Midlife, self-love, vulnerability, and "a series of painful nudges"

June 1, 2018 11:01 AM

"A crisis is an intense, short-lived, acute, easily identifiable, and defining event that can be controlled and managed. Midlife is not a crisis. Midlife is an unraveling." "The Midlife Unraveling" by Brené Brown. "...We are torn between desperately wanting everyone to see our struggle so that we can stop pretending, and desperately doing whatever it takes to make sure no one ever sees anything except what we’ve edited and approved for posting....it seems as if we spend the first half of our lives shutting down feelings to stop the hurt, and the second half trying to open everything back up to heal the hurt."
posted by brainwane (18 comments total)

...maybe we’re standing in the kitchen unloading the dishwasher when we suddenly find ourselves holding up a glass and wondering, “Would my family take this struggle more seriously if I just started hurling all this shit through the window?”

Thanks for posting. I want to read more stuff by women my age about the midlife "crisis." A lot of this resonates with me.
posted by Miko at 11:44 AM on June 1, 2018 [13 favorites]

This is so very timely for me; thank you for posting it.
posted by stellaluna at 12:13 PM on June 1, 2018

Huh. I’ve preferred to think of it as an unfurling. Also:

I hear tell that there are actually people who pull the universe closer, embrace her wisdom, thank her for the opportunity to grow, and calmly walk into the unraveling. I try to spend limited time with these people, so I can’t tell you much about how this works.

Look, lady, I got sick and I didn’t have a choice. But...yeah. Still. If you gotta go, you might as well cannonball in.

Thanks for posting this. I know a handful of people who desperately need to read it and most likely won’t. But I’ll send it anyway.
posted by schadenfrau at 12:26 PM on June 1, 2018 [3 favorites]

What if you’re just tired? Answering the universe requires a certain amount of energy. (Screening my calls atm.)
posted by cotton dress sock at 12:45 PM on June 1, 2018 [3 favorites]

Seriously, just reading that wore me out. Where does she get the juice for this?

(I like the piece, it’s important and will precipitate an anxiety attack at approx 12:45 am, I’m pretty sure)
posted by cotton dress sock at 12:46 PM on June 1, 2018 [3 favorites]

"By low-grade, quiet, and insidious, I mean it’s enough to make you crazy, but seldom enough for people on the outside to validate the struggle or offer you help and respite. It’s the dangerous kind of suffering – the kind that allows you to pretend that everything is OK."

That struck home. I read this piece, and then Brown's book, "I Thought It Was Just Me," because I wanted to hear more about the mechanism of shame, and its companion, silence. She writes that shame works "like the zoom lens on a camera. When we are feeling shame, the camera is zoomed in tight and all we see is our flawed selves, alone and struggling." When we zoom out, though, "We see many people in the same struggle." It has helped a lot to talk with other women who are also working hard to pretend everything is OK, and to know that we're all in the unraveling together.
posted by MonkeyToes at 1:34 PM on June 1, 2018 [13 favorites]

@schadenfrau: You didn't have a choice? If you managed to do what you just quoted when you "got sick" and not the many ways she detailed to deny/minimize/other it then that sounds like a large accomplishment. I'd congratulate you but I'm just a bystander.
posted by aleph at 1:48 PM on June 1, 2018 [2 favorites]

I'm reminded of JG Ballard's comment about his book, Empire of the Sun, "I spent the first half of my life trying to forget it, then the second half trying to remember it."
posted by SPrintF at 2:01 PM on June 1, 2018 [3 favorites]

aleph: well, it was either walk into the craziness and figure it out or get even sicker, so in that sense I guess the choice was just...easier?

But thank you :)
posted by schadenfrau at 2:05 PM on June 1, 2018

But as she said, a lot of people (her as well?) choose the "get even sicker" option. For reasons. And *keep* choosing it for a long time (if it doesn't kill them first). You didn't. Yaaay!
posted by aleph at 2:25 PM on June 1, 2018 [4 favorites]

"There are also the folks who grew up taking care of everyone else because they had no choice. Their death is having to let go of the caretaking, and their rebirth is learning how to take care of themselves (and work through the pushback that always comes with setting new boundaries)."

And my gosh, (some) people just absolutely lose their minds when you tell them that to save your health you need to step back from (even just some of) the things they have become accustomed to you doing for them. The stories I could tell...
posted by Secret Sparrow at 2:39 PM on June 1, 2018 [7 favorites]

Midlife is when the universe gently places her hands upon your shoulders, pulls you close, and whispers in your ear:

I’m not screwing around. All of this pretending and performing – these coping mechanisms that you’ve developed to protect yourself from feeling inadequate and getting hurt – has to go. Your armor is preventing you from growing into your gifts. I understand that you needed these protections when you were small. I understand that you believed your armor could help you secure all of the things you needed to feel worthy and lovable, but you’re still searching and you’re more lost than ever. Time is growing short. There are unexplored adventures ahead of you. You can’t live the rest of your life worried about what other people think. You were born worthy of love and belonging. Courage and daring are coursing through your veins. You were made to live and love with your whole heart. It’s time to show up and be seen.

Goddammit. I’m trying to get dinner together. Instead, I’m bawling like a baby. This passage pretty much is my life for the past several years, and, the older I get, the more it’s true.

*sigh*
posted by Thorzdad at 3:22 PM on June 1, 2018 [32 favorites]

Thorzdad: Good luck in the struggle!
posted by aleph at 4:01 PM on June 1, 2018 [3 favorites]

Great find, thank you.
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 4:01 PM on June 1, 2018

If you want more from her I can’t recommend enough The Power of Vulnerability on Audible. It’s a series of talks rather than a novel, and it’s delivered by her. I’ve listened to it many times, especially during periods of intense unraveling. I think it’s her best work but ymmv.

It’s also a good one to gift or select for your free trial book as it’s stupidly expensive. It’s well worth it though.
posted by iamkimiam at 6:22 PM on June 1, 2018 [4 favorites]

"maybe you work hard to keep people at a safe distance and now the distance has turned into intolerable loneliness"

Ah.
posted by ZipRibbons at 12:38 PM on June 2, 2018 [8 favorites]

Huh. It didn't resonate that much with me. I'm not a perfectionist and I don't keep people at a distance... these are the only two types she mentions.

Midlife is about both hating and loving my slowly wearing out meat cage, about being way beyond obsessing about other people's opinions, about saying "no" "sorry" and "if your whole organization depends on massive amounts of uncompensated labor by women you need to reexamine its structure, no matter how worthy the cause."

I'm the bad kind of lucky; my parents died young so I only take care of one person, my kid. I have had enough crises that I've had to develop good boundaries.
posted by emjaybee at 2:54 PM on June 2, 2018 [4 favorites]

Yeah, it didn't resonate that much with me either. Grew up different, just figured it was different kind of person. But the effort/work to face the struggle, instead of the all-too-human tendency of denying it did.
posted by aleph at 3:26 PM on June 2, 2018