Generation X, those born between about 1965 and 1980, often get squeezed. But now in middle age, and not being quiet about it, Gen X women, in particular, have a lot to say about getting better as they get older.
NPR health and science reporter Alison Aubrey has written a new book about midlife called "Your Turn: How to create a midlife you love."
She spoke with KAZU's Amy Mayer.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Amy Mayer: Your book “Your Turn: How to Create a Midlife You Love,” has just come out. Before we dig into that, I'm just curious, when you were a new parent, did you read all sorts of books about child development and parenting and that sort of thing?
Allison Aubrey: Yes, until I became so anxious I had to close each and every one of them.
AM: I was wondering how the experience of sort of consuming that information might have influenced the book that you've just written.
AA: That is a good question, and one that I have not been asked. I think mostly my reporting, more than those parenting books, probably influenced my thinking a lot. I've always been kind of an evidence-based person. I don't want to just go with the latest trend unless I know that there's some evidence behind it. I always found a lot of those parenting books were just based on wives' tales or one person's subjective experience. And so, I think the throughline to my book, now that you ask this question, is that my formula for all these years of science and health reporting has been to weave stories together with evidence.
AM: What were some of the triggers that made you realize that a book that offered guidance about how to enjoy and embrace midlife would be wanted?
AA: Well, because I was looking for this guidance, and I wasn't finding it. And I read a lot of the midlife reinvention literature and wasn't seeing myself in it. And in the end, I was like, you know what? I have this question. I'm a Gen X woman. I've been in the moon bounce of controlled chaos, jumping between daily deadlines and parenting duties, and daily deadlines and parenting duties for decades. I do not want the insights of billionaires or super influencers or Olympians or famous people. Like, there's plenty of memoirs that talk about this phase of life, written by people whose lives I can't relate to, but where were the everyday people like me?
I do not want the insights of billionaires or super influencers or Olympians or famous people. Like, there's plenty of memoirs that talk about this phase of life, written by people whose lives I can't relate to, but where were the everyday people like me?
Also, I talk about this exciting phase beyond parenting and the paycheck, but we all know that we never stop parenting. Many of us will never stop working. So how do you squeeze this legacy chapter and this life of joy and adventure into all of the obligation that still remains? And I didn't find another book like that, so I thought, "Okay, I'll write it."
AM: Even though this is actually at the beginning of the book, I was hoping we could end with you explaining what the "third turn" is and how that became the metaphor for what happens in life at around this age.
AA: I grew up in Kentucky and went to Churchill Downs, which is the home of the Kentucky Derby. The first Derby I remember watching, the horse at the back of the pack was looking like it was going to lose. And then there was like this surge of momentum, like out of the blue. It just went from the back of the pack and right around the third turn of the track. (It) was just like unstoppable and gaining on all the other horses. And, lo and behold, oftentimes in a horse race, just like this past Kentucky Derby, someone far in the back... the jockey and the horse kind of work together to find that momentum and surge ahead to win. And later I was talking to my grandfather and he said, "You always watch the third turn, Allison. It's always at the third turn." And I said, "Okay, well why?" And he said, "This is where something unexpected happens."
Then I asked, "Well, well why here? Why this spot?" He said, "Well, I guess because when you can see the finish line, a sense of urgency arises." And that did not settle as a midlife metaphor when I was an adolescent. Decades later, entering into midlife, going back to Churchill Downs, that's when his words came back to me and it kind of settled in as like, wow, okay: we are entering the "if not now, when?" phase of life.
And hopefully we all have decades to go, but we can see the home stretch, and I can feel that urgency.
