What Isn't Lost...
Struggle and creativity can co-exist in midlife
A recent Guardian article titled, ‘You lose yourself’: inside the mental health crisis hitting gen X women, grabbed my attention because it’s such a familiar feeling.
Quotes like this struck home: “As a woman in midlife, you kind of lose yourself,” says Dr Lisa Morrison, the BACP’s director of professional standards, policy and research. “Maybe because you feel invisible or you’re putting yourself at the bottom of the list of family priorities…
The truth is, I don’t think what’s happening to Gen X women/femmes is new or universal to us—though many of us Gen Xers did have largely unsupervised, unparented childhoods—what the article describes are common experiences in midlife.
And midlife is a period where people (of all genders) often run into creative walls by dint of the sheer levels of responsibility coupled with often dramatic physical changes (hallo perimenopause) and a variety of other life stressors that make creativity flee or dry up temporarily (though it can feel terrifyingly permanent).
Another quote that struck home from the Guardian article:
“Everything about me felt wrong. My hair was wrong, my clothes seemed to belong to another woman entirely, my friendships became tense and fractious. Looking around at other women my age, it seemed like everyone else was coping just fine. I felt like a failure. …No amount of talking is going to make a terminally ill parent well again, or give you back the energy you had at 35.”
Articles like this validate the reasons why I wrote Writing Through the Pause: Mining Midlife for Powerful Writing (Pre-Order now!). There’s a common narrative (in the U.S. at least) that either you are struggling or you’re “well.” That either you’re deeply connected to your creative self or you’re not. And midlife has taught me that there’s actually a, well, middle place where you can be struggling and creatively fulfilled/connected at the same time. But you often have to chart new paths to restore these connections.
“If midlife has taught me anything it’s that our old ways of functioning might stop working or feel uncomfortable as our bodies, our psyches—or both—start feeling like ill-fitting costumes. If you’re wondering, “What does this have to do with my writing or other creative practice at this stage of my life?” to put it simply: change in one aspect of your life tends to ripple out into all other aspects. It’s when we try to squeeze ourselves back into the version of ourselves we’re outgrowing that things get complicated.”— Jordan Rosenfeld, Writing Through the Pause
Fortunately, 28 writers and other creatives agreed to speak to me about their midlife/creativity journeys and they all showed me ways to keep connected, to reroute energies, to surrender or fight or use your voice or speak with a new one. They reminded me that while our creative lives might not look the same at midlife and beyond, they can be just as robust and profound.
Every chapter includes a tip and a writing prompt (sometimes several) like so:
Tip: Play with processes
It’s easy to get stuck in your usual creative processes. Consider mixing things up, doing something differently. Write at a different time. Write short versus long, write to music or without, etc.
Pause Prompt: Find the limits
Muse, meditate, or write on what is “off limits” in your writing or creative life. What might it take to bring that subject more safely toward you?
I’m grateful to the writers who read advance copies and offered me their testimonials, like this one from novelist Jennifer Banash.
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The Gen X experience is illuminating, Jordan. It was such a pivotal generation into tech and media, and dominated feminine identity, much more so than mine, a pre-Boomer (1941). The pressures were immense for Gen X women, how to look, how to create. Kudos for navigating those cultural waves.
At mid-life, I remember being more arrogant, willing to take bigger risks, sky is the limit kind of feeling as a creative. Some of that was successful! I felt the buoyancy of past achievements that led to a new cycle of inner work.
Great post. I especially liked, “It’s when we try to squeeze ourselves back into the version of ourselves we’re outgrowing that things get complicated.” And how.