Why We Can't Sleep: Women's New Midlife Crisis by Ada Calhoun

If you’re a Gen X woman who’s not sleeping and asking yourself, “Well, how did I get here?”, this book will provide insight and validate your experience. You are not alone. It’s all of us. I highlighted so many sections of this book because there were so many explanations for what I was experiencing.

Calhoun explores the cultural and political circumstances that have shaped our thoughts and feelings about the problems we face — job instability, money panic, caregiving, decision fatigue, divorce, and perimenopause. I promise you, this book will make you understand yourself better and feel less alone (and maybe also a little angry).

Some more relatable content:

“Gen X women had sky-high expectations for themselves. The contrast between our “you can be anything” indoctrination and the stark realities encountered in midlife—when you might, despite your best efforts, not be able to find a partner or get pregnant or save for retirement or own your own home or find a job with benefits—has made us feel like failures at the exact moment when we most require courage.”

“In a New York Times piece entitled The Good Divorce, Susan Gregory Thomas writes that if a Gen X woman does divorce, she will often go to great lengths to make it amicable—doing anything ‘to spare children the horrors of the Kramer v. Kramer bloodbaths of their own childhoods.’ They are also more likely to keep plugging away at a difficult marriage, hiding their feelings from fear that rocking the boat will sink it.”