Flip It and Reverse It: The Wild Card That Is 40
Forty is a paradox. It’s the age where your group chat includes moms of toddlers and parents of college freshmen. Some friends are navigating their second divorces, while others are planning their first weddings. One person is dating someone half their age and test-driving a Ferrari, and another is Googling “best organic formula for infants” at 1 a.m.
My West Coast crew is just starting their parenting journeys. My Midwest friends? They’re filling out FAFSA forms. Some of my friends are contemplating baby names; others are contemplating quitting their careers and moving off-grid.
And here’s the side of 40 no one posts on Instagram: a lot of people are quietly reckoning with the choices they made in their 20s. The “smart” major chosen for job security now feels like a trap. That steady, high-paying career path has morphed into a gilded cage. So much schooling, so many boxes checked early—marriage, kids, the house—because it was what was expected. Only now, years later, there’s a simmering resentment they can’t quite name. A quiet sense of Is this really it?
Midlife crises are real. And they’re not just about sports cars or dramatic haircuts—they’re existential. (I had one last summer.) People are waking up with full calendars and empty spirits, wondering how they got so far down a road they never truly chose with their heart.
Me? I got married at 36—fashionably late by some standards—and only after a beautifully full chapter as a bachelorette. My 20s and early 30s were a mosaic of passport stamps, bottomless brunches, and spontaneous girls’ trips. Now I’m in bed by 9 p.m. with a cup of tea and a book I’ll fall asleep reading. Predictable? Absolutely. Boring? Occasionally.
But being child-free means I still get to do what I want, when I want—and there’s a certain magic in that freedom. And I loathe how society shames women for choosing themselves, their peace, their careers, or simply a different path over motherhood. There’s nothing selfish about designing a life that actually fits you.
And while we’re unpacking things—can we retire the question, “So when are you having a baby?” Especially for women over 35. There are layers to that decision: emotional, medical, financial, relational… and plenty of women are navigating fertility challenges they don’t want to explain at every holiday dinner. If she doesn’t bring it up, don’t ask.
I am 40 now—thankfully I don’t look it, based on the memes my friends and I send each other of 90s movie parents who were supposedly 40 but looked like they were pushing retirement. But even so, I don’t feel behind. Kourtney Kardashian had a baby at 44 and looks fantastic. I’m not planning on being 44 and pregnant, but if that’s how life unfolds… maybe. Who knows.
Life at 40 is funny like that. Everyone’s playing a different hand. And from a therapist’s lens, that’s the beauty and the tension of this age: it’s the first time most people have enough lived experience to recognize the gap between the life they were told to build and the life they actually want.
Forty is where the unconscious becomes loud. The old coping mechanisms stop working. The “shoulds” lose their power. The stories we inherited—from family, culture, religion, or younger versions of ourselves—start to crumble. Not because they were wrong, but because we’ve outgrown them.
This age asks you to pause, to notice, to reevaluate. To stop living on autopilot and start living with intention. To let go of the timelines you were chasing and grieve the ones that won’t unfold. To rewrite the ones that still can.
In therapy, we call this integration: gathering all the versions you’ve been—ambitious twenty-something, exhausted thirty-something, heartbroken, hopeful, lost, evolving—and deciding who you want to be next. Not who you were expected to be. Not who you promised to be before you knew yourself. Who you actually are now.
Forty isn’t a crisis. It’s a convergence. A reclamation. A chance to flip it and reverse it—not out of panic, but out of clarity.
Because the wildest, most powerful thing about this decade is realizing you’re still allowed to change your mind. You’re still allowed to choose differently. You’re still allowed to choose you.
Good luck out there,
LC
Vibe with Me LC 