to change. But blaming yourself for a problem that you can't actually fix that way, it just leaves you stuck.

Trying the same solution over and over, wondering why it keeps failing, and quietly concluding that you must be the broken part. You're not. The equation changed. And that's a very different thing than you simply failing to solve the equation or problem. And this distinction matters more than it sounds like it does.

If you believe the problem is you, every failed attempt to fix it becomes more evidence against yourself that you are not gonna be able to handle it. But if you believe the problem is that your circumstances changed and your approach didn't, well then every failed attempt can just become information instead of some sort of indictment against yourself. It tells you that the old approach genuinely just doesn't fit anymore.

Not that you're somehow failing to make it fit hard enough. When my kids were little, everyone, I don't know about you, but everyone told me just hang in there, it gets easier. And now that my kids are getting older, I've got adult kids and grandkids, right? Some things did get easier. I'm sleeping through the night most times. I mean, if I'm not, it's my issue. I'm not carrying a diaper bag everywhere I go. I'm not chasing toddlers through the grocery store. But let's tell the whole story.

Now I have teenagers and young adults. There's sports almost every night. There's kids with jobs who need rides there. There's drivers ed. There's college visits. There's friends who are in and out of the house. There's a grocery bill that feels impossible because somehow teenagers can empty an entire pantry in a weekend or less. There's laundry that never ends. And there's conversations that carry so much more weight than they did when my kids were five.

And then there's work and there's finances and there's schedules and there's trying to keep a home running and there's trying to stay connected to my loved ones and my friends and trying to remember everything everything and trying not to drop the ball. And now I have grandkids and I absolutely love being a Gigi. But when they're here, the toys come back out too, and the dishes pile up. And when they leave, the house doesn't magically reset itself. And I'm not complaining. It's just I'm painting the picture of what reality looks like now.

I remember there was a week not long ago that captured this kind of perfectly. I had a driver's ed pickup to do, and I had grandkids coming for the afternoon. I had a work deadline that I'd been chipping away at for days, and I had a conversation with one of my teenagers that I knew the second it started, it was gonna take real emotional energy, not just five minutes of half listening while I folded the laundry. This was not that kind of conversation. And all of those things that I just listed off, none of those things were optional.

None of these things were things that I could just simply hand off or ignore. And by the time I sat down that night, I remember thinking that this is what everyone said would be getting easier. This is the easier version. And I sat on my the edge of my bed that night, and I was still in the clothes that I had worn all day, and I genuinely could not tell you which part of the day had exhausted me the most. It it wasn't any one single thing.

It was just the sheer number of things, each one asking for a different version of me. patient Gigi, present mother, focused professional, attentive friend, all within the same 12-hour stretch, with almost no transition between any of them. It was just one piled on top of the other, and a lot of them were overlapping. The truth that I came to realize, and maybe you've come to realize it too, or maybe this is gonna kind of be the first light bulb moment for you.

When I say life actually doesn't get smaller, it gets fuller as we get older. It gets more layered. It gets more complex. It gets more demanding. And nobody warns you about this part. We're told about the sleepless newborn nights, right? We're told that toddlers are exhausting. It's the terrible twos and it's all those things, right? We're told that teenagers are hard in their own way.

But nobody sits you down and says, by the way, none of these seasons actually replace the other. They just kind of stack, right? The needs of your teenagers layer on top of the needs of your aging parents. The needs of your grandkids layer on top of a career that you've spent decades building. The emotional weight of a marriage that's been through 25 years of layers on top of everything else you're already carrying. Well, that layers on too. Each individual season that we live through.

Has taken on its own a toll out of you, right? And all of these are likely manageable, each on their own. But the thing is, is that by the time we get to midlife, we're still kind of straddling many of these different seasons. Midlife is is kind of a straddled version. And so it's kind of like we're living all of these different seasons simultaneously. And

Every article, every well-meaning piece of advice, every it gets easier was written about a single season in isolation, not the layered, complicated reality of carrying several of these seasons all at once. And I think that's part, I think that's a big part of why midlife feels so disorienting. You're not failing or struggling with any one thing. You could probably handle the teenagers alone if that's all you had.

You could probably handle the aging parents just fine if that's all there was. You could probably handle the career or the marriage changes or the grandkids or any single, any single one of these things alone and handle it well. But what nobody prepared you for is that you were gonna be handling all of them at the same time with the same 24 hours that you had back when you were only handling one or two of these seasons and two of these things at a time.

