What Messages Did We Receive About Midlife?
There is something I need to say plainly.
When I first heard the word midlife attached to me, I felt something in me tighten — not dramatically, but enough to notice. A quiet resistance, almost an insult, even though by that point I had already crossed into that stage of life.
And it took me a moment to realise that it wasn’t the age itself that I was resisting.
It was everything that the word seemed to carry with it.
The imagery.
The tone.
The cultural undercurrent that sat just beneath it.
Because midlife, as it had been presented to me growing up, was not expansive. It was not creative. It was not sovereign, or curious, or alive in the way I felt myself to be.
It was diminished.
It was the “battleaxe.”
It was the woman who had endured too much and hardened.
It was the one whose softness had been replaced by sharpness, whose humour often came at the expense of something gentler, whose vitality and sensuality had quietly disappeared from view.
And I did not recognise myself in that story.
The Cultural Landscape We Inherited
If you grew up in the UK in the 70s and 80s, you may recognise this without needing it fully explained.
Our screens, our communities, the conversations around us — they were filled with representations of ageing women that were narrow, often unkind, and deeply limiting.
There were “strong” women — but strength often meant endurance without joy.
There were “funny” women — but humour often carried bitterness.
There were “independent” women — but they were frequently portrayed as isolated, disconnected, or somehow outside of normal life.
There were very few visible examples of women who were:
Expanding.
Evolving.
Creative.
Sensual.
Becoming more, rather than less.
And the message, although rarely spoken directly, was clear enough to be absorbed:
Youth is where life happens.
Midlife is where it contracts.
And older women, in many ways, become background.
These messages do not just sit in the mind.
They settle in the body.
What We Internalised Without Realising
Looking back now, I can see that I had taken those messages in — not consciously, not as a set of beliefs I could name, but as something quieter, more embodied.
A kind of internal positioning.
Don’t become that.
Don’t lose relevance.
Don’t disappear.
So when I found myself, in 2023, standing at the Mind, Body & Spirit Festival and being asked to support a stage dedicated to midlife, I felt that flicker of resistance rise up again.
A subtle question:
Why have you put me here?
And that moment was important.
Because what I came to realise, as I listened to the women speaking that day, was that the resistance was not about age.
It was about the narrative I had inherited.
Because the women I was listening to were not diminished in any sense.
They were intelligent, articulate, thoughtful, reflective. They were practitioners, doctors, authors — women who had lived, worked, raised families, built careers, and were now speaking not from a place of decline, but from a place of integration.
They were not collapsing.
They were recalibrating.
And that disrupted something I hadn’t fully questioned before.
Midlife in the Workplace — The Hidden Layer
This is not just a personal reflection.
It plays out quietly, and often invisibly, across workplaces.
Because midlife is not something that most organisations are particularly well set up to understand.
At this stage, many professionals — both women and men — are navigating:
Shifts in identity.
Changes in energy.
Accumulated stress from years of responsibility.
A growing awareness that the way they have been living and working may no longer be sustainable.
And yet, externally, they continue.
They lead.
They deliver.
They manage complexity.
They support others.
Often without a space to acknowledge what is changing internally.
So what organisations are often holding — without fully realising — are highly capable individuals who are functioning well on the surface, while simultaneously going through a significant internal review of their lives.
The Cultural Silence Around What Comes Next
In Western culture, particularly, a great deal of value has historically been placed on youth, productivity, and outward performance.
But what we have not been given, in any clear or consistent way, is a visible and compelling narrative for what comes after that.
So people are left to navigate this stage largely on their own.
Some cling to earlier identities.
Some push through, overriding what they are feeling.
Some begin to withdraw quietly.
Not because they lack resilience.
But because there has been very little language, modelling, or permission to experience midlife as something expansive.
Reframing Midlife as Awareness, Not Decline
What began to shift for me, both personally and professionally, was the recognition that midlife is not, in itself, a problem to be solved.
It is a phase that brings awareness.
A point at which the roles, expectations, and identities that once fitted begin to feel tighter.
And questions begin to surface, sometimes gently, sometimes more insistently:
What do I want now?
What no longer fits?
Who am I beyond the roles I have carried for years?
This is not crisis in the way it is often framed.
It is consciousness.
And when supported — rather than suppressed — it can lead to:
Greater clarity.
More grounded decision-making.
Stronger boundaries.
A deeper sense of alignment between life and self.
What I Began to See Differently
As I moved through this more consciously, I started to notice different stories emerging around me.
Women in their 50s and 60s:
Starting businesses.
Learning new skills.
Travelling independently.
Reclaiming parts of themselves that had been put aside.
Not retreating.
But expanding.
And alongside that, conversations with women who were navigating the more difficult aspects — the health changes, the sleep disruption, the sense of invisibility in certain environments, particularly in workplaces where these realities were rarely acknowledged openly.
Both realities exist.
And both need space.
Because midlife is not one experience.
It is a spectrum.
Why This Matters
For individuals, this stage can feel disorienting if it is not understood.
For organisations, it is often missed entirely.
But when midlife is recognised as a phase of transition rather than decline, something important shifts.
People are better supported.
Experience is retained.
Leadership deepens rather than disengages.
And wellbeing becomes something that is integrated, rather than reactive.
A Different Way to Hold Midlife
Midlife, I have come to understand, is not something to resist.
It is something to engage with.
Not as an ending.
But as a point of authorship.
A moment where the inherited script can be questioned, reshaped, and, where needed, rewritten.
And perhaps that was the real reason it initially felt uncomfortable.
Because I was still holding someone else’s version of what it meant.
Now, I am far more interested in writing my own.
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Written by Melanie Gabbi, Psychotherapist
Melanie is a UK-based Mental Health & Wellbeing Consultant, Psychotherapist, and Coach with over 30 years’ experience across the NHS, education, and leadership systems. She specialises in stress, burnout, identity transitions, and high-performance environments, combining psychological insight with grounded, practical approaches that support real and sustainable change.
Alongside her professional work, she brings lived experience of navigating burnout, rebuilding, and redefining life at different stages — offering a depth of understanding that resonates across both personal and organisational contexts and is the grandmother to an amazing little girl.
