Losing my mind in a midlife crisis

I turned 44 in May and for the last few months, I feel like I don’t recognize myself. Some days it’s in a quiet internal reflective kind of way. Other times its overly dramatic with a mini meltdown of tears. The moments I am overthinking and questioning everything in my life, reassessing the things I thought I wanted, and wondering what the fuck happened to my body.

I realized that I am in the beginning phase of my midlife crisis. I use to laugh at that thought back in the day, because society made it seem like something only men experienced. The image was painted of middle aged men buying corvettes and motorcycles, divorcing their wives for 20 year olds, and growing what's was left of their hair out. No one ever talked about what it looks like when women reach this point. When menopause hits, our hormones are out of sync, and our breasts are sagging to our belly buttons.

Perimenopause is very real and it has snuck up on me like that creep at the club. I had to take a step back and refine how I lived my life to accommodate this new phase. Which meant getting a grip on my terrible sleeping patterns, noticing my weight increasing and my body changing, recognizing what foods make me inflamed. I have so many days where I want to disappear. I have very few days where I feel powerful. I've been grieving the old version of me and trying to figure out who am I in this next phase.

It’s beautiful. It’s lonely. But not in the alone type of way, but because Its a phase of not knowing what I am experiencing. I am shedding so much of what I use to know and who I use to be. A midlife crisis and perimenopause at this age feels so uncomfortable, sacred, emotional, and exciting. This version of My Very Good Year is one I could not have anticipated at all.

I’ve been reprogramming my mind to see this phase as me being remade. In the sense that everything about me - my body, my routines, my belief, my environments are being stripped away to make room for what is next in my life. I’m evolving and forced to grieve and extend grace to myself at the same time. I am reimagining who I want to be over the next decade of my life. And this deserves intention, patience, and self-love.

If you’re in this space too somewhere between growth and reinvention, I want you to take your time. Don’t rush to figure it all out or package it neatly. There is no roadmap for becoming a new version of yourself. No blueprint for who you’re supposed to be next. You get to create your own vision, in your own way, at your own pace. And that alone is something special.