DEAR JOYCE: After reading your column about mid-career menopause, I think you were mostly talking about men, but you briefly mentioned women. I am at a spot in life that most other women would rate successful. Problem: Something's missing, but as the chief earner in my family, I can't afford to make any major changes in these tight times. Can you address the "locked-room" challenge for women? -- J.V.
Is a woman's midlife a time of reckoning and re-evaluation? Do professional women break down in ways that men don't? (Yes to both questions, according to a new study.)
Although few women have written to me expressing your overarching concerns, apparently you've been drafted into an army of working women who say they're facing a major turning point in their professional lives. So reports Kathy Caprino, a Connecticut-based work-life coach and psychotherapist. Caprino is the author of an important new book, "Breakdown, Breakthrough: The Professional Woman's Guide to Claiming a Life of Passion, Power, and Purpose" (Berrett-Koehler).
Caprino, in conjunction with the Esteemed Woman Foundation, spent a year conducting a national study, finding that seven out of 10 working women are questioning their status quo and want change: "After devoting years to building successful careers, most of them feel that their professional lives and identities no longer work."
Caprino identifies a dozen common crises of professional women, including chronic health problems, financial bondage and painful losses of the "real me," and presents a new holistic model for overcoming them.
In the category of women's self-help books, "Breakdown, Breakthrough" is a quality choice to remember.
DEAR JOYCE: I, too, am a first-timer at being unemployed -- a topic you recently discussed. I don't much care for it, especially as I am now in my 14th month without a job. My self-esteem has never been lower. At 48, I'm too young to retire, and having just lost 30 percent of my IRA and 401(k)'s value in the current economic market, I need to work.
I have worked continuously since I was in my mid-teens and have never been without a job. After months of frustration, I've become much more aggressive at playing detective and finding out who the "real" hiring managers are, and am writing to them directly. So far no luck, but I will keep trying, as I fully agree with you that I must enlarge my network, even though it was extensive to begin with.