Mid-life Transitions

Arriving at Mid-life

There are many transitions in our lives – from childhood to adolescence to adulthood, forging a career, changing career, entering marriage, and beginning a family through to retirement. The morning of life is generally busy, full of external focus, building a strong ego, and either striving to make a mark in the world or, for some, simply surviving, raising children, and hopefully finding a balance between work, family, and life. The morning of life is often so busy that almost imperceptibly we find that we have arrived at mid-life and, as the poet and writer David Whyte describes it, we find ourselves facing the “great unknown.”

From both a religious and psychological perspective, much has been written about the journey through mid-life. Fowler (1995), in his book Stages of Faith, looks at it from the religious perspective and the stages of development in faith. Faith for him is a universal quality of life and is a dynamic evolving process. He sees the middle...