In reality, the math simply doesn't work the way that it used to, no matter how capable you are. And here's the part that I don't think we realize. For years, every time that life asked a little bit more from us, we answered it the same way. I'll just stay up a little bit later, I'll just work one more shift, or I'll just make another grocery run, or I'll just squeeze one more thing into the schedule and I'll handle it. And here's the thing: that wasn't a bad strategy. It worked. In fact,

It probably built the life that you have today. It helped you raise your kids, it helped you support your family, it helped you build your career, it helped you pay the bills, it helped get everybody where they need to be. You became the woman that everyone could count on because every time life asked more of you, you just found a way to give more. That makes you really strong, right? And I don't think we give ourselves enough credit for that. The version of you who figured out how to be in two places at once.

The version of you who stretched a paycheck, who stayed up late finishing something so nobody else would have to. That version of you was a very strong, capable version. She was resourceful and she built something real out of sheer will and grit and love. And whatever season you're in right now, you got here because of her. And I think about all of the I'll just.

That got me through my 20s and 30s, right? I'll just skip my own lunch so the kids can eat on time. I'll just take the early shift so someone else doesn't have to. I'll just handle the thing that nobody else noticed needed handling. Every one of those small sacrifices stacked up over the years is what built the family and the home and the career that I have today. I'm not, I don't feel bad about that strategy. I'm grateful for it. It did exactly what it was supposed to do for exactly as long as it needed to.

And if I'm being honest, there's even a part of me that misses how simple life was back then. Not the exhaustion, but the clarity. There was always an a next move that felt more obvious than what anything feels right now. Push a little harder, stay up a little later, and the problem in front of you got solved. But the thing is, is midlife doesn't offer that same kind of simplicity. And I think that's part of what makes this season feel so disorienting and so hard.

The old moves don't produce the same results anymore. And there isn't yet an equally obvious new move to replace those. And I think that that's really important for you to hear clearly because I don't, I don't want this conversation to sound like I'm telling you that everything you've done to hold your life together was somehow misguided. It wasn't. It was resourceful and it was loving and it was completely appropriate for the season that it was built in.

The problem was never the strategy itself. The problem is what happens when a strategy built for one season gets asked to carry a completely different season. Think about it almost like a tool, right? A hammer is exactly the right tool for driving a nail into a board, right? But it's a terrible tool for tightening a screw. That doesn't mean the hammer is broken or that you're using it wrong. It means that the job that's being asked of it is different, it's changed.

And the tool that you reached for out of habit, or because it was always the one that worked, well, it isn't billed for this particular job anymore. I'll just do a little more was the right hammer in this example. It was the right hammer for years. Midlife handed you a screw though. And no amount of hammering harder is gonna make that screw work. And again, it doesn't signal that there's anything wrong with you. It's not because you're too weak to make it work, but it's because you're using a tool that was built.

For a different task. But here's the thing: somewhere along the way, life kept asking for more and more and more while we kept answering it the same old way, right? Give more, push harder, more grit, figure it out, keep going. Until one day there just wasn't another gear to kick into anymore. And I wonder if that's where so many women find themselves. And it it's not because they're not capable.

But it's really because they've been capable for so long. I don't think women are largely burned out because they're doing life wrong. I think they've reached the point where I'll just do a little more. It isn't a solution that works anymore. And when I really started to see that in myself and in the women that I work with, it kind of changed everything because it helped me stop seeing myself as the problem. And I could help other women do the same thing.

I remember the specific night I finally said that to myself out loud. I said, I'll just I'll just do a little more. Just doesn't work. I was standing in my kitchen and I genuinely could not think of a single thing that I could cut out or a way that I could stay up later or just push through one more time. There was no more later to stay up. There was no more gear to shift into.

For years, the I'll just you fill in the blank had always been there and it was just waiting and it was ready to absorb whatever it needed to absorb. And and that night, maybe for the first time ever, it just wasn't there. And in instead of feeling like I had failed somehow, I just literally sat there and just tried to figure it out. And as I started to realize, you know what, this just isn't the same season.

I actually started to feel a sense of relief. Like I was finally being allowed to stop pretending that the strategy still worked. It was really the first time I realized it's just not going to work. Before that night, I think some part of me believed that if I just kept insisting that the strategy still worked, it would eventually work again. I'd tell myself, I just need one good night's sleep. I just need one calmer week. I need one less complicated month.

