Gosh, even though I’ve created a midlife wisdom school and written a couple of books on the topic of midlife, I’d never thought of this label applying to me even though midlife is the least-studied life stage in human development. But, it’s a profitable life stage for the pharmaceutical industry, what with Viagra and antidepressants. In fact, antidepressant pill use nearly doubles during people’s late forties when compared to their late twenties or early sixties. The number of midlife suicides have more than doubled since 2000. Why isn’t society recognizing that midlife could use a little love?

It’s a rarity to cite BuzzFeed as a scholarly reference for my work, but I appreciated this recent story entitled, “A Study Has Finally Revealed The Age When Most People Reach Peak Happiness And Self-Confidence, And It Might Surprise You” (of course, the title is clickbait). It goes on to say many of the things I write about in “Learning to Love Midlife: 12 Reasons Why Life Gets Better With Age:” older people have better mental health, are more stable and content with what they have, and are less reactive to negative stimuli. I’d probably prefer citing the Harvard Business Review than BuzzFeed, but this just goes to show that the word is getting out there. 

I love being a midlife activist helping to rebrand midlife and beyond.

‍What’s a subject that activates you enough to become an activist? 

-Chip