Crisis – n., the turning point for better or worse in an acute disease or fever. Derived from the Latin term using Greek krisis, to decide.
After centuries of semantic drift, crisis also means: an emotionally significant event or radical change of status in a person’s life.
Losing one’s job can certainly lead to an identity crisis, especially if work plays an outsized role in the loser’s life. Losing’s one’s job can also trigger a midlife crisis for anyone in the broad range of 40 to 60 years old. For a 50+ woman workaholic like myself, it doesn’t look good.
You don’t get the sports car or the younger partner (unless you’re Stella, getting your groove back). You get emotional, you gain weight, you gain cats, and with it, you become crazy, or worse, invisible.
Highly gendered myths of midlife are not what I need to help me navigate. I don’t even like cats. When I realized, slowly, in the hours after the words “Your role has been eliminated,” that I was indeed, without a job, I wondered – is this a crisis?
First thoughts reek of socially conditioned responses: how will we pay for the kids’ college? How will we pay the bills? Will we ever make the proverbial ends meet? We had played the game a long time, had lived a frugal life, were planning for “retirement” as an exodus from the corporate mayhem. I fantasized about jobs that were non-committal, maybe even aloof. Jobs that were all muscle, no brains, and jobs incapable of following you home or crashing your life like a brash, manipulative stalker.
And then I heard it, a much quieter voice, a most compelling question that rose from deep inside, “Can this be good?”
"Can this be good?"
“Do you want to tell your team?” Of course, why yes, and it must be me telling the team. And at that moment, I had already decided, this needed to be good. I needed to bring the team through this – they were losing our pack too and moving to a combo-pack. And if I’m to make it good for them, it will be good for me.
I walk every day, I know most do. It’s common, it’s simple, it gets dogs from A to B with a little pee. Universally we giggle with glee when babies take their firststep – a milestone! And yet, I don’t know how I do it. I certainly couldn’t teach a baby how to do it. Glee is disguised relief that we don’t have to explain it.
It just happens. I just will it to be. Some pulse somewhere in my head, in my heart or maybe in my gut tells my feet, tells the dogs, gathers the leashes, the coat, moves the legs – there’s some sort of social agreement throughout, and the cells that are me combine forces and we move.
It was the same with this moment, this decision, this agreement that this would be good. I just willed it to be so, and somehow, it was.
Optimism may be my superpower. So much so that I feared I may be seen as its foil –the toxic positivity that can plague a workplace. But I was genuinely convinced at a cellular level that this would be good.
I told the teams, I set up the new leaders for success, I told my friends, I told the dogs. And with each step, I walked farther from that workaholic identity, farther from that career.
Is midlife a time of rebellion against our prior obedience? Or perhaps a moment of quiet reflection and recalibration to get back to ‘it’? Let me know about your rebellions and recalibrations. Maybe we can join forces and move together. I know it can be good.
7 thoughts on “Part 2: A Midlife Moment”
I had to do a double-take when I read that you called someone a “loser”. But that is what happened — a “job loser”. I have had some time to reflect on what happens to one’s psyche when you get lumped into the “loser” bin, but I’ve been nowhere near as eloquent in providing a description of the emotions as you’ve been (in just two blog posts)!
Anyway, one thing I knew before and after being in the “loser” bin — I love dogs, and I’m allergic to cats.
Thanks for reading along Greg, and for the encouragement. Writing is indeed a way to work through it. I’m sorry you too went through this!
Greg, I too did a double-take when I wrote it! ha! Just realized I hadn’t replied directly – thanks again for reading along, I really appreciate it!
Cats suck. Dogs are good. I think losing a job is an identity-changing experience, amplified more by age and experience. After all, with THAT MANY years and deeds and ideas and putting-up-withs, we deserve more than being surprised by it, right? Also though… it probably is a good thing.
Sidenote – the whole “Greek krisis, to decide” um.. I read Kristi decides, which I like enough to not self-correct.
Love Kristi decides! New meaning for crisis?? And thank you for reading along!
Having been the “loser”, it was the icing on the cake after a divorce just 3 weeks earlier, a loved one passing 2 years earlier and her boxes still unopened which were emotionally suffocating me. I had the opportunity (aka, silver lining) to reflect and consider what was next for me. I too am an extreme optimist. Yes, at the time all of it was hard but I was given the opportunity to choose what was next for me, and only me. So… I relocated to a new and warmer part of the country, took a new job that leverages my creativity and passion, built a team (still growing), and I work for someone who appreciates me and is a beautiful, warm person inside and out! The icing on my new cake is a wonderful relationship that humbly expands my view of love, life and the world around me. I will not let a temporary situation change the person I am or want to be. I love challenges and the feeling of overcoming them! I am grateful for every connection, referral, piece of advice and the huge support from the dear people who walked with me!
Ellen, thank you for sharing your rebellion / recalibration – it sounds like it worked out exceedingly well! I agree, the connections and support along the way make all the difference.