Making the Most of Midlife

Human development is a lifelong, cumulative process. Midlife, however, is largely overlooked and misunderstood.

When exactly is midlife? The general consensus is that midlife encompasses the years between 40 and 60, give or take. In a 2015 poll, people expressed the belief that midlife begins at age 44 and ends at age 59, however the roles and life circumstances that surround middle adulthood are perhaps more defining of this era than a specific age.

Challenges related to caring for growing children and aging parents, the shrinking social and healthcare safety net, and economic volatility, including inflation, complicate the picture of midlife in modern times. While the narrative of a “midlife crisis” is emphasized, research reveals that only about 10-20% of people actually experience it, though anxiety and depression rates rise during this season of life.

According to Erik Erikson, generativity is the primary task of midlife, which is often accomplished through meaningful work and investing in the next generation (Infurna et al., 2020). While midlife continues to be an under-researched area of the human experience, we can turn to literature to better understand ourselves in the context of these full, complex, but potentially rich middle years.

Poet Kate Baer explores midlife in her latest collection, How About Now. Here’s her take on making the most of midlife.

Heather Rose Artushin (HRA): Carl Jung referred to midlife as the “afternoon of life.” Your latest poetry collection, How About Now, is a raw, honest portrayal of midlife womanhood in all its complexities. If you had to distill your experience of this phase of life in a few lines, what words would best capture midlife for you?

Kate Baer (KB): Midlife feels like sitting in a room I built, fully mine, wanted by life, moving toward the light.

Poet Kate Baer explores midlife in her latest book, "How About Now."

Source: Jillian Guyette/Used with permission

HRA: While some studies refute the u-shaped happiness curve, many researchers state that life satisfaction takes a dip in midlife, reaching a low point. What are your impressions on the reasons for this dip, and how has poetry offered a meaningful way to cope with the complex emotions this season of life brings?

KB: Whenever I get this question, I like to revisit one of my favorite pieces of television, Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood, Season 2, Episode 18, where Daniel learns that you can feel two feelings at the same time, and that that’s okay. My experience with midlife thus far holds the same paradox as most phases of life: joy and grief, expansion and loss, existing side by side. Yes, I’ve never felt more grounded in myself, more internally sound, and also my body surprises me with its limits, newly faced with its own mortality.

I imagine the dip in the chart comes from a natural convergence of reckonings: caring for aging parents, watching time accelerate, feeling the weight of responsibility, and realizing that certain doors have closed even as others open. As always, poetry offers a place where those contradictions don’t need resolve. A place to hold complexity without flattening it.

HRA: Your poems evoke images of the messiness of marriage, parenting, body image, and friendship, artfully giving voice to both the beauty and the pain that tend to coexist. What complex emotions and desires do women in their 40s tend to wrestle with that your work gives voice to? Why are these realities often concealed from the broader narrative on midlife?

KB: Women in their 40s often live with contradiction. There is a growing confidence alongside grief for unrealized selves; enduring love alongside resentment; desire that sits beside a contented life. Many are negotiating a hunger to be seen again—sexually, creatively, existentially—while carrying the weight of care, responsibility, and a body that is both capable and changing. These emotions coexist rather than resolve, and that tension can be difficult to name because the dominant midlife narratives leave little room for nuance. Women are expected to emerge either empowered and serene or reduced to burnout and cliché. How boring. How reductive!

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HRA: Your poem “How About Now” says, “You say we have a lifetime./ Love, we’re in our lifetime./ How about now?” How has poetry helped you to make the most of the present moment?

KB: Reading poetry trains our attention to the present. Its distilled storytelling strips away excess, leaving sharp moments, precise feeling, and immediate experience.

Source: Harper Collins/Used with permission

HRA: What do you hope readers take away from spending time with your book?

KB: I hope readers leave with a sense of play, a tolerance for nuance, and a gentler regard for themselves. I hope they feel a little more present in their own lives, and newly open to what poetry can offer and to how stories might be told.