And then I'll be back to being able to handle everything in the old way. But that calmer week never actually came because the complexity of my life, it didn't go anywhere. It wasn't a temporary complexity. It was simply the new shape of my life. And no amount of insisting otherwise was gonna change that. And that really is the part that took me the longest to accept. It wasn't that I was tired, I already knew that. But that the tiredness wasn't a temporary dip that I could just

push through and return, snap back from, that was hard. It really was a signal that the entire operating system that I had needed to change. It wasn't just my effort level within the old operating system. That wasn't gonna work. I wish that somehow I had realized sooner that reaching that point didn't have failure, failure attached to it. Because I spent longer than I want to admit

treating myself like I was a failure. Like if I could just find one more ounce of discipline or squeeze in a little bit of extra sleep or try the next best and greatest system that I'd get back to being that person who never ran out of gas. But you know what? Again, she wasn't coming back, I realized. And it and it didn't mean that there was anything wrong with me. But it was because that version of running a life was never meant to last forever.

It was built for a specific season and that season had ended. So like me, I wonder if the problem isn't that you have changed. I wonder if the problem is that life kept changing and your strategies like mine never did. The strategies that that helped you build your home and build your family and build your career and keep all the plates spinning, those those strategies they served you well.

Again, it's part of how they're in in a large part what built who you are today and the life that you are living today. But not every strategy is meant to carry us through every season. Sometimes growth looks like letting go of a way of living that no longer serves the people we've become. Not because there was anything wrong with it, but because we're doing exactly what we're supposed to. We have outgrown that season.

Think about it this way the strategies that you needed to survive your 20s. A lot of times these are strategies like hustle and push and figure it out. Those are exactly right for that season. They would have been the wrong strategies, though, for the season that you're in now. And that's not a contradiction. That's just what it means for a strategy to be seasonal instead of permanent. You wouldn't expect a coat that fit you perfectly at 25 to still fit you as well today.

Strategies work the same way. Outgrowing one strategy doesn't mean that there was anything wrong with it or that it failed you in some way. It just means that you're not the same as you were when you built that strategy. And I think about the women that I've worked with who've reached this exact moment. And almost all of them describe the same kind of quiet grief, right? It it's not just tiredness, although we definitely feel that. It's this kind of

We all have to go through this phase where we have this sort of mourning for the version of themselves that used to be able to do it all, who never seemed to run out of gas and who took br pride in being the one who always figured it out. Letting go of that identity, even when it's genuinely costing you everything, can feel like you're losing something that really is important or precious to you. And in a way, it is.

But what you're losing is a role that you've outgrown, outgrown, not a piece of who you actually are in it. It is the identity and the season and a role. It is not you. The version of you underneath the strategy, the one who loves fiercely and who shows up and who cares more than almost anyone about the people in her life. She's still the same person. She's still there.

She doesn't disappear when the strategy changes. If anything, she finally gets room to breathe once you stop asking her to also be the one with the endless capabilities that again, physiologically, she used to be able to have. That's really what I think this reframe that we're having here today is offering you. It's not offering you a smaller life or a life where you care less or show up less.

But it really is offering you this reframe for a life where the woman that is doing all of the caring finally gets counted as someone who matters also, not just the engine that quietly kept fueling everyone and everything else. And I that's worth repeating because it's easy to hear. Let go of the old strategy and translate it into do less. That's not it at all. That's not what I'm saying. This is about where you.

Spend the effort you already have. You spend the effort you have now. Not that you are spending less effort. You're spending what's available to you. But what's available to you is different. You're still going to show up fully for the people who matter to you, just like you always have. But now you're going to stop being the only one left off the list of the people who matter because.

You're running yourself into the ground. So many women in their 40s and 50s are doing this. And if that's where you are today, I want to make sure that you hear this. This isn't the end of your capacity. This isn't the beginning of your decline, admitting that we have to do less. It's not proof that you're falling apart.

This can simply be the moment that you've realized that doing more isn't the answer anymore. And believe it or not, that can be a really hopeful thing. Because if I'll just do a little more isn't your only option, then there must be another way. You don't have to know exactly what that way looks like today. You just have to be willing to believe that it exists because I know that it does.

I believe that there is a way to live this season that you're in right now without constantly feeling like you're one step behind. I believe that there's a way to carry responsibility without carrying the crushing weight of believing it all, everything depends on you. I believe that there is a way, when we are in our forties and fifties and maybe even beyond, to build a life that fits the woman you are today, not the woman that you had to be twenty years ago.

I think that's the work of midlife. It it's not becoming someone new, it's becoming more intentional about how you live. Now I know that that might feel like a big unfinished thing to sit with right now, right? Without a checklist telling you exactly what to do now, right? Sometimes we need a plan. And at some point we do need a plan. But what we need first here today is permission.

