Reflections on Identity
Learning to Cope With All the Midlife Doozies at Once
Divorce, Death, Moving, and Career Change
My daughter spent the days following her grandfather’s death making a video montage. It was moving and beautiful, an epic poem of his life from his childhood in Brooklyn to his years in the Peace Corps in Iran to his five children and eleven grandchildren spread over two marriages, the longest one being to my mother for 45 years.
My daughter chose a song to play over the video by the band Train, the first lines rising above the black and white photos of his youth: when it rains it pours and opens doors and floods the floors we thought would always keep us safe and dry.
These words echo through my mind in an endless loop as I seek dry land and try to accept the fact that I will probably be wading through murky water for quite some time. Many therapists identify the biggest life changes as the death of a loved one, divorce, career change, and moving from one home to another. Are there bonus points for enduring them all at the same time or for adding to the list? Did I unwittingly sign up for A Mid-Life Package in which I bought all four of these events simultaneously in the hopes that I could just knock it all out at once?
