Accepting the Things We Can’t Control in Midlife

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A crucial part of midlife is embracing the bitter and the sweet and then learning to let go completely.

And looking at life through what I call the Control Filter is a tactic we must practice forever. To help, I’ve compiled a list of all the things you can control:

  • Your words 
  • Your attitudes and opinion 
  • Your thoughts 
  • Your actions and reactions 
  • Your choices in life moving forward 

What You Can’t Control

Did you notice what isn’t included on the list? Your background, your history, your upbringing, and many of the things that do in fact pertain to you and your body and your one precious, beautiful life but remain largely out of your control. Yes, you do have agency over your body and yourself, but often your ingrained reactions and emotions, your thoughts, and your behaviors are largely due to outside circumstances that have conspired together to form patterns without you even realizing it.

What we need to harness here instead is our limited agency, or our ability to recognize destructive patterns and grasp control of those things over which we actually have some influence.

So here, I’ve also provided an exhaustive list of all the things you can’t control:

  • Everything (and everyone) else

You Have to Let Go

It was forever ago, and yesterday. But during those seven years married to my husband while he was actively using drugs, his vacant eyes and trembly hands made it increasingly clear to me that he was gone—lost and wandering through his life and very likely going to die from his addiction. I had exhausted every possible thing I could think of to bring him back—back to me and our lives, back to our children, back to light and sobriety and life. But none of it worked.

“Fixing” him was out of my control, and I had to let go. I had to let go of trying. I had to relax my grip. I had to sift. And after years of pain and heartbreak and sadness and devastation, two trips to rehab, a six-month stay in a three-quarter-way addiction recovery house, and approximately one million minutes unclenching my fists, I did. I let him go. I harnessed my limited agency, and I learned to do the next right thing. And then the next. And the next.

I bought pears from the store. I mowed the lawn. I painted my walls the perfect shade of blue, and it made me smile. I prayed the Serenity Prayer. And every day—every moment, really—I let go. Because in life, I am the only person I can control. 

Beautiful in a New Way

Today I have a marriage of twenty-two years to my husband, who has been in recovery now for fifteen years. I have five children and a career and extended family and neighbors and friendships. And I am still learning to look at my life through the lens of control. Each day, it feels like I have a whole new list of bits and pieces and broken parts that I pull from my pocket to hold up to the light and question, Is this mine?

And each day I pray for serenity and acceptance, for the courage to act on my own behalf, and for wisdom to know which parts of life are mine to change. I am still practicing the fine art of letting the excess fall away. 

One of the most important discoveries of midlife is learning to peel your fingers back from the death grip you’ve had on relationships, health, kids, career, life, and the picture you’ve carried in your mind for so long of how life is supposed to be. I’m sorry. I know it hurts, but it doesn’t look the way you hoped. And no matter how hard you struggle and fight, it just isn’t going to be that way. But it can be beautiful in a whole new way if you can only let go of control.

Reflection:

  • What are some things you’ve been trying to control lately?
  • What things are not yours to hold that you need to let go of?

Were you inspired by this post? Check out the book by Everything I Wish I Could Tell You About Midlife by Mikala Albertson. Dr. Albertson offers practical tools to empower you to care for the body you actually have and the life you are actually living for women in their forties, fifties, and beyond.

Mikala Albertson, MD is a board-certified family practice doctor and well-being advocate who is passionate about women’s health and healing in the middle of our messy, ordinary lives. Author of Ordinary on Purpose, Mikala inspires readers to aim for wholehearted living through a gentle, achievable, sustainable approach. She and her husband have five children and live near Salt Lake City, Utah. Learn more at MikalaAlbertsonMD.com.

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