Sheehy said that it’s common for this to happen unless you know you’re to work on the transition or unless there is a crisis in your 40’s or early 50’s that forces you to reflect, to make a “new passage”. It was what she terms “2 nd Adulthood”, “a new life to live, one in which we could concentrate on becoming better, stronger, deeper, wiser, funnier, freer, sexier, and more attentive to living the privileged moments.” Sign me up for this!īut why wasn’t I feeling all those benefits? Now here’s the real rescue–the book taught me that I wasn’t moving into this new and beneficial part of life (transitioning/passaging) because I was trying to stay in my old life. I learned in New Passages that it truly wasn’t a mid-life crisis. Plus, I’m not in mid-life yet.”Įvery day for two years I just kept thinking, “I’m stuck–I can’t seem to go forward, I can’t even go backwards.” Gail Sheehy to the rescue–and I’m not being facetious, she really did rescue me. Is it that I don’t like my job anymore, my home, my life? I can’t be having a mid-life crisis-that’s for people who lack confidence, self-esteem, people who aren’t psychologists and analyze themselves to death like me. 'On the other side we will be something else but we have no idea what.' - New Passages, page xi
