Forty Somethings
By Molly Flinkman
@molly_flinkman
1
Some time during my late thirties, the phrase “mid-life crisis” begins to enter my regular conversations.
It comes up with my husband, Jake, when we discuss the impulse motorcycle one of our friends recently bought and with various girlfriends when we parse the fine lines in both our faces and our parenting. And each time the topic comes up, I hear myself say this: “I mean, I’m not having a mid-life crisis. It’s just that I can see why they happen.”
I say it so many times, in fact, that I begin to wonder if someone who isn’t having a mid-life crisis has to mention so many times that she isn't.
2
Wikipedia tells me that a midlife crisis is “a transition of identity and self-confidence that can occur in middle-aged individuals, typically 40 to 65 years old” which honestly doesn’t sound so bad.
Google tells me it’s “a period of intense self-doubt and emotional turbulence triggered by a growing awareness of aging and mortality.” I like that definition less.
3
Six months before I turn forty, I hear whispers that a teaching job is going to open up at my kids’ school. It has been eleven years since I’ve had my own classroom. I can’t explain what has changed, but I feel like now might be the time to re-launch my career.
I talk through all the angles and try to picture every way a full-time job would require me to recalibrate my life. I cry a lot—a surprising and unsurprising amount—during the deliberation.
“This isn’t some kind of mid-life crisis,” I tell Jake when I’m considering. “This doesn’t have anything to do with me searching for worth.”
I am ninety-eight percent sure that I believe my own words.
4
I remember when my dad turned forth. I was eleven, and I helped my mom fill his entire office with crumpled up newspaper and balloons. He was literally waist-deep in newspaper when he stood by his desk. I don’t even know how my mom managed to get that much newspaper or how she hid it all from my dad before she needed it.
What I do know is that I understood that particular birthday to be A Very Big Deal.
5
When my sister-in-law told us all she was going to stop coloring her grays, I lent her my full support.
“I love this idea,” I said with the confidence of a person who did not yet have any gray hair. “I am here for aging naturally.”
Then, a thought entered my mind: You’re going to have to contend with that statement one day.
6
Last spring, I walked into church wearing a red, floral midi skirt with sneakers and a gray crewneck sweatshirt on top. When I got dressed that morning, I thought the ensemble was cute, but by the time I made it to church, the whole of it felt, well, dowdy.
I caught my reflection in the windows of the building and the outfit suddenly felt like a costume—like I tried too hard to dress hip and failed. I wrote the headline in my head: Middle-Aged Mother of Four Forgets How to Dress Herself.
I haven’t worn that skirt since.
7
Sometime in my late twenties, I asked a friend if she could remember the first time she felt like a grown up. We both had two kids at the time, but she was fifteen years ahead of me.
She thought about it for a moment and then told me a story about a time she was sipping champagne in a cocktail dress at a fancy wedding while her kids were back at the hotel room with a babysitter.
“That was the moment,” she said.
8
I recently heard ninety-two-year-old Carol Burnett say she feels like she’s eleven on the inside.
I say twenty, but I get it, Carol.
9
I wonder: When will I start to feel like a grown up?
10
I don’t really remember my tenth birthday. Is that the year I asked for the same cake as my American girl doll, Molly McIntire—the one with brown frosting, yellow piping around the circled edge, and Happy Birthday, Molly, written in cursive letters? I cried about that cake for some reason; it’s coming back to me now.
I think it suddenly felt silly to have the same cake as a doll, like I was too grown up or something.
Eat that cake, ten-year-old Molly, I’d like to whisper into the past. You’re not grown up yet.
11
I apply for the job, interview for the job, am offered the job, and accept the job. I work through feelings of both self-doubt and confidence during each step of the process. Some days I am invigorated; other days I am paralyzed by indecision. Some days I feel, “Great!” and other days I want to melt into the floor and let the status quo carry on. It’s disorienting to begin a new thing when I no longer feel young. I am fresh-faced and weathered—a walking dichotomy of experience.
12
I wonder: What do middle-aged teachers wear now?
13
I watch Jake age with hyper-focus. His beard has gone gray along with the hair by his temples, and I love how rugged and handsome it makes him look.
Meanwhile, I look at myself in the mirror, and the only word that comes to mind is “haggard.” All I can see are the bags underneath my eyes and the sagging skin along my jawline. I try to blame the tri-fold mirror in our bathroom but eventually have to admit that my face just looks like this now.
14
I wonder: Is it normal to think about all these things?
