midlife Archives - Page 3 of 4 - Mothering in the Middle

Sex: It’s Good For What Ails You

by Dr. Barb Depree

Who has time for sex any more? That’s a question I hear from women whose plates are full with working, caring for parents, caring for kids, even caring for grandchildren. With all of the demands on our time and energy, why not just let sex fade into the background? Beyond the intimacy sex brings to our relationships, research continues to document how and why regular sex improves both our mental and physical health. These effects are significant enough to feel as good about an active sex life as about taking our daily vitamins. […]

52 Mistakes Project – A Love Letter to Myself

by Kathy Caprino

Bottom line – “Embracing and loving who I am and what I’ve done is not a fixed state- it’s a long work in progress.”

As many of my friends know, I’ve immersed myself in a 9-year life reinvention, and shifted from a miserable and chronically ill corporate professional to an author, consultant, speaker and entrepreneur who absolutely loves what she does for a living and what she’s focused on, despite the enormous challenges.

It’s been one heck of a ride, with pitfalls, bumps, highs and transformations, that I barely recognize myself from the individual I was 10 years ago. The core essence of me is still there, of course, but there’s been so much shifting and morphing that now I see much more clearly what I truly value and need to have in my life and work and family experience. I “get” myself a lot more deeply than I did before. […]

Make Your Own Love Potion

by Dr. Barb Depree

“I just want to want sex again.”

I can’t tell you how many of my patients have expressed — in one way or another — this simple desire for the desire they experienced in their 20s and 30s, when their bodies were flooded with procreative hormones.

Wouldn’t it be great if I could mix up a love potion to send home with them and to share with you here? Some powerful concoction of roots and herbs perhaps, a magic elixir guaranteed to bring it all back? […]

Becoming Our Parent’s Parents

by Maddisen Krown

At the beginning of this New Year, I’d like to share about my personal experience as a mid-lifer facing and caring for my physically declining elder parents.

The Journey Home

For Thanksgiving this year, I went home to Connecticut to be with my family. My focus and the main theme for this week-long trip went way beyond the one day of festivities. I was primarily there to assist my ailing elder parents. To do some serious cleaning and clearing inside their large home, and to realistically assess their states of health and next steps for their care. […]

Cyma’s Picks: the newly-released How We Love Now, by Suzanne Braun Levine

“You are not who you were, only older,” Suzanne Braun Levine

I haven’t written a book review for Mothering, yet, since I believe our readers are a widely diverse group of women representing many ages, interests and ideologies. So, when I received How We Love Now, I wasn’t sure what I would do with it, other than read it. […]

Making The Most Of Our Time

by Deborah Swiss

There’s a new breed of activists on the rise. Mothers at mid-life are banding together around the rhetorical question: If we don’t help this planet, who will? It’s a different spin on the imperative to save Mother Earth but both share an urgency to roll up our sleeves and do something. With so many problems across the globe, our first inclination might be to walk away under the weight of the question “Where do I even begin?” […]

Midlife: What Goes Down Must Come Up

by Vivian Diller

When Obama turned 50 in August, warring political parties and world leaders paused to congratulate him. Thousands of fundraisers in his hometown of Chicago sung “Happy Birthday,” and his two daughters left summer camp for Camp David for a more intimate celebration. But among the outpouring of well wishes were warnings too. Turning the big 5-0, he was told, meant that things would go downhill from there — as if he didn’t have bigger downturns to worry about! […]

Midlife Crisis: A Misleading Myth or A Reality in Search of a New Name?

by Vivian Diller Ph.D

Although originally used by psychologists to describe a transitional stage in adult development, today the midlife crisis is often associated with the guy in his 40s who finds a young girlfriend and runs off in his new sports car; or the woman, about the same age, who reinvents herself, buys a new wardrobe — and sometimes buys a new face. Is it a myth? An excuse for impulsive, bad behavior and unrealistic transformations? Or is it a reality in need of a new name, given recent changes in contemporary culture? […]

What If…

by Cyma Shapiro

Until yesterday, I would swear to it that I was past all the “What If’s.” That is, the nagging, endless questions that plagued me for the last few decades. Here are a few: […]

Parallel Play

by Valerie Gillies

“The best remedy for a short temper is a long walk.” Jacqueline Schiff

Despite consuming mountains of flax and exercising daily, power surges and hormonal swings punctuate my days and nights, leaving me less kind and understanding than I’d like. Christiane Northrup, in her book Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom, inspires by reframing this stage of life as an opportunity, and my nasty and selfish feelings as a means of coming to terms with my inner voice and needs. Such lovely ideals—and I want them! […]