Are We All Just Dreaming Of Starting Over In Our 40s?
Every few weeks, someone I know makes some version of the same joke: "So, should we just quit and open a bookstore, or...?" Sometimes the punchline changes, and we're talking about running away to Portugal. Starting a plant shop. Or maybe we should all be realtors?
We always laugh, but the joke has started to feel, uh, less joke-y lately.
At first, I chalked it up to working in media, with its ever-changing landscape. I mean, it makes sense that a group of exhausted women would fantasize about blowing up their lives and starting fresh.
Except, it’s not just at work that I hear these conversations. So many women in their 40s seem to suddenly be reconsidering careers they’ve had for decades. One of my close friends recently left graphic design after 25 years to work for an insurance company. Another is on the brink of leaving the medical field to pursue art. And, sure, we pretty much all wax poetic about the prospect of moving to some cute little Hallmark town and opening a cozy shop where we can sit and drink coffee on a quaint sidewalk bench.
No matter which alternative reality we're entertaining, it's clear that women are reevaluating: friendships, marriages, hobbies, priorities, routines. In some cases, our entire identities.
Is it high-functioning burnout? Or something else? Why do so many women in their 40s seem to genuinely be craving reinvention right now?
Looks Like a Midlife Crisis, Might Actually Be A Values Reset
When I was growing up, there was a term often disparagingly tossed around to describe someone experiencing restlessness or dissatisfaction around this age: “midlife crisis.” But is it a crisis, really? When I posed that question to therapists and other mental health experts, they said it's much more nuanced (and systemic) than that.
“By our 40s, many women have spent years performing at a high level, often prioritizing expectations, roles, and responsibilities over their own inner voice,” psychotherapist and author Emmy Brunner told me. “What can look like a desire to ‘blow everything up’ is often less about wanting a completely new life, and more about a deep recognition that something essential has been lost along the way.”
Is it any wonder, then, that feeling hits so hard during midlife? Women are dealing with the convergence of a sh*t ton of life changes: emotional, hormonal, and practical, all at once.
“During this phase of life, there are often multiple things happening at once that can lead to women re-evaluating their life choices,” says licensed clinical psychologist Dr. Katie Carhart. “There is increased mortality awareness as their own parents age, physical and hormonal changes related to perimenopause, career plateaus, children getting older and needing less attention … as well as starting to face empty-nest syndrome coming down the pipeline.”
In other words, the systems and identities that carried us through our 20s and 30s suddenly stop fitting quite the same way. And once you become aware of that misalignment, it’s almost impossible to go back to ignoring it the way you did before.
Burnout and Reinvention Can Live in the Same House
The truth is, we’ve reached an age where we’re just tired of being tired. We’re tired of asking for help. We’re tired of feeling like something doesn’t fit. We’re tired of putting everyone before ourselves. And we actually know ourselves enough now to acknowledge that.
“I work with a lot of women experiencing burnout, and I think as you reach your 40s, you have a much better sense of self and what you want out of life,” Carhart says. “What can come with this level of insight is that you may start to become more aware that this life — that you’ve worked so hard to build and create — may not be as fulfilling as you expected.”
That doesn’t mean every woman secretly wants to abandon her family and move to a villa in Tuscany. But it does at least kinda explain why so many of us are suddenly fantasizing about entirely different lives.
The crucial distinction, experts say, is figuring out whether the urge to start over is based entirely on burnout or on a genuine need for change. Or… both.
“When looking through the lens of burnout versus a need for change, the reality is that it can be both/and rather than an either/or experience,” explains Eileen Borski, a licensed professional counselor and founder of Authentic Brain Solutions.
“Burnout is real and can occur during the years committed to building a career, raising children, or engaging in community. I hear women discuss commitments and obligations that take significant time, including managing a family’s schedule, building a career-advancing brand, and ensuring there is time for self-care. Over time, a woman may discern that one or more of those commitments is no longer the focus, from a practical standpoint. She is satisfied with her level of advancement, her children are more self-sufficient, or she emerges as a mentor rather than a doer in the community,” Borksi says.
It’s this phase of life, she suggests, when we “shift from knowledge to wisdom or from manager to consultant.” With that shift comes more time, space, and freedom, which can lead to wondering what the next season of life will look like.
To determine if we’re at that hopeful jumping-off point or in the throes of burnout, Borski says you have to do a little internal digging. Are you running towards something (aka a genuine need for change), or running away from something (burnout)?
Because while, yes, some of us may seriously need some changes in our lives — whether it’s ditching a toxic job, unhealthy relationship, whatever — the experts I spoke to did generally caution against impulsively “blowing up” your life without understanding what’s driving you to feel that way in the first place.
Same Sh*t, Different Setting
What’s that saying? “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” It’s the same gist, says Debbie Lucas, known professionally as The Joy Alchemist.
“The risk is acting on that urgency without addressing the underlying pattern,” she says. “Without nervous system regulation, the same dynamics will simply recreate themselves in a new environment. The real work is rebuilding self-trust, tapping back into your intuition, and rediscovering joy, as this steadies your nervous system and lets you make decisions you don’t have to undo later.”
How exactly are we supposed to do this, though?
“I focus a lot on alignment in my work with women experiencing burnout,” says Carhart. “It’s about matching how you spend your time, energy, attention, and money with the things that are most important to you.”
Liz Delia, founder of Sabbatical Studio (which supports people in taking sabbaticals and career breaks), says this is an evolution she’s noticed really start to pick up — and, happily, women are hitting this point earlier than prior generations did.
“People are recognizing they can, in fact, start anew and pursue new passions or curiosity. I think millennials and Gen Z behind them, especially, are tired of the narrative that we choose a career path in our 20s and stick with it, regardless of our happiness, until retiring decades later,” Delia says, emphasizing, “They’re choosing meaning and happiness on their own schedules, and that’s a pretty powerful thing.”
TL;DR: Yep, a lot of us are out here dreaming about starting over in our 40s.
Sometimes that really does mean changing careers or moving to a new town. It could be as simple as taking up a cooking class or as complicated as ending a marriage. At the end of the day, what it comes down to is revisiting the you that's been ignored for decades while you were neck-deep in the endless demands of adulthood.
After so much time spent caregiving, performing, achieving, accommodating, and proving ourselves, many of us are finally asking a question we didn’t have the space to ask before…
What do I actually want now?
source https://www.scarymommy.com/lifestyle/why-women-want-to-start-over-in-their-40s
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