It's permission to stop believing that the only answer is always to push more to do more. We need permission to consider that there might be an entirely different way to do this season and the next ones well. One that you haven't tried yet because you haven't known to. I think a lot of women stay stuck here longer than they need to. This knowing it isn't working anymore, but I have no idea what that even means or what to do about it.

They stay stuck here. And it's not so much because they can't imagine another way, but it's because first we need to come face to face with admitting that the old way of doing things isn't working. And that feels a little bit like admitting defeat, but it doesn't have to feel that way. Recognizing that a strategy has essentially run its course isn't defeat at all. It's actually really wise.

It's the same wisdom that told you years ago that a strategy of I'll just do a little more would actually work then. It's not that you don't have the wisdom anymore. It's just that it needs to point somewhere new. I also want to make sure that you don't walk away from this conversation thinking that the answer is simply to do less and hope for the best. That's not what I'm saying either. The answer isn't less effort, it's different effort.

It's effort aimed at the right things, spent with intention instead of urgency, protected instead of endlessly available to whoever asks for it next. That's a completely different way of living than either pushing harder or giving up. And it's the way that I want to take the conversation next time. You've proven that you have what it takes to build a life through sheer effort and grit and love.

When we get older, what the season is asking of you, it isn't less of you. It's asking for a wiser, more intentional version of the same devotion. One that also includes you in the equation, instead of all of that constant pushing yourself to the back burner. So here are a few takeaways I want to make sure that you caught today. Nothing is wrong with you if you feel

a little bit uncertain of what life looks like now. Now that you're a little bit beyond your younger child years, let's just say. You're more established in your career. Yeah, hormones have probably changed and all of that too. But nothing is wrong with you. Something changed. The exhaustion that you feel in midlife isn't proof that there's anything wrong with you, but it's proof that life expanded while the strategies you were using

Stayed the same. The question was never, what's wrong with me that I can't do this anymore? The question always should have been, what's changed? And once you ask that question, then the guilt and shame that we feel about not being able to operate at the same level can fall away as well. Takeaway number two, I'll just do a little more. That was a very strong way of doing life. That strategy largely built the life that you.

Have. It got your kids raised, it got your bills paid, it got your family supported. Reaching the limits of that now doesn't erase what it did accomplish. It just means that it's finished doing what it needed to do. And it's allowed to retire with honor and dignity rather than being remembered or thought of in the context of I guess it's just a big failure now.

Takeaway number three, outgrowing a strategy isn't the same as it being wrong. The way that you survived your 20s and 30s was never meant to carry you into midlife without any changes. Letting go of those strategies, it isn't losing part of yourself. It's actually evidence that you've grown into someone new. Someone this old strategy just isn't going to work for anymore.

Takeaway number four, reaching your limit is actually hopeful, not hopeless. Because if pushing harder isn't the answer anymore, that means that there's another option. Again, you don't need to know what that is right now. You just need to believe that there is a different way of doing things and be willing to keep looking for what that is instead of returning to the same worn-out ways of doing things and being frustrated that they don't work.

So today instead of asking yourself, why can't I keep up? Try asking another question. What if pushing harder isn't the answer anymore? Simply because this season is asking something different of you. And maybe you're straddling a lot of different seasons all at the same time.

Friends, you don't have to keep living the way that you've always lived just because it's the way you've always done it. There can be another way. For today, I just want you to sit with that possibility. I don't want you to plan anything. I don't want five steps. I don't want to give you the five steps or three steps. I just want you to entertain the thought that you haven't somehow failed if you're feeling tired, exhausted, uncertain.

and having no idea how to make anything feel easier. You're just you've simply arrived someplace new. And new places are gonna take a little time to learn how to live in them well.

In our next conversation next week, we're gonna I'm gonna introduce you kind of to this concept that completely changed how I see my own life. Because I know that many of you aren't just exhausted. We're living in what I call default mode. And once you can see it, you can't unsee it. So I'll meet you there next week. Now, one thing you'll likely find helpful is a new free resource I have, and it's called

How to get relief from everything you're carrying. It's really helped you take an honest look at everything you've got on your plate and start to formulate a way forward, even if setting any of these things down truly isn't possible. So make sure you check out the show notes before below where you can grab it for free. Friends, I hope you feel permission to change. Permission to know that the way that you used to do things isn't supposed to fit your life now.

There is other things. There is a new way. We'll get there. But for today, just know that the systems and strategies that served you well did serve you well. Be thankful for that. And then be ready to look forward to a new way, because that's where we're going next. We'll talk again soon. Bye, everyone.