If you have reached a point in life where your children are dating on their own and many of your life’s dreams never come to fruition, then this article is for you. If you feel like your 50th birthday is going to change everything or that it came and went against your will, read on. If you were a parent and now you find that your identity is suddenly changing and becoming (?), then perhaps this article will stimulate you to think.
I too am entering this phase of my life. I want to share some thoughts and suggestions with you. I have a 20-year-old son who will graduate from college in a year and has his future pretty well planned. He is the type that always has his life planned and organized and he has done it since he was 2 years old. That doesn’t mean he didn’t have his challenges because he did. But in the area of academic performance he did very well. I also have a son who lives for his video games, never wants to leave his room, and couldn’t finish his coursework in 11th grade. He had to repeat that grade and will be 19 when he graduates from high school. He has no particular plans for his future and recently decided to live with his father. Therefore, I have experiences on both sides of the fence with two completely different sounds.
But this article is not about parenting teenagers. It’s about us; parents. Especially breast. Back when she was studying adult development in graduate school, there was a vague notion that adult development was different from child development, but no one was sure how to break down the stages. Now that everyone keeps saying that the new 50 is 40 and 60 is 50 and all that, what does it mean that our children go out alone and now we are “free”? We are?
The notion of an “empty nest syndrome” died with the 1950s. It is no longer relevant to understanding our challenges and our lives. In fact, it’s as sexist an idea as the 1950s ever were. If you ever see a therapist talking about empty nest syndrome, RUN as fast as you can!
We are the creators of a new way of ageing. We are now subject to age discrimination in our careers because our salary requirements are too high and we are too skilled, proactive and assertive. Our resumes are discarded in favor of new graduates. In this culture, experience and age are not valued, so our value in the labor market drops dramatically between the ages of 45 and 50.
There is only one way we can stack the odds against our future health and well-being. At this stage of life we have no choice but to take better care of ourselves. Diet is no longer about vanity, it’s about health and disease prevention. Exercise is not for bikinis now, it is necessary to lessen the pains associated with aging. A massage therapist who is almost 50 years old and weighs about 110 pounds recently told me, “now we have to work 5 times as hard just to get up and move in the morning.”
Our mothers are 80 years old or gone. That generation is not aging very well except for a lucky few. We as a generation have been exposed to a world much more toxic than them, so what awaits us? I have been searching for my Shangrila and realized that it does not exist here on earth. I realized that as toxic and stressful as New York is, the rest of the world isn’t very healthy either. New York can leave you shattered, and on any given day, if you ride the subway here during rush hour, you’ll see the most depressed and tired people in the country. But living here has its positive side and therefore many continue to move here.
However, this is not an article about aging in New York City, but about what happens at this stage of life. Children are finding their own paths in life and we are at a crossroads. I would love to tell you that all you have to do is follow steps A, B and C, but for each person the answers are going to be different. A 50-year-old woman is not perceived in the same way as a 40-year-old woman. When we pass the threshold between the two, we enter this new realm. It is up to us whether we can make it a positive transition or not. Time is definitely running out now and all the places we never got to see are still there and we still haven’t figured out how to get to them. All the activities that we hoped to do are dreams of the past that we are no longer sure we want. They may not be relevant to our lives right now.
I can say that the number one task of this phase of life is to let go of our children. It is accepting who they have become and what and who they are even though we wanted something more from them. As proud as I am of my two sons, their interests and beliefs are quite different from mine. Mine are progressive and open-minded and theirs are conservative and rigid. There are these barriers between us now and I am no longer the goddess in their lives. My identity as “mommy” is almost dead. When I see young mothers with strollers, I can’t believe she isn’t one of them anymore. I have to accept that I am now entering a new phase of life and choose to see that as an exciting endeavor. Sometimes when I get annoyed when someone pushes a stroller on my heels like they own the sidewalk because they’re the parent of a young child, I want to say “hey, I’m a parent too, my kids are older now. They’re not.” . it doesn’t give you the right to fight your way using prams as a weapon.” We didn’t have the arrogance that they have now. Did we?
In the future, our retirement will probably look nothing like our grandparents’ retirement. Maybe our parents’ retirement isn’t what they thought it would be either. Some are lucky enough to have the financial security to enjoy their later years, but many seniors today can barely pay their rent and live in fear of running out of money.
As a generation, those of us between 45 and 60 years old have a lot to think about. Life has changed so rapidly throughout our lifetime that none of the old rules apply anymore. We are so adaptable and flexible due to the rapid changes that have occurred in the last 30 years.
Our children never experienced the slow pace of change that we knew as toddlers. Even my children feel behind in the technical age and they are not yet 21 years old. We want the old structures of life to continue and they cannot. They will not. We have to be creative and optimistic in our problem solving. As individuals, we have to be extremely disciplined now if we want to have a physically, mentally, financially, and spiritually healthy future.
For moms at this stage of life, try to see this as the most liberating phase you’ve ever experienced. Create some kind of strategy for yourself that gives you peace of mind. Regardless of your outer experiences, be determined to be happy no matter what happens. This will attract the best that life has to offer.
