Why We Can’t Sleep: Women’s New Midlife Crisis

It’s impossible to recommend this book highly enough to anyone who identifies as a Gen Xer or to those who love one.

Why We Can’t Sleep is a story with GUTS. It explores why women of a certain age and generation have been largely marginalized, partially by society and partially by their own choices, facing a world they were not prepared for. It addresses those big feelings women face in middle age—namely, I have everything I wanted (or, conversely, I have nothing that I wanted) so WHY am I so unhappy?

The experience of Gen X women in middle age is a unique one, smashed between the “you can have it all” message and the reality of feeling constant inadequacy and failure. Calhoun lets her readers know that it’s not their fault they feel like they do, gives context to their suffering, and offers light at the end of the tunnel that doesn’t have to do with death and taxes. She doesn’t flinch from brutal truths as she explores the context of how Gen X found itself in this situation. She leaves readers feeling that Gen X women are not irrelevant and have not been forgotten.