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A review by stevensabby
Why We Can't Sleep: Women's New Midlife Crisis by Ada Calhoun
5.0
I. Feel. Seen.
I have never felt like I “belonged” to GenX, even though my birth year says I do. But this book helped me to see myself in light of the cultural atmosphere into which I was born and raised. I never knew how *normal* my experience of my life is/has been—particularly as I have entered my 40s.
I also found myself scribbling the names of my friends in the margins, seeing so many reflections of the struggles we share with each other: care-giving, financial insecurity, the “angles and filters” necessary for social media, hormonal changes, fears for which we can find no rational basis. Except, as Calhoun so beautifully articulates, there IS a rational basis. We are not wrong: our lives (while also, often, deeply privileged) are wildly difficult in ways the generations before and after us do not experience.
If you are a woman, particularly a GenX woman in or approaching your 40s/50s, I cannot recommend this book enough.
I have never felt like I “belonged” to GenX, even though my birth year says I do. But this book helped me to see myself in light of the cultural atmosphere into which I was born and raised. I never knew how *normal* my experience of my life is/has been—particularly as I have entered my 40s.
I also found myself scribbling the names of my friends in the margins, seeing so many reflections of the struggles we share with each other: care-giving, financial insecurity, the “angles and filters” necessary for social media, hormonal changes, fears for which we can find no rational basis. Except, as Calhoun so beautifully articulates, there IS a rational basis. We are not wrong: our lives (while also, often, deeply privileged) are wildly difficult in ways the generations before and after us do not experience.
If you are a woman, particularly a GenX woman in or approaching your 40s/50s, I cannot recommend this book enough.