15
It is so wild to think about how much life is lived between the ages of ten and twenty.
You start the decade practicing multiplication facts on the swingset with your friends, and then by the end, you’re mapping out career paths and life plans. My son is about to turn ten, and when I try to picture him as a man, I can’t.
It’s so far away and also, I know, not.
16
I am emailed tax forms for my new job. I open the file, take one look at them, and hand my laptop over to Jake.
I bring a lot of good things to our family table. I have taught our kids how to run outside when they spot a beautiful sunset and wax poetic about all things Harry Potter, but I do not understand W-2 Forms or the math required to figure out how much money we should be putting into our 401(k) every year. I don’t know what escrow means and feign both interest and comprehension every time we meet with our financial advisor. I once accidentally didn’t pay two months of mortgage payments.
When it comes to the more adult matters of our household, I need Jake to be the one in charge.
17
I wonder: When did Jake become a grown-up?
18
I wonder: When will I catch up?
19
When I cook risotto, I like to drink a glass of white wine and listen to Carole King’s Tapestry album.
When I drive to sand volleyball in my minivan by myself, I like to roll down the windows and sing Olivia Rodrigo’s Sour album with the volume maxed out.
Sometimes these two things happen on the same night and, when they do, the juxtaposition—the feeling of both my youth and my age—delights me.
20
I turned twenty a few weeks after Jake and I started dating, and, to celebrate, he took me to a pond near our college campus. He spread a blanket beneath a weeping willow tree and we sat there together for a few hours, talking and drinking iced tea on the sloped grass.
Exactly one year later, Jake asked me to marry him while we sat on a bench at the edge of Lake Michigan, where our future felt as wide-open as the vast expanse of water beside us. We were both technically adults, and also we were just a couple of kids who thought we knew so much more than we did.
21
Sometimes during the ten-minute drive to Target, I write the eulogy I’ll give at Jake’s funeral someday. (It’s such an insane personal assignment, I know.) By the time I pull into the parking lot, I have tears all over my face. I find that the closer I get to middle age, the more I think about death and dying. We have a will and trust made. Jake shows me where he keeps the list of all his passwords. I do not know who will fill out the W-2 forms if Jake isn’t around to do them.
Our future together once felt so vast and wide open; it was a given. Now I know that nothing about time is certain. I see the downward slope of time with sharp clarity.
22
I wonder: Is it normal to think so much about all these things?
23
I spent my twenties learning. Jake and I got married when I was twenty one, I was hired for my first teaching job when I was twenty three, my first baby was born when I was twenty six, and we moved across the country for Jake’s job when I was twenty eight. Most of what I know about my own worth was grown in the soil of that decade.
Just before I turned thirty, I considered each of the previous ten years and all the ways they had shaped, refined, stretched, and challenged me. I was a better version of myself, and also, still a work in progress. I was both sure-footed and ever-changing, and I wondered how much more I could possibly learn in the next ten years.
What will 2026 Molly have to say? I asked myself, with full confidence she would report back.
24
This is what I know about my own worth: it cannot change.
I have felt the upheaval of job changes and motherhood and lonely nights and cross-country moves and regular Wednesday afternoons, and in all of it, I remain loved and chosen and redeemed and known.
When the thoughts in my own mind get especially spinny, I realize I’ve taken my eyes off all those truths.
My worth cannot change, I remind myself again and again and again and again.
25
My home is a storefront for anti-aging products: a red-light facial sculptor, various brands of wrinkle patches, a lymphatic drainage brush, gua sha stones, ice rollers, overnight toning body whip, toning body serum, skin firming lotion, collagen powder.
I draw the line at botox even though all of my over-the-counter purchases are really just grasping for the same results.
26
This is the part where I admit that I didn’t include every anti-aging purchase in the above section because I got self-conscious about how long the list was. There’s also a weighted vest, a vibration plate, and a red-light therapy panel. Okay, and also an Oura Ring.
27
During yoga one day, while I’m attempting to hold eagle pose, I notice a sharp pain in my right heel which persists for a few weeks.
I buy a pair of tennis shoes whose reviews assure me they are great for people with heel pain, and when I wear them with my black weighted vest on my early-morning walks, the phrase “woman of a certain age” always comes to mind.
When my girlfriends and I discuss our various aches and pains, we laugh because we never seem to know anymore if it’s an actual problem or just a normal side-effect of our age.
28
I wonder: Is this normal? Is this normal? Is this normal?
