I’ve been in the midst of a mid-life crisis (or mid-life reckoning) for the past 6 months.

It started with my dad’s terminal illness. He had been deteriorating physically and cognitively for about a year, but initially his doctors couldn’t find the cause, despite the fact that he has had cancer for over 15 years. Until lately it has been managed by alternative therapies (drug trials, etc), and he has proven to be a medical marvel - outliving his initial prognosis by 10 years. My MLC started in April. I think I sensed something was wrong. I began acting recklessly, spending unwisely. I lost weight. I pushed the people who loved me most away in favour of shiny, new friends I thought were cooler than me. I spent a lot of time thinking about external validation.

In May, the reality of my dad’s situation was made official by his oncologist. I was in the room when she said he maybe had a year left, if chemo could slow the progression of the cancer that was now actively making holes in his bones. I lost more weight. Spent more money. Planned a trip by myself, craving the anonymity of another city. I fantasized about a bigger, more glamorous life beyond the sense of community, enduring love, and safety of the smaller city I grew up and where I still live.

For context, I was raised an only child as an in-family adoptee. My maternal grandparents are the people I call my parents. I went to live with them at age 2, after my biological parents split up. This is an important part of my story, because, even though I don’t remember specific things about my time with my biological parents, I do remember the vibe. And the vibe was CHAOS. I have attachment trauma from the sheer insecurity of my early years. I brought my insecure attachment with me to my relationship with my adoptive parents. When I was young, I constantly worried that they, like my biological parents, would ultimately judge me to be unworthy of love. I became a people-pleaser as a result, insecure and overly sensitive and afraid of failure but more afraid of rejection. But, after a while, I developed a secure attachment to my parents, and those maladaptive qualities became less central to my personality.

For many years, for the most part, I was a happy, well-adjusted, rational, organized, sensible person. I wasn’t perfect, but overall I was pretty together. I had the house and the car and the good job and the loving and helpful husband and the adorable and hilarious kid.

I was also mildly bored a lot of the time, but it didn’t bother me until six months ago. It was like my dad’s illness cracked something open in me, and there was no going back. Suddenly, I felt like I was just putting one foot in front of the other. I wanted to express myself creatively but didn’t know how to. I wanted more from life. I felt stifled and restless. I had a couple of episodes of emotion-fueled binge drinking. I acted erratically, irrationally. I had a limerent episode. It was all very dramatic.

I knew I was in a bit of trouble, so I started therapy again. My therapist helped me work through my early trauma. She helped me realize that I had been holding on to the idea that people who leave me (my birth parents, friends, romantic partners) do it because I’m annoying or because of any number of other personality defects. My therapist reminded me that the narrative of being unloveable as the catalyst for my parents’ leaving was “never true” and that the other narrative of my adoptive parents doing me a favour, of them heroically rescuing me, was also bullshit. “All four of them loved you then and still do. Your birth parents let you go because they loved you. Your adoptive parents wanted you to be their child because they loved you.” My therapist has also pointed out that my early chaos made me who I am: along with the vulnerabilities outlined below, my experience also imbued me with adaptability, perseverance, curiosity, and self-reliance.

Slowly, I started to view my MLC for what it was: an identity crisis that involved the fracturing of my full, authentic self into distinct pieces (personas): my inner child (needy, insecure but also creative and enthusiastic), my mom-boss self (practical and organized but also warm and nurturing) and what I would call my “shiny pony” persona (vain and attention-seeking but also witty and engaging). I had been trying to bury my inner child for my whole life, under boldness and sexiness in my 20’s, under control and domesticity through my 30’s, and now, in my 40’s under a new brand of boldness and sexiness that was classier and sassier than version 1.0.

But the more I tried to bury my inner child, the more vicious she became. She lashed out in ways big and small, a pattern of mistakes stretching all the way back through my childhood. “Stop!” My therapist said, “ignoring her will only retraumatize her. You can’t ignore her forever. It will only cause her to feel rejected. You have to put your arm around her and tell her she’s going to be ok.” So I did. I hugged that strange, magnetic, independent-thinking, tough little girl inside. I started to feel better.

The other two parts of my personality were easier to integrate since there’s a lot of overlap anyway between the mom-boss and the shiny pony, but I still found myself favouring being shiny over being a good partner, mother, leader, and colleague. I wanted to be seen (and not in the “seen and understood” way, in the “seen in a hot outfit” way). I did not want to do school drop-off or write reports. I wanted to be a CREATIVE FORCE. So far, I’ve only been able to find marginal success in this endeavour, mostly through my wardrobe. I wasn’t sure I could integrate without losing shiny pony’s fabulous sense of style. But I eventually realized that mom-boss was paying for the clothes and shoes, and that she endorsed shiny pony’s sartorial choices fully. Yes, mom-bossed enjoyed stability, but it didn’t need to come at the cost of joy.

I slowly learned that I could be all three parts of me at once, and that only when I reintegrated would I be my authentic self: a new version of me with some big flaws but so many decent qualities. She is chic, charismatic, practical, organized, creative, and enthusiastic. She is also easily wounded, a know-it-all, too sarcastic, vain, stubborn, and impatient. She is me, and I’m working on embracing her fully, but it’s a process. Some days I feel great, and other days I still feel lost, but I think I can see light at the end of the tunnel.