Midlife: Stories of Crisis and Growth from the Counselling Room, Helen Kewell in Conversation with Catherine Jackson

What is midlife? A point of existential and psychological crisis? The threshold to our inevitable decline into old age and redundancy? A time of emotional volatility, depression and hormonal upheaval? So much of the medical and media coverage would have us believe.

In this challenging and uplifting book, humanistic counsellor Helen Kewell takes a compassionate look at the challenges presented to us, men, women and non-binary folk alike, by our arrival at this major point of transition in adult life. Extending life expectancy and advances in medical science have given us many more years to life than was once the norm. We have many more years to live, and much still to contribute to society and to our families. Kewell’s message is that these are indeed years to be lived to the full.

In these short vignettes fashioned from her casework with clients and her personal experience of midlife, Kewell crafts a story not of decline and disintegration but renewal, revival and new beginnings. With her skilful guidance, her clients unpick and come to terms with what has driven them thus far and throw off the shackles of old ways of being. Yes, the menopause exacts a heavy toll on many women; yes, men also find their accustomed physical strength and social status challenged by their changing hormones. But alongside, there is so much we can add to the years of life ahead, she argues.

This sensitive, thoughtful and challenging book addresses a topic rarely discussed from this perspective, bringing to it a counsellor’s wisdom, rooted in humanistic and existential theory and personal experience of being female, a mother and amid midlife.