Midlife Crisis Should Be More Fun
December 1, 2025 | by Dorothy Rosby
I was 36 when I had my only child, and I soon discovered the advantages of being an “older” mom: I was suddenly a member of an elite group. Julia Roberts, Madonna, and Susan Sarandon all had babies long after the old biological clock needed new batteries. At crowded school programs, younger mothers let me take the last remaining chair. And, by the time I’m a grandmother, I’ll be accustomed to being called one.
But there were disadvantages too, the main one being that having an adolescent boy and a perimenopausal mother under the same roof was like storing the matches with the dynamite. It was fun getting moustaches at the same time though.
While my son and I suffered though our own versions of Hormone Hell simultaneously, today I’m just going to focus on mine. He might be embarrassed if I write about his.
The way I see it, estrogen is a sometimes benevolent, sometimes cruel dictator that rules a woman’s life from puberty until menopause. When we reach a “certain age,” it starts to relinquish its power, leaving behind a dangerous leadership vacuum and causing midlife crises that is not nearly as much fun as we had hoped our midlife crises would be.
Take me, for example. Instead of getting a tattoo, I got a middle-aged middle. On the bright side, I have more room for tattoos.
Instead of a career change, I had a personality change. I become increasingly impatient and irritable to strangers; behavior I once reserved for the people I love.
Instead of a new sports car, I got a new thermostat—and I don’t mean for the house. My whole life, I’ve been a cold person. I don’t mean “cold” as in “cold-hearted cold,” no matter what the previously mentioned strangers say. I mean “cold” as in “long-johns-from-October-to-June cold.” And I still am—except when I’m not. And I’m not at random, inconvenient times throughout the day and night. I’m convinced global warming was brought on by the hot flashes of baby boom generation.
My good friend Google tells me this could go on for years. I’m afraid when I finally get through it, my husband will have left me. I won’t have any friends left. All I’ll have to show for my ordeal is greater body mass and more facial hair. Just like my son.
Dorothy Rosby is a blogger and humor columnist whose column appears regularly in publications throughout the West and Midwest. She’s the author of four books of humorous essays all available locally at Mitzi’s Books in Rapid City and on Amazon.