Why Midlife Loneliness Can Be a Sacred Pause
- jackiemorisette
- Jan 10
- 4 min read
When you're a painter trying to relay what a painting means to you, it forces you to sit down and be honest with yourself. This blog is the reflection on "Citrus liturgy" It was easy enough to say this painting came from a feeling loneliness but it was a loneliness I had never felt before. It wasn't specific, there was no one person that stood out that I could say I miss this person. There was just a feeling and painting this painting made me stop and contemplate why I was feeling this way. The younger me might have just called a friend and filled the emptiness instead of allowing myself to examine why I was feeling like this. It's always so much easier if we can just ignore the hard feelings, but then you end up also ignoring the beauty. The zest of life.
There’s a peculiar hush in your forties. Career paths that once felt infinite now trace clearer, often narrower track that slowly winds towards an end goal of retirement. Friendships scatter into different time-zones and a convergence of all things in your life, childcare of teenagers, eldercare, relentless work and the general malaise that the doctor keeps telling you is because you just need to lose 10 more pounds.
Nights grow quieter, not because life has dimmed, but because its volume has shifted to frequencies you can’t always hear. You spent your life always on the go chasing the noise but in this season, where it seems things just got all thrown together at you, you're the busiest you've ever been with caring for all those around you and you crave quiet.
In that quiet, that hush you find loneliness. It isn’t proof that something is wrong with you. It’s proof that you can finally hear yourself think.
In earlier decades, momentum muffled feeling. College semesters, first apartments, small children, work ambitions. Every full calendar day was protecting you from the acidic sting of introspection. By midlife that quest for a quiet moment slackens the pace just enough for the juice to seep through. Suddenly you taste both sharpness and sweetness in the same swallow. It can surprise you, maybe even burn a little, but it’s also vividly alive.
Loneliness here isn’t a deficit, it’s information. It tells you where connection is needed, where desire still pulses, where grief remains unspoken. Ignoring it is like throwing away the orange because the peel is pale or has surface scars but then you lose the juicy interior. Slicing it open, on the other hand, releases the very brightness you feared might be lost forever.
Think of midlife solitude as a liturgy, a ritual of sorts.
The lone slice like a canceled plan or a quiet Saturday that exposes negative space. Instead of rushing to fill it with scrolling or errands, hold it up to the light. Absence can illuminate longing, and naming longing is the first step toward meaningful change.
The pressure of the juice Splash. Mortgages, blood tests, or teenagers—can compress you until something bursts. If you allow the eruption instead of suppressing it, the resulting spray refracts light in unexpected directions. A daring career pivot, a revived friendship, a long-postponed creative project. The squeeze is uncomfortable, but the droplets sparkle.
The Midnight Altar. Picture a lone bulb over a cutting board, the scent of citrus oil in the air. This is the moment you choose not to numb out into routine but to take notice. Make tea slowly, read a poem aloud, stretch until your spine sighs. Ordinary gestures become ritual simply because you pay full attention.
Why is feeling deeply a good thing? Because emotion is information, sometimes the only honest report you get all day. It clarifies priorities, exposes neglected parts of yourself, and fuels decisions that align with who you are now, not who you were at twenty-five. When you let loneliness register, you move from autopilot to authorship.
4 Simple Practices to help Honor this Hush
Slice & Savor. When the evening feels cavernous, peel an orange mindfully. For each segment, name one truth that stings and one hope that sweetens. Swallow both; they belong together.
Spotlight Solitude. Replace background noise with a single candle or lamp. Journal, pray, or simply breathe for ten minutes. Treat the silence as illumination, not deprivation.
Pressure into Play. Schedule one activity that scares or intrigues you—a dance class, a solo hike, a foreign-language lesson. Let the compression of daily life propel you into a burst of novelty.
Daily Benediction. End each night by acknowledging one ache and one delight from the day. This tiny ritual transforms raw feeling into integrated experience.
Midlife loneliness isn’t a verdict, it’s an invitation. The ache you notice in the quiet isn’t the absence of life, it’s life asking for your undivided attention. Taste it fully. Let it be sharp, let it be sweet, and let it remind you that you are still, gloriously, beautifully, alive.
Sounds weird, but sometimes in those quite moments, talking to yourself as if you're narrating your life as a story or movie gives a certain perspective. It simply frames your life as what it is from what it's not without the burden of judgment. It's freeing, forgiving, and accepting at the same time.