29
I do not ask ChatGPT about any of this. I do talk to my sister-in-law. We don’t use the phrase “mid-life crisis,” but we do try to describe the way our anxiety feels inside our skin every month. We talk about purpose in motherhood and what the next decade will look like while we hold books in our laps at the pool. Our kids are elsewhere. We know we’ve moved into the next phase of life.
30
There was very little fanfare when I turned thirty. Jake and I left our little girls home with a babysitter, ate chocolate fondue at The Melting Pot, and made it home in time for an early bedtime. Nine days later, I held our third baby in my arms.
We were, as they say, in the thick of it. I’ll make a big deal out of forty, I remember thinking. I won’t be so tired then.
31
A new headline: Middle-Aged Mother of Four Goes Shopping for New Work Clothes.
I meet with a stylist first, who tells me what types of tops and pants are best suited for my body type. (Not the body type I want, but the one I actually have and am working hard to embrace and love.) She teaches me how to put an outfit together, and basically gives me a helpful funnel through which to sort clothes when I’m shopping. I make my way through four stores and feel great about the pieces I come home with.
I really do feel great about each item of clothing, which I accept as a form of grace.
32
This is the part where I acknowledge the fact that I am often talking out of both sides of my mouth because what I believe to be true about aging and how I most honestly feel about it are often at odds.
I am working hard to embrace the realities of the second half of my life. I also harbor many angsty thoughts about how those realities actually feel.
33
I spent my thirties learning. Our last baby was born when I was thirty one, we moved back to our home when I was thirty two, our last baby started kindergarten when I was thirty seven, and I decided to relaunch my career when I was thirty nine. Sure, I cemented my beliefs about my own worth in my twenties, but I see better now that every year continues to give me opportunities to live all that out.
On the cusp of forty, I consider how much has changed since Jake spread that blanket beneath the weeping willow and also how much has stayed the same.
I’m still a work in progress; I’m still being shaped, refined, stretched, and challenged. I’m still sure: everything continues to change except the truth that I am loved and chosen and redeemed and known.
2026 Molly has reported back.
34
My mom told me once that forty is the best decade, and I believe her. We’re no longer in the thick of it when it comes to parenting, which is to say we sleep through the night and our kids pack their own duffel bags when we go on vacation. I am not so rattled anymore by things that don’t matter. I feel more certain of things that are true and things that are, well, garbage.
I tell all my friends how great the next ten years are going to be; I announce it any chance I get. “Forty is going to be great, you guys,” I keep announcing because I need us to all believe it together. I need the joy of the next decade to be a group assignment.
35
I tell Jake exactly what I want to do for my fortieth birthday party: Rent out our favorite wine bar. Fill it with our friends. I don’t want to be self-indulgent; I just really want to celebrate the life and the people I’ve been given.
36
Jake adds his own plan on top of mine. After I joked for a decade that he could never pull off a surprise party, he pulls off a surprise: a weekend trip to New York City with our friends.
He marks the occasion as A Very Big Deal.
37
I wonder: How might 2036 Molly look back on all this some day? What might she have to say?
38
After I accept my new job, I have just over three months before it officially begins which affords me plenty of time to feel every single emotion available. Some nights I wake up at 3:00 a.m., shaky from a stress dream. Some days it all feels exactly right. I vacillate between the two with regularity, a pendulum of conflicting emotions.
My worth cannot change, I say to myself again and again and again and again.
“I think I am ready,” I tell Jake, and I mostly believe my own words.
39
When people find out I’m about to turn forty, they usually ask some version of the same question: “How are you feeling about that?”
“I feel great about it,” I always say, which is both true and also, as you now know, not quite the whole story.
40
Jake and I teach our kids how to play The Game of Life on a Sunday evening in July. We pick jobs and buy houses and build families and then in the middle of the board, everyone has to stop on the “Midlife Spin Out” space. If you spin a red on that turn, you have to go down the mid-life crisis path, while a black spin sends you down a shorter, easier path toward early retirement.
If only it really was that easy, I think, and then I reach forward and spin the wheel.
After six years of stories about big feelings, common grace, and that one about Taylor Swift’s eras before The Eras Tour was even a thing, this is Molly Flinkman’s final essay for Coffee + Crumbs. If you want to know what she’s up to in the future, you can sign up for her monthly newsletter, Twenty Somethings, or her Substack (where she shows up a little less reliably). No matter what comes next for her, she’ll keep writing in the margins. She doesn’t know any other way.
Photo by Jennifer Floyd.